Two countries divided by a common pandemic

In late 1970, British prime minister Ted Heath learnt that his Australian counterpart John Gorton planned to change the name of the Department of External Affairs to the Department of Foreign Affairs. It became a big issue – Britain’s view was how could Her Majesty’s Australian Diplomatic Service, as our diplomats were then grandly styled, possibly handle relations with the UK from a ‘Foreign Affairs’ department when the UK plainly wasn’t a foreign country? We were family.