Penny Wong has urged Britain to confront its colonial past in landmark speech

Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong has highlighted the links between Australia and the UK while pointing to the countries' chequered histories in the Pacific.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong speaks during a press conference in Paris. Source: Getty / Stephane De Sakutin

Key Points

• Foreign Minister Penny Wong has called on the UK to confront its colonial past.
• Senator Wong said both Australia and the UK have multicultural ties that will help relations in the Indo-Pacific.
• While Australia has not listened to the Pacific adequately before, she said, it is time for change.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong has urged the United Kingdom to confront its colonial past in the Indo-Pacific as Britain pushes ahead with a tilt towards the region.

In a landmark speech to King's College in London, Senator Wong highlighted the deep links between the two countries, saying many Australians continued to think of themselves as British after federation more than a century ago.

"But as the nature of our nations, our regions and indeed our world has changed, so too has the character of our relationship," Senator Wong said.

She said the "modern face" of both Australia and Britain display a plethora of cultures, and must be understood for the countries to progress in the Indo-Pacific.

"Today, as a modern, multicultural country - home to people of more than 300 ancestries and the oldest continuing culture on Earth - Australia sees itself as being in the Indo-Pacific, and being of the Indo-Pacific."

Senator Wong pointed to her personal history as a descendant of British colonists in Australia and Chinese immigrants to modern-day Malaysia.

"[That] other side of my family had a very different experience of British colonisation," she said.

Senator Wong said many people from the same Chinese clans as her father laboured in tin mines and plantations for the British North Borneo company, while others - including her grandmother - worked as domestic servants for British colonists.

"Such stories can sometimes feel uncomfortable – for those whose stories they are, and for those who hear them," she said.

Senator Wong conceded that Australia had not always listened to the countries of Southeast Asia and the Pacific as carefully as it could have, but the government was working to change that.

She said understanding the past brought with it the opportunity to find more common ground than if "we stayed sheltered in narrower versions of our countries' histories".

Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles said the foreign minister was making the critical point that acknowledging the past allowed for deeper relationships.

"It's really important for all countries to think about their past in terms of that providing a gateway for meaningful engagement in the future," he told ABC TV.

"We want to see a Great Britain which is engaged in our region and they certainly seek to be that, because if Britain is engaged in the Indo-Pacific it will help provide stability ... and that's really important."