Diplomacy is the oldest form of any of the foreign policy institutions of the state, predating foreign ministries, foreign ministers and ministerial offices by centuries. Remarkably, given its age, diplomacy is an institution that preserves the basic forms of its core functions – communication, representation, information-gathering and negotiation – and the basic set of diplomatic privileges and immunities (now codified in the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations) substantially intact from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Few institutions in contemporary Australian life have older antecedents than diplomatic missions, and few have changed so little in their basic structure: ambassadors and staff are sent to live abroad under the protection of diplomatic status to represent the government and speak on its behalf. The designations of staff overseas – ambassadors, counsellors, first, second and third secretaries, and so on – has remained largely immune from the fashions of management re-engineering in home-based departments. The form has endured for 500 years or so because it is simple, replicable and comprehensible across cultures and countries, and has been able to adapt effectively to profound changes in technology, social values and the form and norms of the international system.

Australia's overseas posts range in size from tiny outposts in micro-states like Kiribati to complex operations like the Australian Embassy in Washington, DC. The conditions of living for staff can vary from an apartment in Paris overlooking the Eiffel Tower to a guarded security compound in Port Moresby. The focus of the work differs enormously.