This article seeks to explore how various language policies may have impacted Year 12 language candidature in Victoria. Australian Federal and Victorian State Government language policies are but one of the influences yet, it may be argued, the most significant influence. These stand alongside waves of immigration, global events and conflicts, and the agitations of community groups and academics. Data available on languages candidature at the Year 12 examination in its various iterations are examined. The framework referred to throughout this article is that devised by Lo Bianco with Slaughter (2009) as a means of describing, as a sequence, the overlapping periods of language planning in Australia. The phases are described as comfortably British, assertively Australian, ambitiously multicultural, energetically Asian, and fundamentally economic (Lo Bianco, 2009, p. 15). (Contains 2 tables.)