Dave Sharma (Wentworth, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in favour of this motion, which commemorates 80 years since the establishment of formal diplomatic relations between the United States and Australia. This relationship was established when the United States established a legation to Australia in 1940. It was Clarence Gouse who served as the very first minister, from 1940 to 1941, and it was subsequently upgraded to an embassy in 1946. We are now with the current ambassador, Arthur Culverhouse Jr, the 24th US ambassador. May I commend the ambassador on the excellent role he plays in supporting the US-Australia alliance to this very day. In the same year, in 1940, Australia also established a legation in Washington DC. Prior to that, we had an officer working out of the British embassy, who was meant to represent Australian interests. Notwithstanding the fact that countries such as South Africa, Canada and Ireland already had diplomatic representations in the United States at that time, Australia did not. It was a decision of the Menzies government to appoint our first representative, Richard Casey, one of Menzies' colleagues, who served as the very first minister. This legation was upgraded to an embassy in 1946, as the Australian Embassy in Washington DC, and Arthur Sinodinos, the current occupant of that role, is proving to do a very fine job in supporting our relationship. We now have our 21st ambassador to Washington.

For a young country such as Australia, this is one of our oldest diplomatic missions. The Department of External Affairs was only created in 1935, and it was only in 1939 that the decision was made to set up full diplomatic missions in, at the time, Tokyo, Changqing and Washington DC. For us, 80 years is, in fact, our oldest diplomatic relationship. It's also, of course, one of our most important. Notwithstanding the fact that we have a long history of friendship going back to the visit of the Great White Fleet to Australia in 1908, the battle of Hamel in 1918, when US troops served under Australian command, under the command of Australian General Sir John Monash, on the Western Front, it was the war in the Pacific, when the alliance was formed in that theatre, that really cemented this relationship. Just a few ago, in 2017, we marked the 75th anniversary of some of these important battles: the battle of Midway, the Battle of the Coral Sea and the Battle of Guadalcanal, when the tide of Japanese aggression in the Pacific theatre first began to turn. Indeed, at our nearest northern neighbour, Papua New Guinea, where I have spent a lot of time, there are many battlefields which commemorate this US-Australia alliance in full flight. The ANZUS treaty, which concluded a number of years after that, in 1951, remains Australia's pre-eminent security alliance and our most important one.

Since that time, we've served alongside US troops in most major conflicts—in Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Afghanistan, Iraq and the current fight against the Islamic State presence in Syria and Iraq. History's verdict on some of these conflicts has not always been kind, but they were always done for the right reasons. I think that's a point worth noting. One of the notable features of US leadership has really been its benevolence and lack of self-interest in prosecuting a global leadership role. I'm reminded that anti-Americanism was very fashionable, including in this place, up to about a decade ago. But it's become much less fashionable, and I think that's because the alternatives to American leadership and the sort of self-interest that accompanies them has become more apparent.

This alliance between the United States and Australia often takes on a military hue because the cooperation we see on a military scale is at the pointy end, but in fact the alliance is so much more than that. It's a pattern of cooperation and support for one another that goes into all fields—economic, investment, trade, diplomatic, security, intelligence and a number of other facets. Most major Australian diplomatic and foreign achievements have relied upon close US cooperation, be they the postwar normalisation with Japan, the creation of APEC, our intervention in East Timor and Solomon Islands, the creation of a G20 meeting at leaders level, the expansion of the East Asia Summit to include the United States, or, mostly recently, Pacific Step-up. I would acknowledge here the bipartisan nature of the alliance, which has been an important strength of it. Under Labor and Liberal governments in Australia and under conservative and Republican governments in the United States, the alliance has always gone from strength to strength.

I'd like finally to commemorate the bravery, service and sacrifice of the US firefighters who tragically lost their lives illustrating the depth of our support for one another: Captain Ian McBeth, First Officer Paul Clyde Hudson and Flight Engineer Rick DeMorgan Jr, who lost their lives on 23 January 2020.

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