Mal Washer (Moore, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Minister for Foreign Affairs. Will the minister update the House on the planned visit to Australia by the United States Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice. What is the significance of our alliance relationship with the United States? Are there any alternative approaches?

Alexander Downer (Mayo, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for Moore for his question and for his interest. I know his own constituents will be interested and pleased he asked the question. The United States Department of State has announced that the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, will be visiting Australia from 16 to 18 March. This will be the first time that Condoleezza Rice has visited Australia as Secretary of State. It will be an opportunity for her to meet with the Prime Minister, the Minister for Defence and me. I think the Attorney-General and the Treasurer are going to have the opportunity to meet her as well. During her visit we will also have the first meeting at the ministerial level of the trilateral strategic dialogue between the American Secretary of State, Japanese Foreign Minister Aso, who is coming here, and the Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs.

This visit underscores the importance of the American alliance. We had the US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, here in November of last year. We are entirely unapologetic about our close relationship with the United States. It is a country which we engage with very heavily over Asia-Pacific matters. The United States is deeply important, for example, in the fight against terrorism in South-East Asia. We very much appreciate the cooperation we have with them just on that task alone.

As far as any alternative views are concerned, we know that there is a strong vein of anti-Americanism that runs through the opposition, and that was illustrated only too clearly by the candidate survey which found that only 40 per cent of Labor candidates thought the American alliance was of great importance to Australia. I wonder whether this has any implications for the current preselection debacle where my friend the member for Maribyrnong has been so poorly treated by the Leader of the Opposition.

I notice in a Queensland newspaper that a man called Ivan Molloy is planning to stand for Labor preselection for Fairfax at the next election. Talking of gun-toting, Mr Molloy is a gun-toting anti-American who, if not having been a supporter of terrorists, could be described as an apologist for terrorists. He is deeply anti-American. I wonder if the Leader of the Opposition—so happy to allow his own colleagues who sit on the front bench with him to be dumped—approves of Ivan Molloy being preselected for the Labor Party. Mark Latham described him as the ‘candidate from hell’. I would not think so. We on this side of the House had good fun with him during the last federal election campaign. The interesting thing about the Leader of the Opposition is a serious point: he is prepared to turn his back on and see dumped colleagues who are shadow ministers but he is quite happy for Ivan Molloy to run as a Labor Party candidate in Fairfax. What a weak man.