Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have the honour of being the Chair of the Australia-US Parliamentary Friendship Group. I want to reflect on our relationship with the great country of the United States as it moves towards its presidential election. In the last few weeks we have had the visit of the USS John S McCain in Sydney and Melbourne. Many ship visits happen in Australia. Isn’t it interesting that the great American admiral after whom that ship is named was the grandfather of John McCain? The ship was here to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Great White Fleet, the first visit of an American fleet to Australia. In some senses, the visit of the Great White Fleet recognised that Australia was and is an independent country. Despite the concerns of the British embassy at the time, the American fleet visited this country.

The US-Australia Parliamentary Friendship Group had breakfast at the American embassy this morning. The US ambassador was the gracious host. There were about 50 members of parliament there. He and Mimi McCallum treated us with their usual great kindness and hospitality. We all reflected on the fact that there are so many connections between Australians and Americans at many different levels, not just at the expected security level through the ANZUS treaty but at all levels of politics, culture and the economy.

My relationship with the United States goes back to 1979 when I was a participant in the East Asia South Pacific Youth Leader Project. Never will I forget the kindness shown to me by the farmers in Illinois who I stayed with for a few days—they drove me to Chicago for one night to celebrate Passover—or the Marine pilots who worked with Pan Am who I celebrated thanksgiving with in upstate New England. We continue to see that kind of profound relationship with our political leaders now. For instance, it was fascinating to see Julia Gillard talk to Paul Bongiorno on Channel 10’s Meet the Press program. She said, in discussing plans for Australian education:

I think we all know from our television screens as much as anything else that New York is a city with pockets of very great wealth and pockets of very great poverty and disadvantage. And Joel Klein’s model has made a difference to those pockets of poverty and disadvantage. And when you see a model that is working in some of those tough suburbs in New York, then I think you’ve got to take notice of it.

Similarly, it is very interesting to see our great Minister for Resources and Energy, Martin Ferguson, take his concerns about supplying uranium to India to the United States to make people there understand that it is very important to get India to participate in the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. So it is a two-way relationship, not just a one-way relationship. It is very interesting to see the maturing of the Australian media. Unlike Mr Pilger, with his turgid America-phobic presentation on Q&A, we have serious people like Leigh Sales, the former Washington correspondent for the ABC, Barry Cassidy and Tony Jones, host of Lateline, with access to equally serious players right across the political spectrum in this period before the US presidential election.

Even the conservative Wall Street Journal Asia said that Julia Gillard’s recent presentation in Washington was very impressive. When she was in Washington the Deputy Prime Minister said:

Beyond us—

the people who were at the Australia-US dialogue—

stand hundreds of thousands of people of the same conviction, on both sides of the Pacific Ocean. No matter where they meet—whether in a law firm in New York, on a movie shoot in Hollywood, backpacking in the Greek islands or serving alongside each other in Afghanistan—Australians and Americans just seem to click.

I would not underestimate the role of popular culture in cementing this. Australians have been the beneficiaries of our successful involvement in US popular culture, as we have seen with Heath Ledger in the great box office success The Dark Knight. It is a great tragedy that his life was taken away. But isn’t it fascinating to see Australian actors, people in music and people from all kinds of cultures so successful in this globalised world because of our intimate understanding of things American. Some time ago I was at a gay festival in Melbourne, which had a Doris Day festival at the end of it. The singer had won New York Cabaret Artist of the Year. A friend of mine, Robbie Weil, won ‘best imitation of an orthodox rabbi’ at the New York Comedy Festival.

A war of aggression threatened both Australia and the US. This is what Julia Gillard meant when she said:

The bedrock of that relationship is the US-Australia alliance, which was signed 57 years ago, but which reflected the judgments—clear, accurate, brutally frank judgments—of an Australian Labor Prime Minister a decade earlier.

That is, ‘Look to America.’

Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member’s time has expired. At this point, may I welcome our visitors.