Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure this morning to stand in our great Parliament House and speak on the motion moved by the member for Canning on the relationship between Australia and the USA. It recognises the strong historic relationships that exist between our two countries, especially the ANZUS treaty, and also our long commitment to freedom, democracy and liberty between our two nations.

We start back, during the First World War, at the Battle of Hamel when Australian General John Monash was given the responsibility to be in charge of American troops—one of the few times in history that a foreign general has been in charge of American armed forces. That honour was given to Sir John Monash, and when he had that responsibility he did so magnificently. It was a most successful campaign—a successful defeat of the German enemy in World War I. Then, our relationship strengthened at the Battle of the Coral Sea, when an Australian Navy admiral was placed in charge of American vessels. Again, Australians and Americans fought side-by-side in the Coral Sea. Even though on paper it was not a historic victory, it went on to be one of the great turning points of the war that guaranteed freedom for our nation.

In Korea and Vietnam, we still stood side-by-side with our American friends. Vietnam, often an unpopular war, gave the fledgling democracies of the ASEAN nations a chance to establish themselves. Often the Vietnam War is criticised, but if we look at the words of Singaporean President Lee Kuan Yew—he said that that time was so important as it put a halt on the march of communism and gave nations like Singapore the opportunity to develop and progress into the successful democracies that they are.

We see today the Americans, under their new president, having enormous economic success. In fact, only last week, US consumer sentiment unexpectedly surged to a 13-year high, and I note that America's perception of the economy and their own finances have rebounded following several major hurricanes. The jump in sentiment, greater than any analyst had predicted, was the result of falling gasoline prices, repeated record highs for the stock market, a 16-year low in unemployment and post-storm recovery efforts driving a rebound in economic growth. There are a few points on which we have differed with our American friends. One of those is in competition law. America, the home of free market capitalism, has divestiture powers in their competition laws or antitrust laws. They also have divestiture powers which we do not have here in Australia. America also has an act called the Robinson-Patman Act, which is a prohibition on anticompetitive price discrimination. Our competition laws have no such equivalent provision.

Although we share many great successes with the US over the last century, today we share many challenges. We see the same threats to our democracy, to freedom and to liberty that come about with our cultures being under attack. We see groups, both in Australia and in America, smearing our founders, belittling our nation's accomplishments, pillorying it for failing to live up to the ideas that we hold. We see in both nations those that mock our most sacred traditions and those that deride our heroes. We need America to be strong. What makes America strong also makes the nation of Australia strong. America is truly our greatest friend. It has been for the last century. I hope, through the work of this parliament, that it can be for the next century. I thank the House.

Anthony Byrne (Holt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to endorse the comments made by the member for Hughes and the motion moved by the member for Canning, Mr Hastie, and to add my views in support of this motion. There it is a lot of debate about the US-Australia relationship at this point in time. Echoing what the member for Hughes said, I think it's important to think about the unique nature of the relationship through our shared history and shared values.

The member for Hughes mentioned the Battle of Hamel, and I wanted to mention it as well. Next year Australia and the United States celebrate 100 years of mateship since the Battle of Hamel. The document on the history of this mateship summarises to a large degree the nature of the relationship we have with the United States, which is often misrepresented. The document states:

In 2018, Australia and the United States will mark a centenary of mateship—a friendship first formed in the trenches of World War I during the Battle of Hamel on July 4, 1918.

The offensive to retake Hamel was the earliest instance of American and Australian troops fighting side by side. American troops offensively fought under the command of a non-American for the first time during the Battle of Hamel. That commander was Australian General Sir John Monash—and in honour of the Americans he was commanding, General Monash chose July 4, 1918 as the date of the offensive on Hamel.

The battle plan devised by General Monash was radical for its time—it marked the first time tanks had been used as protection on a battlefield for the advancing infantry and the first time aircraft had been deployed to drop ammunition to ground troops.

General Monash predicted that the offensive would last for 90 minutes. Incredibly it took the Allied forces just 93 minutes to secure victory and—

importantly—

turned the tide against the Germans on the Western Front.

The Battle of Hamel is the symbolic foundation of the deep and enduring bond, mutual respect and close cooperation that continues to exist between the American and Australian militaries today.

I would echo that particular sentiment.

In terms of my assessment of the unique relationship between the United States and Australia, four people shaped my view. One was my father, because we lived in the Goldfields in Western Australia and we had a lot of interaction with American mineral exploration companies that would come to Kalgoorlie, and a lot of people, particularly from Texas, would remark on the great similarities that existed between Texas and Kalgoorlie. As a young man I heard that often. The second was Kim Beazley—former defence minister, former opposition leader and, some would say, the best Prime Minister this country never had. The third was former Prime Minister and foreign affairs minister Kevin Rudd, who was quite strong when speaking to me about the alliance with the United States, saying that we would look at our relationships with countries like China and South-East Asia through the prism of our relationship with the Americans. I believe that they were quite eloquent words, as the member for Melbourne Ports says—

Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Elegant.

Anthony Byrne (Holt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

elegant as well—and I would continue to hold, in my mind, that particular point of view. The fourth was Senator Robert Ray.

But, when some talk about the unbalanced nature of the relationship with the United States, I quote a speech that Kim Beazley gave to this place on 24 June 2004 about our alliance relationship. He said:

That alliance relationship stands because many in government make judgments about the Australian national interest and the fact that it serves it. But it also stands because Australians believe their relationship with the United States is a matter of fair dealing. Australians believe that, in entering a relationship with the United States, we are entering a relationship with a people who are roughly compatible with us in outlook and views about life.

If you do not like the government of the day in the United States, they might not like ours. If you do not like their opposition, they might not like ours. But you know that at the end of the day the process will produce from time to time governments in the United States which every single Australian will have agreements with.

I echo those sentiments and add my voice in support of this motion that has been put forward by the member for Canning.

John Alexander (Bennelong, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to thank my good friend the member for Canning for raising this important motion. A lot has happened in the States since this motion was brought forward, but the sentiments in this motion remain as true as ever. The connection between our two great countries runs deep and extends back to before the arrival of the Great White Fleet in Sydney Harbour over a hundred years ago.

I had the privilege of living and working in the United States for much of my sporting career. Much of Australia's international relations take place on courts, fields and stadiums of the world, and I'm proud to have played a part in fostering strong relations. I have a deep affection for America, and it does many things very well. However, there is one scourge afflicting their society, and, like true friends, it is our responsibility to highlight this issue.

I was born on 4 July and grew up in Australia, with strong American influences such as Father Knows Best, the Nelsons, Leave it to Beaver, Elvis Presley, Crash Craddock and Ricky Nelson. All portrayed strong family values common to their little brother Down Under. I first travelled to the US as a teenager, in 1967, and stayed with American families all up the east coast. Families as portrayed in the TV shows were alive and well. I spent much of my time between that first visit to when I retired from the tennis circuit living and working in the USA. I owned homes in Atlanta, Georgia, and was a green card holder.

When first entertaining friends for dinner—roast lamb—there was great concern from my new mates, my pals, that I didn't have a gun. There was even an offer from one to pop back home and get me a gun to get me through the night. I declined. When asked what I would do if someone came into my home with a gun, I said that I'd raise my hands and ask if there was anything I could help them out with. My pals were befuddled. However, some of the women entertained my very different view.

The US have been and continue to be our staunchest ally and are at the top of the list in the 'best friend' category, as we are for them. Their little brother has grown up some—more independent, making our own way in the world, particularly in the region we inhabit. In every battle there has been where our values were challenged, and some where they weren't, we were there under fire, we proved our worth and we cemented a bond that prospers in this time of relative peace. There has been a great price in human life paid through these wars and the sorting out of your domestic conflict through your civil war. The total loss of life at the hands of your enemies is monumental, a monument to the value of your principles and your right to freedom and democracy. Your enemies have exacted a tragic toll for this prize. The US has been the world's policeman, the greatest force for peace wherever peace is threatened. It is therefore difficult to reconcile that the US is empowering its own people to do greater destruction of human life to themselves than the combined forces of all enemies over the past 150 years. Until you control gun ownership, you are your own worst enemy. With love, from your little brother from Down Under, born on 4 July.

Madeleine King (Brand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak today on the historic and ongoing relationship between Australia and the United States of America. The relationship between Australia and the US is a longstanding one. With 77 years of diplomatic relations behind us, our alliance is an important keystone in our region, working to ensure peace and stability both close to home and around the world. We have been allies and trading partners who have turned to each other in times of conflict, while supporting and encouraging each other in times of peace.

In war, Australia and the USA have shared great losses. Earlier this year, we commemorated the 75th anniversary of the Battle of the Sunda Strait, the waterway that connects the Java Sea to the vast Indian Ocean and lies between the Indonesian islands of Java and Sumatra. Among the most significant events in the history of the Royal Australian Navy, this was a naval battle between the greatly superior forces of the Imperial Japanese Navy and the beleaguered allied navies of the US and Australia, reeling from the disastrous Battle of the Java Sea only a day before. At the Rockingham Naval Memorial Park in my electorate of Brand there is a small memorial which reminds us all of the sacrifice of the crews of the light cruiser HMAS Perth and the heavy cruiser USS Houston, which were both lost to the sea in the Battle of the Sunda Strait on 1 March 1942. As a memorial to the 696 crew of the USS Houston and the 375 men of the HMAS Perth who lost their lives in a truly heroic struggle in the gravest of circumstances, it reminds us of those still on watch in the Sunda Strait and gives us cause to remember the further 240 Australian and US sailors that perished as prisoners of war and the lifelong sacrifice and pain of those who survived to make it home once the conflict had ended.

From that time, 75 years ago, it is remarkable to think how far peace in the Indo-Pacific has taken us all. You cannot miss the remarkable blue and white wheat silos at Kwinana Beach, full of millions of tons of grain, that stand behind this war memorial, from which Western Australia wheat is exported from the Western Australian Wheatbelt directly up to Indonesia, through the Sunda Strait, where our two nations fought together so long ago.

Before I came to this place, I established and was the chief operating officer of the Perth USAsia Centre. This Western Australia based centre is a think tank dedicated to strengthening relationships and strategic thinking between Australia, the Indo-Pacific nations and the United States. The centre was first funded by the federal Labor government under the leadership of former Prime Minister the Hon. Julia Gillard and enjoyed the strong support of three great Western Australians: the then Minister for Defence, the Hon. Stephen Smith; the then minister for education, Senator Chris Evans; and the Hon. Kim Beazley, former Ambassador to the United States. The financial support of the WA state government under Premier Barnett was critical, as was the contribution of the University of Western Australia as a host institution. The American Australian Association, which was established in 1948 under the dynamic leadership of the Hon. John Olsen AO, is a founding member of the centre. The extraordinary effort of the AAA and John Olsen himself to establish a sister centre to the United States Studies Centre, but based on the west coast, was critical to the creation of the Perth USAsia Centre. I hope the current government continues to recognise the important work of this burgeoning institution and ensures its funding so that the Perth USAsia Centre can continue to make important contributions to regional discussions of US-Australian Indo-Pacific relations.

The recent joint publication of the USSC and the Perth USAsia Centre of its survey on America's role in the Indo-Pacific provides some significant insights into opinions of the US across the region. There is some sobering reading in the survey which indicates American influence in our region has diminished, a view held particularly in Australia and Japan but not in China. The survey indicates that there is some way to go on increasing public awareness in Australia of US alliances across Asia and of the active engagement of America in regional institutions. The survey seems to indicate that, in some parts, the Australian public holds more negative views of the US role in our region than do other Asian nations. I am not sure why this is but perhaps older friends can sometimes be more critical and open in their assessments, but, equally, they may sometimes take one another for granted. The US-Australia relationship and our respective relationships with great nations across the region are vital as we work to build regional cooperation and productive and meaningful engagements between ourselves, our neighbours and our global partners. We have been great friends for many years and that is sure to continue.

Gai Brodtmann (Canberra, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Since the election of Donald Trump, the calls have raged in some quarters of Australia for Australia to abandon the US alliance. It is an alliance of more than 65 years, which has withstood personality clashes and policy differences in the past and I believe it can withstand them now. So those of us who believe this is an alliance that deserves to endure need to speak up in its defence. Australia can have an independent foreign policy and a strong alliance with the United States, as Labor leaders have long proved.

So it was with the late, great Gough Whitlam, who took issue with Richard Nixon over the Christmas bombings of December 1972 on the major population centres of North Vietnam, Hanoi and Haiphong. According to James Curran in TheInterpreter, Whitlam wrote to Nixon to express his grave concern at the resumption of the bombing, questioning whether it would achieve the objective of bringing the North Vietnamese back to the bargaining table. Clive Cameron declared the White House full of 'maniacs'. Tom Uren accused Nixon of committing 'mass murder' and 'acting with the mentality of thuggery'. And Jim Cairns lamented 'the most brutal, indiscriminate slaughter of women and children in living memory'. The Maritime Union banned American shipping in Australian ports, which was reciprocated by the US International Longshoremen's Association. Henry Kissinger called our embassy in Washington, complaining to the charge d'affaires, 'We are not particularly amused at being put by an ally on the same level as our enemy,' and Australia was put in the freezer for a few months. Nixon only reluctantly agreed to give Whitlam a one-hour meeting in the Oval Office in late July 1973. There were no toasts, no speeches, no state dinner and no welcome on the White House lawn. Over the life of the Whitlam government, the two countries continued to disagree over regional architecture, the idea of a zone of peace in South-East Asia and Indian Ocean neutrality, and yet the alliance endured.

The recent commentary on the alliance in some quarters has assumed that Australia is always a lapdog in the relationship with America—obsequious, compliant and obedient. But Labor has proved that that doesn't have to be true. Too often under the coalition we have been 'all the way with LBJ' and 'Waltzing Matilda with you'. But Labor has always known how to preserve the alliance and Australia's dignity. In the 1980s, Bob Hawke faced down the US over the MX missile crisis. As Gareth Evans notes in Incorrigible Optimist, Hawke said at the time:

… we are not an aligned country which had to agree, or did agree, with every single aspect of US policymaking … In the expression of those differences of opinion you do not militate against the alliance. They are a re-flection of its basic strength.

Under Hawke and Keating there were other notable disagreements with Washington, including sanctions against South Africa, ratification of the Geneva protocol on the rules of war, the urgency of the comprehensive test ban treaty and the banning of mining and oil drilling in Antarctica.

In fairness, sometimes even the coalition can find Australia's voice in the alliance. In the late 1990s, I worked on the Middle East desk in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and on the normalisation of our relationship with Iran. The normalisation involved the first ministerial visit in 10 years and a trade delegation of Australian businesses looking to explore opportunities. The visit attracted a great deal of interest, particularly from the US embassy. I took the records of a number of conversations between the Minister for Trade, Tim Fischer, and the US ambassador, where it was made very, very plain that the United States was underwhelmed with Australia's plans to normalise the relationship with Iran, and where Tim Fischer made it very, very plain that it was in Australia's interests to do so.

Australia has dealt with difficult American presidents before and shown that a true friend speaks truth to power. We need to do that now. As James Curran writes, our foreign policy has a tradition of seeking greater interdependence within, or at times without, the alliance. This is what wins Washington's respect. America needs a more discerning ally and sometimes an ally that can say no. The alliance is stronger and healthier for its disagreements. It might seem an obvious point, but it bears repeating. There is not one consistent story of the alliance since 1951: its history is conditional and contingent. If you want an independent foreign policy and a preservation of the best aspects of the US alliance, then there is only one government that can deliver that. That is a Shorten Labor government.

Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The fourth of July next year will mark the centenary of the Battle of Hamel in the First World War. It is the battle in which American and Australian soldiers first fought side by side. It was a critical battle in the fight against Germany on the Western Front, and it had enormous strategic influence in terms of the course of the First World War. In terms of our relationship with the United States, it was the beginning of a joint military history between the two nations which has persisted through every major conflict from that day right through until the present, when Australians are working alongside United States forces in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.

The conflict in the Battle of Hamel, interestingly, took place under the command of an Australian, General Sir John Monash. It was in honour of the Americans he was commanding that he decided to make the day of the offensive in the Battle of Hamel, 4 July, American Independence Day. Next year will represent a centenary of that history. It is being commemorated by the Australian Embassy in the United States and in Washington as a centenary of mateship. I feel proud to wear the centenary of mateship badge today. That will be a significant moment in the relationship between our two countries.

The motion speaks about the political engagement between our two countries, which has been very significant over the journey as well. I was pleased to be able to add my small contribution to that last week, when I was in the United States visiting representatives of the US government in Washington and Honolulu. Prior to that I visited the Lockheed Martin facility in Fort Worth, Texas, where Australia's 72 joint strike fighters are currently under construction. I had the honour of being able to sign the sixth of our joint strike fighters that we are procuring from Lockheed Martin with significant Australian involvement. I was able to visit Mobile, Alabama, where Austal, a great Australian shipbuilding firm, based in Perth, is making combat ships for the US Navy. It was an extraordinary thing to see how impressive that shipyard was and how significant the projection of the Australian defence industry brand is, both in Alabama and in the United States more generally, by virtue of the work of Austal. Nearly 4,000 to 5,000 people work in that shipyard.

I was able to meet representatives of the Pentagon, in the administration itself, in the Congress, in the CIA, as well as having a number of round tables in Washington. Coming through Honolulu, I had the great honour of being able to meet Admiral Harry Harris, the commander of Pacific Command, which is the largest of the combatant commands of the US—its geography, of course, includes Australia and is a very significant part of our national security framework.

I want to take this opportunity to thank those at Lockheed Martin and Austal for facilitating my visit, and all of those at the Australian embassy in the United States and the United States embassy here in Australia for helping with the program, particularly Jeff Robinson, the consul general in Honolulu. Andrew Shearer, from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, who will be familiar to people in this building, hosted a roundtable for me there. My good friends Matthew Freedman and Marty Russo did a great job in introducing me to a number of people in Washington, and Ashley Townshend from the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney also played a very significant role in the trip.

We have shared values with the United States—shared values of democracy and the rule of law and we seek to bring the rule of law to the global community. That is perhaps the most significant of all the shared values we have. We also have a very significant shared defence industry. Australian Air Force planes are being constructed in Fort Worth; American navy ships are being designed in Perth. It says everything about the significance of the relationship between our two nations, which on 4 July next year will indeed celebrate the centenary of mateship.

Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Earlier this year I was standing in a queue in Springfield, Illinois, reminding myself that I had been to the United States once a year every year since 2005. I have burned a neat hole in my pocket buying tickets to see NBA games in stadia from Orlando through to Chicago and from Boston through to Sacramento. Besides a sports addiction driving me to America, I have been attracted to other elements of the nation. I have sat with 20-somethings in Silicon Valley on four separate trips to that part of California, these young people energised by the prospect of using tech to change and improve the lives of many others. I have sat with some of the 20,000 Australians who live and work in Silicon Valley along with many others from other parts of the world—nearly 50 per cent of the people in Silicon Valley come from other parts of the world to contribute to development in that part of the United States. I have chatted with Americans who speak so fondly and warmly of our country, always promising to visit to learn more about our nation—a nation they think of so highly.

The biggest thing that stands out in my mind about America is the promise of America—the promise that it will always stand up for liberty, for freedom and for the pursuit of happiness, not just for its own people but for others beyond its shores. I go back to what I mentioned at the start—me standing on a chilly winter's day, in a queue, having driven hours to get to Springfield, waiting to have a look inside a place that was home to one of the greatest American presidents we have ever known, Abraham Lincoln. In this day and age some might consider that house to be tiny, but it proved to be a massive formative backdrop for someone who not only did so much for his own country but also inspired others in other corners of the world. Tested by the savagery of a civil war, Lincoln held his country together by ensuring that its promise of freedom and liberty wouldn't be compromised. It was his efforts that I thought of as I walked to see another memorial in Washington DC—the face of Martin Luther King etched out in stone standing proudly in that nation's capital. It has been a shining beacon—as much as that description has become commonplace. I think of the words of one woman sitting at the feet of another:

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Then many years later I hear these words in an angry hall in December 2015—another man trashing the lines of that sonnet with words that crack across the globe: 'Donald J Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on.' I can't believe this is where this great country has got to—that it exercises that ban and that it shuts out people on the basis of faith.

I visited the country at that point in time before the inauguration, friends saying to me that it was probably premature to think that it was not right to visit again some time later. But I think it's wrong that a nation that promises so much in freedom can shut out people on the basis of faith and do it in that way. It is wrong. It is against what America stands for. I think of the words of Paul Keating when he said that 'once they have pawned the crown, it's hard to reclaim the inheritance'. He is right. What America is doing to itself and the way that it's behaving is disappointing to so many of its friends. I can't see myself going back to America while this is being maintained. I cannot think of people like me, of my faith, being taken out in front of their children in a line and queuing up to visit the States, just on the basis of faith. America, I think the world of you. But I and people like me cannot be shamed by you. This is not the promise of the America we love. America is better than this.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to take the opportunity to contribute to the debate about the importance of the relationship between Australia and the United States. I do so because in spite of the fact that this is a motion moved by a government backbencher, the government has not been able to provide speakers in support of its own motion. That says a lot about the current government and the demoralised state that it finds itself in. It is not even prepared to back up its own members when they move a motion. We on this side are prepared to back up the importance of the relationship between Australia and the United States. It is one of the three pillars that we believe our foreign policy should be built upon: the relationship with the United States, the relationship with countries in our region, and the engagement with multilateral forums, in particular through the United Nations and its agencies.

The United States is a complex country. It's a diverse country. I had the opportunity to visit, as a guest of the United States, a long time ago before I was a member of parliament and visited places as diverse as New York, Washington, Boston, Dallas, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New Orleans. You really get a feel for how it is a different place from Australia—a different culture. But we have so much in common and, as the world becomes more globalised, that engagement and those people-to-people relations are so important. That doesn't mean that we can't disagree. Friends should tell their other friends when they think they've got it wrong. I back up the comments of the member for Chifley. The United States, under President Trump, has got it wrong when it comes to discrimination against people visiting the United States on the basis of their faith. That is simply a wrong policy. It's one that damages the integrity of the United States of America, a country that we look towards for international leadership and a country that we have stood side by side with so often in times of conflict and in times of difficulty. That's what friends should be able to do—not be compliant or subservient but be forthright in defending Australia's national interest. This is absolutely critical. Each year I have participated in the Australia-US dialogue in both Australia and the United States. That brings together people from politics, business, the public service, the diplomatic corps and the military in a way that is incredibly constructive. One of the things that you get out of those processes is a genuine dialogue and, from time to time, a genuine disagreement, both within the delegations and between the delegations. That's as it should be because that is what democracy is all about.

The United States, I think, remains a beacon for the world—when you look at its democratic system and the fact that you can have these challenges which are occurring in the United States in their internal politics at the moment that are still resolved in a peaceful manner. That is certainly far preferable to the conflict that we see, and how change occurs, in other parts of the world, but that doesn't mean that we should not look critically, because we're impacted by some of the decisions that are made by the United States in particular. Supporting the alliance, as we do, shouldn't mean that we are not prepared to put forward Australia's national interest. We on this side of the chamber, as the Australian Labor Party, have such a strong history with our alliance with the United States. We have proudly supported that. We have engaged with that, and we will continue to do so into the future.

Peter Khalil (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to be able to speak to this motion on the Australian-US relationship and alliance. I echo the member for Grayndler, who pointed out quite rightly that this is a motion put forward by a government backbencher and yet they haven't even been able to find enough speakers on their own motion. Nonetheless, it is good to hear some of the bipartisan views around support for the relationship between our two nations.

We have heard from many of the speakers this morning about the relationship and that it has stood the test of time. That is certainly true. For all of those milestones in our histories, and there are many over the last 100-odd years, one of the most significant—and we know it, particularly on this side, and the government side should note and acknowledge it as well—is that seminal moment in World War II when Prime Minister Curtin said:

Without any inhibitions of any kind, I make it clear that Australia looks to America, free of any pangs to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom.

What is less often quoted is the line that preceded this famous quote, when Prime Minister Curtin said:

The Australian Government, therefore, regards the Pacific struggle as primarily one in which the United States and Australia must have the fullest say in the direction of the democracies' fighting plan.

It is worth quoting because it was part of that significant shift in Australia's perspective and longstanding connection to Great Britain that we all know. Among other parts of Prime Minister Curtin's genius and leadership was the timing of this—the importance of the timing. If you look at some of President Roosevelt's personal letters to Eleanor Roosevelt, he has spoken of how great a leader Prime Minister Curtin was. As well as the work that they did together to lead the democracies' fight against the Nazi regime and the Japanese in the Pacific, Prime Minister Curtin was someone President Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt looked to during World War II for guidance.

Of course, our relationship has endured through many wars. Our soldiers have fought side-by-side, and so many thousands have paid that ultimate sacrifice throughout the past century and into this century. This has been something which has been a constant in the relationship. It has bonded Australia and the US, but it goes even deeper than that. It is part of something deeper. There are those shared values that many speakers this morning have pointed to: we are both great democracies, and that is certainly true; we have shared cultural values and similar world views; and we prioritise—we put first—democracy, the rule of law, equality before the law, freedom and liberty. It's something that has bonded the relationship even beyond the formalities of the ANZUS Treaty.

Other speakers have also mentioned the importance of people-to-people relationships. I certainly had the good fortune of living and working in the United States for a number of years. I was at Brookings in Washington DC, and I worked in the private sector in New York. I remember having the opportunity to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when former President Obama was a junior senator and former Vice President Biden was also a senator. At the end of that hearing, I remember going back to Brookings and telling all the people whom I worked with: 'Wow! This guy is going to be the future President of the United States.' This was in 2005. They all laughed at me and said: 'You're just an Aussie who doesn't understand US politics.' I wish there had been a TAB around the corner, because he was at about 200-1 back in 2005. Everyone thought Hillary Clinton would win the next nomination. Those people-to-people relationships are critically important.

The cultural links are also critically important. We know and we heard, too, this morning of our concern with particular administrations. I will say this about that: our two countries don't interfere in each other's domestic politics. Whether it has been a Republican or Democrat administration or a Labor or Liberal government, the relationship has endured. No one individual leader or even one particular party can derail the deep foundations of that relationship; it is very difficult to do so. It is probably worth quoting Abraham Lincoln, who quite prophetically said over 150 years ago—and I hope that he is not right about this:

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.

That was a very important warning to future leaders in his own country. Whether it be Abraham Lincoln, Roosevelt or any of the great leaders that we have looked to, I think they have been an inspiration to us as well, as Australians. And we as Australians have been an inspiration to Americans—let's not forget that.

Debate adjourned.