Julian Leeser (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I congratulate my friend the member for Fairfax on bringing this motion to the Federation Chamber today. It is a motion moved within one month of the 65th anniversary of the ANZUS Treaty coming into force. In preparation for my remarks today, I re-read Sir Robert Menzies' remarks to the US House of Representatives when he spoke to them in the middle of the negotiations for that treaty. The ANZUS Treaty is a very important piece of our global international security and has provided a great deal of security and stability for the entire Pacific. It has reminded us that Australia and New Zealand do not stand alone in the Pacific; that we will coordinate efforts with the United States for a more comprehensive system of regional security; that each country is to develop its own capacity to resist armed attack; that we work together against the common danger of armed attack; and that we work together and consult when the territorial integrity or the political independence and security of the US or Australia is threatened, and that includes our island territories or our military forces.

The US alliance has underwritten our regional stability and our security. It is central to the peace and stability of our region. The US has acted as a security guarantor and instigator of the rules based order, bringing stability and generating the conditions for prosperity. Australia works with the US in our region on a range of issues including counter-terrorism, building capacity to counter violent extremism, addressing the problem of returning foreign terrorist fighters, and maritime security. The US is our most significant trade and investment partner. I had the privilege of living in the United States for some period and I can reflect that Americans do feel a great deal of kinship with us, and that kinship was actually bolstered by the recent commitments that Australia made in both Afghanistan and Iraq. It is unsurprising that senators in the United States Congress decided to move a motion supporting the US alliance.

The coalition has always supported the US alliance. It has been our consistent policy since the time of ANZUS. Indeed, the Labor Party has some history in this space, of which they should be proud. John Curtin, during World War II, sought to reach out to America free of any of the pangs of the traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom. I can hear members opposite quite excited to remind me of that. Labor's history in relation to the US alliance is not a completely unblemished set of records. I think it is important that often they tell us that Australia should have an independent foreign policy, as if we have anything other than that. Australian governments always make decisions about Australian foreign policy that are in Australia's best interests. In the same way, people are quite surprised to hear President Trump say that America will have an America-first policy, as if America would have anything other than that; as if Australia would have anything other than an Australia-first policy.

There has been always been a strain of thinking on the Left that does not like Australia being part of the Western alliance. An 'independent foreign policy' is code for Australia not being part of the Western alliance but being part the old, nonaligned movement. I think particularly of the Whitlam years which were effectively the great demonstration of this policy in action. It was a period of time when we were the only democratic country in the world to recognise the Soviet annexation of the Baltic states, when we were one of the first nations to recognise Pol Pot's regime in Cambodia, when we were one of the first nations to establish diplomatic relations with East Germany, when we sought admission to the non-aligned movement at the sponsorship of Tito's regime in Yugoslavia, when the then Victorian state secretary of the Labor Party, Bill Hartley, said:

We are looking forward to the possibility this year that the—

Labor Party—

Federal Conference will jettison the American alliance and other overseas commitments and join the third world.

Gough Whitlam told the House on 13 December 1973:

We are no longer a cipher or a satellite in world affairs ... We are no longer a colonial power. We are no longer out of step with the world's progressive and enlightened movements towards freedom, disarmament and co-operation.

That was not the US alliance; that was the Whitlam government moving us towards the independent non-aligned foreign policy that many on the Left and many in the Labor Party still hope for.

We saw another demonstration of this just recently with the former Labor Prime Minister, Paul Keating, in November, the former Labor foreign minister, Bob Carr, and the former Labor leader, Mark Latham—the most irresponsible person ever to lead a political party in the history of this country; he was chosen by the Labor Party to lead them—all lining up to wipe their boots on the US alliance, and we see this again and again. It is not just retired parliamentarians who have said this. Tanya Plibersek and the shadow foreign minister, Penny Wong, have talked about the nature of the independent foreign policy. We on this side of the House will always support the US alliance because the US alliance is in Australia's best interests. The same cannot be said for those opposite.

See this speech in context