Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Hansard source

It's my pleasure to rise today and add to the comments of the Prime Minister of Australia and also the Leader of the Opposition and to commend those comments to the House.

My father best reflects what it is like to have the United States as an ally—he as a New Zealander and I as an Australian. He remembers, as a serving member, being in Wellington Harbour in New Zealand. They had little fuel, few boats and not much of an air force, and they were watching Japanese spotter planes while my grandfather fought in the Pacific islands up to Guadalcanal. Then one day he turned around, and there was the American Navy. He said to his other serving members: 'We've just won.' That is what is required. Never doubt the family, which is New Zealand. Never underestimate, as he always said to me, the inspired power of the American people when put to the flame. It's not just strength in military but strength based on shared values. Liberty of the individual, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, rights to private property, no discrimination against ethnicity—these are the cement that binds us together. These are the reason that we strive for what is right, what is just and what is good and that we have an obligation to be part of that process which is ANZUS. In a world moving step-by-step back to totalitarianism, where democracy slips to a form of quasi-democracy and quasi-democracy slips back to autocracy, where autocracy is not tempered by the collegiate aspects of cabinet forms of government or by referring to an executive but goes out and parrots the mouthpiece of the supreme leader.

Without being smart, because I'm not, there is a Latin phrase, 'si vis pacem para bellum', which means 'if you want peace, prepare for war'. We want peace. No-one, ever, encourages war. We want peace, but this is an essential component of what must happen if you want peace. It comes from Epitoma rei militaris, by a guy called Vegetius. It's Latin because it's been the same through history. There is nothing new about this. Preparation needs mass, and mass needs allies. Looking forward requires a learnt experience, a learnt experience over the long term, a learnt experience over a hundred years, of which 70 years is part of ANZUS, but it is a learnt experience over a hundred years, not a memory of the 1990s. The world has changed. Now the geopolitical circumstances show an uncomfortable resemblance to the power jousting in Europe in a previous century.

ANZUS comes with a cost, and it must have the capacity for a bipartisan understanding—and I see that today—of exactly what we need that contract for and exactly how we tie it to that contract. It comes with the requirement for this parliament to show to the Australian people continually why we were involved in Korea, why we were involved in Vietnam, why we were involved in Iraq and why we were involved for 20 years in Afghanistan. Friends have to understand that your heart is where your legs are as well, that you honestly believe in those shared values, that you are willing to say to your people from a parliament: 'This is essential. This is essential, as the contract that is essential for us.'

ANZUS is an insurance policy for the freedoms of our nation. ANZUS is the insurance policy that lets us sit in this chamber. ANZUS is the insurance policy that keeps us from being, if not defeated, a supplicant. ANZUS is the insurance policy that is essential for us in a new geopolitical world where the fuels of the bushfire are so apparent. I commend the motion to the House and thank the opposition, the Prime Minister and this government for their recommitment to this great and noble cause.

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