Gai Brodtmann (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Foreign Affairs. Minister, can you please advise the House of the current state of the Australia-United States bilateral relationship?

Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for her question. Honourable members of this place may be aware that this year marks the 70th anniversary of the Australia-United States diplomatic relationship. Also, next year is the 60th anniversary of ANZUS and very soon, when AUSMIN gathers in Melbourne, it will be the 25th anniversary of that meeting of Australian foreign and defence ministers and their American counterparts. It is a season therefore of significant anniversaries in the Australia-United States relationship. Of course our engagement with the United States goes back way before the initiation of diplomatic relations to the earliest days of Federation, the Great White Fleet, working together and fighting together in World War I. But we did not establish an embassy in Washington until 1940. That was the year we also saw the birth of the Australian foreign service in its modern formation with embassies in Tokyo, in Washington and in China that year. Things may have changed since then in terms of what has occurred in China and Japan but what has been constant has been our relationship with the United States since the darkest days of World War II.

Our important relationship with the United States is built on some core values and interests which we share. When we are looking at important anniversaries, it is worthwhile, for the benefit of the House and for the country at large, to reflect for a moment on those core values and interests: common democracies, the fact that we both support open economies and we both represent free societies, the fact that we, as founding members of the United Nations, support the continuation of a stable international order and, on top of that, that we have risen together in the past to defend any threat to that order wherever that threat has arisen. America remains the world’s remaining continuing superpower. It is also overwhelmingly a force for good in the world. Our relationship with the United States overwhelmingly reflects Australia’s values and Australia’s interests: our common interests in maintaining the strategic stability of East Asia and the West Pacific, our common interests in maintaining an open global economy through our continued cooperation and in the G20, and of course our common interest in widening our security and intelligence cooperation in dealing with the threat of terrorism at home and abroad and other emerging security threats as well. The 25th meeting of AUSMIN will occur in Melbourne. I am advised that this is the first time that Melbourne has hosted AUSMIN, and it will be a great opportunity for the city to showcase Australia to our distinguished American visitors. The Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of Defence, Bob Gates, together with the defence minister and I, will be attending the meeting and the Prime Minister will be meeting separately with our distinguished American visitors.

Our agenda will be focusing on Afghanistan; the subject of debate in this House during the last week and in the Senate this week and, of course, developments in the wider Middle East including the continuing threat to security in our region represented by the Iranian nuclear program. Also we will be discussing the future of strategic stability in the Asia-Pacific region. That, of course, relates to the emerging new architecture of our region, the East Asia Summit, which, for the first time, includes the United States and Russia, which is a good development from the Australian national interest perspective. AUSMIN also provides an opportunity for deep and substantive engagement on the bilateral defence relationship where the defence minister, of course, will take the lead. Secretary Clinton and Secretary Gates will be welcome guests in Australia, welcome guests on this 25th anniversary of AUSMIN and welcome on this 70th anniversary of the Australia-United States diplomatic relationship.