Varun Ghosh (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Motions like this one show that the bottom of the barrel at the Liberal Party has not only been reached but well and truly scraped. There is something absolutely absurd about the suggestion that the United States alliance is not a priority for this government or for the Prime Minister. It's a mischievous suggestion but it is without foundation. To see that, we only need to look at the substance of the relationship across key areas.

The first thing I'd like to talk about is the 2024National defence strategy. It was released in April last year and it dealt with Australia's defensive priorities in the long term. It realigns certain aspects of how our defence posture will be structured, and it repeatedly affirmed the centrality and importance of the United States relationship. And that's a defence strategy that is under the Albanese Labor government, and that's a defence strategy that was, among others, authored by the Deputy Prime Minister, Richard Marles. That defence strategy stated:

Our Alliance with the US remains fundamental to Australia's national security. We will continue to deepen and expand our defence engagement with the US, including by pursuing greater scientific, technological and industrial cooperation, as well as enhancing our cooperation under force posture initiatives.

We recently saw the cooperative war games exercise under Talisman Sabre, an example of the strength and closeness of the relationship in the defence context, which has been maintained and indeed, in aspects, strengthened by this prime minister and this government.

Australia's alliance with the United States is fundamental to our national security and the ADF's capacity to generate, sustain and project credible military capability. That includes projecting that credible military capability in our region in order to preserve those things that Senator Cash referred to—democracy, the rule of law, a rules based order and freedom of navigation. The US is also a key part of other aspects of our defence infrastructure in the region—the AUKUS treaty, the Five Eyes process and the Quad initiative. It is disappointing on this side of the chamber, however, to see that the Liberals still haven't listened, and they remain committed, or at least willing, to put political interest above national interest in this context. This is a topic on which I think it should be fairly obvious that there is bipartisan agreement—the centrality of the United States alliance to Australia's strategic influence in the region and to the stability in the region more broadly.

But, when it comes to the individual attacks on the Prime Minister, they are, again, without foundation. The Prime Minister has visited the United States five times since he was elected. We have continued to engage with the United States at all levels. Senator Cash mentioned tariffs. President Trump announced what he was going to do on tariffs, and a number of countries have had tariffs put upon them. But the government's decision to not put tariffs on American goods shows a focus on the national interest, a focus on ensuring that prices in Australia don't go up for Australian consumers.

At a broader level, it was not just the Prime Minister; it was Foreign Minister Penny Wong who was in Washington, DC, for the second time this year to participate in the Quad Foreign Ministers' Meeting recently. It's the comments and statements by Defence Minister Richard Marles. In Western Australia, it's the ever-growing presence of American submarines, sailors and soldiers as part of ongoing military integration through the AUKUS initiative. So, when we take a big step back, what we see is that there has been no deprioritisation of this relationship; it remains fundamental.