Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

[by video link] I'm pleased to speak on behalf of the opposition and join Minister Payne in supporting this motion to celebrate and commemorate the 70th anniversary of the ANZUS treaty. In the days ahead much attention will be focused on what conclusions are to be drawn from the 20-year war in Afghanistan that came to an end this week, but, whatever may be said on that debate, what is beyond dispute is the constancy of the bond between the United States and Australia through the struggles in Afghanistan and beyond. Throughout the final days in Kabul America was steadfast as an ally and a dependable friend. If it weren't for the presence and courage of our American allies, efforts to evacuate thousands of Australians and visa holders in the past weeks would never have been possible. That presence came at great cost, losing 13 of their own as they sought to help others. Their ultimate sacrifice reflects the heavy duty of leadership and it's a weight that America has carried since World War II, where the origins of ANZUS are to be found in the war in the Pacific and, of course, Prime Minister Curtin's turn to America.

In late December 1941, three weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Curtin declared: 'Without any inhibitions of any kind, I make it quite clear that Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom.' Curtin was attacked by those who would become today's Liberal Party. American President Franklin Roosevelt was astonished because Curtin was ahead of the US in thinking about strategy and priorities for the war in the Pacific. The US 7th Fleet was formed in Brisbane in 1943. Australia fought with the US in major sea battles of the Pacific. General Douglas MacArthur used Australia as his launching pad for the Pacific land battles that eventually saw the defeat of Japan.

In armed conflicts over more than a century the military forces of Australia and the United States have worked together to secure our shared strategic interests, and the vehicle that gives principal expression to our sense of common security purpose is the ANZUS treaty, whose 70th anniversary we mark today. ANZUS arose in the broader context of the postwar settlement, the Cold War and the Korean War to our north and provided the strategic framework for dealing with re-emergent militarism as a possible threat to security in the Pacific. The treaty underwent a fundamental transformation at the hands of Bob Hawke's defence minister—my friend Kim Beazley—and his US counterpart, Caspar Weinberger, in the mid-1980s. They reoriented ANZUS from a threat based agreement to one that focused on the strategic aspirations and purposes of both parties. Of course, thankfully, our partnership with the US is not as controversial today and it has enduring bipartisan support, and much strategic cooperation has happened since.

Looking forward, Australia's alliance with the United States sits at the centre of the 2020 Defence strategic update. With the US again engaged in a global force posture review, it is time for Australia to look again at our own posture to ensure that it fully meets the times—the last one having been conducted by the most recent Labor government, in which I was minister. So I reiterate to the Senate Mr Albanese's announcement today that a federal Albanese Labor government will initiate a new force posture review on coming to office. The Indo-Pacific will remain the key focus. The review will ensure that the government is considering both long-term strategic posture and, given the fast-moving events in the region, short-term imperatives. The review will also respond to the continued emergence of cybersecurity as a central challenge to Australia's strategic positioning in the coming decade.

The relationship with the US goes far deeper than a security alliance alone. The United States has been a core economic partner of Australia's, and its importance only continues to grow. It remains our key capital investor, underpinning Australian innovation and driving both our countries to take advantage of emerging technologies. At the foundation of our shared economic prosperity is the global rules based order—the systems, norms and institutions that guide the world's interactions and govern disputes. These are the rules of the road, and they are being tested in new ways—a global pandemic that continues to wreak havoc, terrorism and extremism that continue to find safe haven, the return of great power competition, the undermining of rules based trade and the use of economic coercion for strategic ends.

The US and Australia have been close allies in building and strengthening these rules of the road, including in our region. But we need to do more, and we can do more only with friends and partners. So we welcome the return of American leadership and the rules based order under President Biden and his dedicated effort to repair alliances. I've said before that Australia's partnerships and leadership in the Indo-Pacific are our principal value-add to the alliance. We have an opportunity and a responsibility to work closely with the administration as it develops its Indo-Pacific strategy, including building its economic footprint, particularly in South-East Asia. We must work with key partners such as India, Japan, Indonesia and other ASEAN nations, South Korea, the EU, and others to both strengthen economic engagement and uphold the rules of the road. This is because, as much as America's role has changed, its unique capacity to offer balance in the region and leadership in the international order means it remains the indispensable power.

Many of our neighbours want the balance that will come from greater US engagement, and they are clear that must mean economic engagement as well as security partnerships. We should be doing all we can to encourage the US to support Indo-Pacific regional pandemic recovery, reinforce ASEAN's centrality and strengthen regional architecture. We welcome the recent visits of Vice President Harris and Secretary of Defense Austin to South-East Asia, and see these as important first steps in the US step-up in the region. We hope to see this grow rapidly in recognition of the vital strategic importance of this region, and we must be prepared to step up our own engagement to support it. At a time when regional uncertainty is high, a deeper US commitment to ensuring all states have the capacity to protect their sovereignty is vitally important. President Biden's early embrace of the Quad was a welcome development, and there will be much opportunity for further US-Australia cooperation in that context.

While so much of the region's immediate focus is on the response to COVID, its more profound concern is climate change. How we address climate change demonstrates our engagement and alignment with our neighbours. It is in Australia's interest, as a continent highly vulnerable to the worst impacts of climate change, that we urgently apply ourselves to the task of reducing emissions, not only because the costs of climate change are so great for us but also because the world's climate emergency is Australia's job opportunity. Anything less would undermine Australian leadership in the region, leave vacuums for others to fill and abandon those most vulnerable to the worst impacts of a changing climate.

In the United States, senior leaders have talked for years about the security implications of climate change. We know it is having geostrategic and regional impacts as well as direct impacts on defence systems, infrastructure and operations. Secretary of Defense Austin has already identified climate change as a top priority for the US military. At his Fullerton address in July this year he described climate change as an existential threat and a challenge we must meet together, echoing what Pacific island leaders have been saying for decades. The US military has acknowledged that climate change is not a future defence problem but an immediate challenge, and it is time that the Australia-US alliance reflected this reality. We should deepen our cooperation on climate change security issues. We should develop capabilities and shared responsibility to respond to natural disasters, address humanitarian needs and mitigate the impacts of rising temperatures, particularly in our region. We should cooperate on technological development to take advantage of the economic opportunity that comes from the shift to clean energy to deliver cheaper energy prices and facilitate an expansion of high-value manufacturing capability. This helps build economic resilience in the event of future shocks.

An Albanese Labor government would make comprehensive cooperation on climate change a hallmark of alliance cooperation because we recognise that Australia's own action on climate change will shape our capacity to live in a region where our interests prosper in partnership with our neighbours and our American ally. We recognise that this is central to the next phase of an alliance with the United States that Labor has always innovated and that reflects the abiding friendship, trust and affection between our peoples.

Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

[by video link] The government has brought this motion to the chamber today, a day after the last American force left Afghanistan and about a week from the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in the United States. They ask us today to unquestioningly endorse the American alliance and to recommit ourselves to a military relationship that we have had with the United States for 70 years. To do this would be politically easy. It is the united view of the major parties that a military relationship such as we currently have with the United States is a good thing for Australia. It's certainly a good thing for them. It's given them many opportunities to stand next to US military equipment, go on fancy visits overseas and meet with defence secretaries and secretaries of state, and feel like significant global actors. To do so, though, in the closing days of 20 years of conflict and war across the world unleashed by the 9/11 attacks, would be to do a great disservice to the Australian community and to those peoples and nations that were so savagely harmed in the aftermath of that event.

It is time, 20 years on, for us to speak the truth about exactly what happened in the aftermath of 9/11: that the United States entered into a blood-rage-induced, vengeful series of exercises whereby they set two nations ablaze and precipitated the loss of some 350,000 civilian lives. In a desperate attempt to reclaim what they felt was a bruised national honour and to reassert themselves in the new century, they took nations across the world to wage war in the Middle East based upon lies, and, when they were caught out on those lies, they invented new reasons for the maintenance of conflict and occupation.

At that critical moment 20 years ago, Australia's political leadership had a choice. They could either engage with the United States and seek to de-escalate the crisis unfolding in the aftermath of 9/11, seek to work with the international community to bring the individual perpetrators to justice, and maintain the so called global rules based order—which has been so much vaunted and celebrated during the course of this debate—or they could validate that period of vengeful blood rage, validate the conflicts that were carried out in the aftermath, participate in them, justify them and attempt to lend them moral support. That is the choice that they made. John Howard took us into Iraq and Afghanistan, and prime minister after prime minister kept us there because it was in their political interest to do so.

Today we are discussing the mechanism by which that decision was played out: the ANZUS treaty, which is 70 years old this year. As we do so, we also need to speak the truth about what that treaty is and where it comes from. There has been much said about ANZUS as a defence treaty that guarantees Australia a level of mutual protection. This is the myth of ANZUS—the treaty of the mind; the treaty that exists only when Australian diplomats and Australian politicians look at that piece of paper. The reality of the wording of the treaty is that it says no such thing; it offers no such guarantee. The wording of the treaty simply states that, if there should be some kind of shared moment of conflict or concern, the parties to the treaty will act with concern to each other. It gives no guarantee of any kind of mutual protection.

Below that, though, sits an even more insidious reality, which is the context in which it was conceived. This treaty was signed in 1951 and, upon its signing, the relevant Australian ambassador called it the beginning of a bulwark in the defence of freedom. In that context the meaning was clear. The meaning was: this will offer Australia protection against the enemies in its region. And the enemies were the people of the Asia-Pacific region. It was the beginning of a narrative of fear against the Asian people of the Asia-Pacific region, a legitimisation of the idea that there was something to fear from those across our sea borders. It saw us enter into that horrific conflict, the Vietnam war.

It used to be the case that the Labor Party understood the dangers of following along in the wake of the United States. It used to be the case that those like Gough Whitlam and Jim Cairns were on the streets with the community as they protested against these violent imperial wars. It is to be noted that Gough Whitlam removed Australian troops from Vietnam as one of his first acts as Prime Minister, yet, all of these years on, we see a Labor Party which has given up in relation to criticism of the United States. It is, in fact, now in lock-step with the Liberal Party, ready to go all the way with the USA once again. The uncritical, unflinching nature with which the Labor Party now positions itself in relation to the American alliance does a huge disservice to the community, and it fails to reflect all of those in our community who want peace, who saw through the lies of George Bush and the complicity of John Howard and understood that there were no WMDs in Iraq, that there was no need to knock over the government of an entire nation to try to bring to justice a single individual, who by then was most likely within the borders of Pakistan. The community has always understood that, when it comes to war, the No. 1 thing on the mind of a politician is how to get electoral benefit out of it.

The hard truth for the major parties is that, in the aftermath of 9/11, as America, in its blood haze, decided to line people up on the board to take out its anger, Australian politicians sought political opportunity to bind themselves closer to an ally which, in response, could deliver them many more opportunities to fancy weaponry, with which they would be able to have pictures taken, and an opportunity to secure their electoral base here in Australia. It is very telling that, in a moment of genuine global crisis, when Australia could have benefited greatly from the supply of something as simple as a vaccine, the special relationship was not strong enough to enable that to occur.

It has also been commented upon that we are now seeking to engage ourselves in the hosting of missiles in the Northern Territory. This is another example of how the major parties are so willing to allow Australia to be used as the United States' most significant and well-armed aircraft carrier in the Asia-Pacific—regardless of the views of the Northern Territory, which so wholeheartedly opposes it.

Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Nationals seek to associate our party with the comments particularly of the foreign minister but also those of the opposition in supporting wholeheartedly the ANZUS relationship and treaty. Today we mark the 70th anniversary of the alliance between Australia and the United States of America. This anniversary comes after the withdrawal from Afghanistan and ahead of the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks.

First signed in San Francisco in 1951, the treaty confirmed both the United States' and Australia's commitment to a shared vision for an Indo-Pacific that is secure, stable and prosperous. The treaty reaffirmed Australia's unwavering commitment to our alliance, recognising its fundamental importance to our nation's security and sovereignty. At the time, Australia's then Ambassador to the United States of America, one of the architects of the treaty, Percy Spender, said:

This day we declare to the world that our three peoples share a common destiny. This treaty takes the first step towards what we hope will prove to be an ever widening system of peaceful security in this vital area.

That it has done, and it will continue to do so.

As a nation, we've been incredibly well served in both peacetime and war by an alliance that has been a testament to our common values and deep mutual trust. This alliance and our bond with the United States is stronger, broader and more vital today than it was 70 years ago. Few countries in the world enjoy such a close relationship, built upon our mutual support for democracy and shared respect for the rule of law. Our shared commitment to deterring aggression has seen us fight together in every major conflict since World War I. From Le Hamel all the way through to the evacuation we saw in Kabul last week, we've stood side by side with our mates, the United States of America and New Zealand.

On 14 September 2001, we saw Prime Minister John Howard formally evoke the treaty for the first time in response to the September 11 terrorist attacks. He said at the time:

In every way, the attack on New York and Washington and the circumstances surrounding it did constitute an attack upon the metropolitan territory of the United States of America within the provisions of articles IV and V of the ANZUS Treaty. If that treaty means anything, if our debt as a nation to the people of the United States in the darkest days of World War II means anything, if the comradeship, the friendship and the common bonds of democracy and a belief in liberty, fraternity and justice mean anything, it means that the ANZUS Treaty applies and that the ANZUS Treaty is properly invoked.

Australia therefore joined the coalition forces in Afghanistan, contributing to the war on terror, and ensured a safer Australia and a safer world.

As it has been for the last 70 years, our alliance is set to remain indispensable from our future. The Indo-Pacific has become a focal point of our alliance, benefiting our partners throughout this region and underpinning the strong relationships we already have with these nations. Our commitment to keeping the alliance strong is shown through Australia's 2020 Defence strategic update as set out in the 2020 Force structure plan. Australia's $270 billion investment in new ADF capabilities will enable Australia to be a more effective and capable alliance partner. The investment also strengthens our industrial base collaboration to further bolster alliance interoperability and our supply chain resilience. Australia's force posture cooperation with the US, including the Marine Rotational Force-Darwin, is a tangible demonstration of the deep engagement in the region by both Australia and the United States.

As we look to the future, let us be reminded of the values and freedoms the ANZUS Treaty has secured for us as a nation. Let us commit to continuing to be vigilant and strong and to building the economic strength for the peace and prosperity of all and for a world that is free. Let us reflect on the sacrifices of all who have served under the flags of all three of our great nations who we will never forget and will continue to honour each and every day. And let us be reminded that, whatever lies ahead, the unbreakable friendship of Australia, New Zealand and the United States will continue to prosper.

Question agreed to.

Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr President, I ask that the Greens' opposition to the motion be recorded, other than for paragraph (e).

Scott Ryan (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

So recorded.