Miles I intend to reply to your post. I do think your POV betrays a reflexive anti-Americanism, which seems to be shared by many of the ALP lads here. I share John Howard's position that America, despite all it flaws and mistakes is the one overwhelming force for good in the world today. Some of you may not know this but Kevin Rudd is even more effusive in his praise of our cousins on the other side of the Pacific. In fact if I wasn't such a rusted on Howard/Lib (not so keen on the Fraser genre) I could very easily vote not for the ALP shudder!, but for Kevin. This is a long Kev speech but you lefties better make sure he is the boy you want. And please Libs don't swap ships because you may end up with Julia, yuck!
KEVIN RUDD'S ADDRESS
Kevin Rudd | August 24, 2007
Friends of America, friends of Australia, and friends of the alliance that unites us all.
It's been a marvellous speech just now by Larry Smarr. Marvellously provocative on the great subject of broadband. Larry there's an Australian-ism and it's called "stirring a possum" and that's what you've been doing tonight. And from where I sit, it's a message well placed for the nation and it's time our nation joined fully the global broadband revolution.
It's great to be back here at the 15th Australian American Leadership Dialogue.
We acknowledge Phil Scanlan as our founder. We acknowledge the contribution that this dialogue has made over the last fifteen years. There's an extraordinary fabric of people here, a web of relationships, personal and professional, which actually add this great second dimension to the Australian - American engagement. And it would not have been possible without this dialogue.
We acknowledge the fact that it exists because it's also been from the jump, supported by both the great political traditions of both our countries, Republican and Democrat, Labor and Liberal.
On a night like this, it's been fantastic to have Dame Elisabeth Murdoch with us to remind us of those who've gone before us - those who've made a contribution to this alliance from its formation, from the beginning.
I remember meeting Dame Elisabeth for the first time in Beijing of all places in 1985. We had the Qantas choir up here this evening. 1985 was the year that Qantas had its inaugural flight to the People's Republic of China. I remember Dame Elisabeth on that visit because she was the one that led the pack up the Great Wall as a septuagenarian and when she got to the top, she said to me coming down: "I intend to slow down now". That was a long, long time ago and there is no evidence of slowing down yet.
The truth is Dame Elisabeth's husband Sir Keith Murdoch was always a great supporter of the Australia- US relationship. He had a significant impact on three Labor Prime Ministers; Andrew Fischer on the conduct of the first war; John Curtin on the conduct of the second war including the historic turning to America in Curtin's great speech of December 1941; and on Ben Chifley on reconstruction after the war and on the construction of the peace. Sir Keith Murdoch was a great Australian and a great contributor to this alliance.
One of the great institutions of this dialogue in terms of personalities is someone who's sadly no longer with us, Johnny Apple. I loved Johnny and we are the poorer for his passing. Veteran New York Times columnist, great lover of Australia; I learnt so much about America from Johnny. He was a wonderful bloke. I remember sitting with Johnny and Betsy and their daughter on the lawns of the Australian Embassy in Washington. They explained to me so much of the fabric of the American democracy. They explained to me its literature and introduced me more fully to F. Scott Fitzgerald and his role in the modelling and the shaping of the modern American mind. He gave me once this quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald which I thought said something about the country with which we are proudly allied the United States. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in 1929
"France was a land, England was a people, but America, having about it still that quality of the idea, was harder to utter--it was the graves at Shiloh and the tired, drawn, nervous faces of its great men, and the country boys dying in the Argonne for a phrase that was empty before their bodies withered. It was a willingness of the heart."
F. Scott Fitzgerald writing from the early part of the century just gone.
In America we see this "quality of the idea", this "willingness of the heart" alive through its history. The revolutionary war which gave birth to the nation. The civil war which preserved the nation. The first war and the second war to save the peace. Not the national peace but the global peace. The containment of communism, the propagation of democracy.
And beyond that, the creation not just of a nation of laws but an international order of laws. Global security policy architecture, global economic architecture all brought about through the creative impulse of the American democracy in those days following the last war - both at San Francisco and at Bretton Woods. And that is where we see the American "idea" at work in our most recent history - and in the most recent history of our country.
The question for tonight and I put it simply, is where does this "quality of the idea", this "willingness of the heart" take us in the twenty-first century?
My first proposition to you is that for the twenty-first century to be a truly pacific century, a truly peaceful one, it must still be an international rules-based order. It was important for the century just gone, and will be just as important for the century just unfolding.
The second proposition is that you cannot deliver a rules-based order in the absence of the underlying ballast of US global strategic power. Carefully husbanded, selectively deployed, without that a rules-based order ultimately withers.
And the third proposition is this: that America today, should not disengage from the world post-Iraq and I say that as someone who has been for almost five years, a continuing and consistent opponent of the war in Iraq. But I say that despite Iraq, the world needs America. I say that despite Iraq, America is an overwhelming force for good in the world. It is time we sang that from the worlds' rooftops.
When you look around the council of nations, the council of states, you cannot often say that about others. Whether you are looking at those who need nourishment in the rice fields and the disused factories of North Korea or those in need of food aid in Western Darfur. Whichever of the world's hell holes I have travelled to in recent years, there I see America's helping hand at work.
So I say to my American friends here tonight, whoever wins the next Presidential election and however Iraq is resolved, let there be no retreat of America from the world. Let there be no retreat of America from the Asia-Pacific region. Let there be no retreat of America from our region.
There are, I think, four great challenges that confront this hemisphere during this Pacific century, where American leadership is central.
The first: how do we integrate China into the global rules-based order that I referred to before. In security, the economy, in trade, investment, the environment and climate change. Bob Zoellick, a member of this dialogue in years gone by and now the President of the World Bank, summed it up in these terms: We need, through our collective efforts, to make China part of this global rules-based order by causing China to conclude that they must be a responsible stakeholder in that order. This is not an easy challenge. But it's a challenge we must rise to because other than that, the security trajectory for us all is open to question. The future of strategic weapons for Asia and across our hemisphere more broadly, is a deep concern. Whither trade liberalisation, whither climate change, whither resource security - the challenge is to engage China as a force in this global rules-based order as a responsible international stakeholder. This must start here in the region by engineering a permanent resolution of the China - Japan - US relationship. Something which has been a subject of discussion in our dialogue here in the last two days. And without American leadership that is not possible, with it, it lies within our reach.
A second great challenge is the one we've talked so often about in previous dialogues - that is the rise of militant Islamism. It's not going away. It's still there. The question which we face as mature democracies is this: How do we deal with the hard-edged security questions that must be dealt with, in relation to militant Islamism? And be hard, thoughtful and resolute in our response to it. At the same time realising that unless you're engaged productively, globally and regionally, in the battle for "hearts and minds", it will all come to naught. How do we assist productively, in hard security and in soft security, to enable the forces of modernism, pluralism and secularism in the Islamic world to prevail in their own internal struggle with fundamentalism. And in doing that we must also deal globally with the challenge of Israel-Palestine. This is a challenge which again cannot be realised in the absence of continuing global American leadership.
Third, the future of trade liberalisation. We have taken so much of this agenda for granted in previous decades. We can no longer take it for granted. The Doha Round begins to teeter. There is not much time left. We have global leaders in this country very soon at APEC and that's a good thing. We can use APEC to provide a platform for continued global trade liberalisation. I regard it axiomatic that any country that participates in the closing of its trade borders, and any country that attempts to shrink the size of the global trading market by engaging in short-sighted protectionism - is a country which not only shrinks the size of our market, but also the opportunity for poor countries in the developing world to trade their way into development. That's why this Doha Round is called the Doha Development Round. It's the underpinnings of what's also called the Millennium Development Goals which require the injection of public capital through formal means of public aid delivery. But you know, time's running out. Forces of protectionism are rearing their heads again in one place or another. Again this requires the American leadership to bring it about. Because if America is on the bus, if America is taking the lead, and America is providing the visionary leadership for continued global trade liberalisation, it is harder and harder for others to resist.
Finally on climate change. The great global moral, economic and environmental challenge of our age. Our proposition is simple and it's been a matter of some controversy in this dialogue. From our view the science, in essence, is in. The question now is one of public policy and how to move without unnecessary delay. We argue that we need simple propositions like carbon targets. We need effectively operating emissions trading schemes. We need to ensure that carbon prices are set as a consequence. We need, through those market mechanisms, to unleash the enormous vitality of a creative private sector and the investment community to invest in clean, green, renewable energy options. From carbon sequestration at traditional coal-fired power stations at one end, through solar, through wind, through geo-thermal and the other energy options at the other. If we fail to act, nationally and globally, then the injustice which we deliver to the generation which comes after us will be great indeed. But again, if we do not have American leadership then I fear the world will not rise to this challenge. This is a truly global problem. American leadership, bringing China and India to the table and ourselves conducting a proper policy of constructive engagement with the post-Kyoto process, we can both act intelligently and morally to save the planet.
These are all critical challenges. I've nominated just four. But I use them as illustrations of why strategic leadership is necessary to deliver solutions to these problems. These solutions will not spontaneously combust. These solutions do not simply fall from the trees. They require political grit and determination and continued global leadership of the type we've come to expect from the United States in the century that's just passed and which the globe continues to need in the century to come.
So what about us here in Australia. What do we do about all the above? Well, we in this country try not to over-estimate or under-estimate our importance. Very few have ever accused us of under-estimating our importance.
The traditional alliance that's united us for all these decades now enables us to partner with our great American ally in dealing with these challenges of the twenty-first century.
If we are elected to form the next government of Australia, I would say this to this gathering here in Melbourne tonight: there is no greater challenge or opportunity I look forward to more than working with the great American democracy, the arsenal of freedom, in bringing about long term changes to our planet.
Should we not prevail at this election and Mr Howard is returned, I am confident that vision is shared on the other side of the aisle as well, despite the many things that separate us.
The challenges are huge. The task is great. But I believe that with leadership in Washington and with leadership here, we will not disappoint those we are elected to serve.
