| Australia Never Had To Choose Between UK and US |
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| Written by Professor David Flint AM | ||||
| Saturday, 13 August 2005 | ||||
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In a speech to the US-Australia Leadership Dialogue in Sydney on 20 July 20005, the federal Health Minister, Tony Abbott said that while America has for over half a century been Australia's most important ally, “…the importance of Britain - as America's principal global ally, Europe's most assertive military and economic power and Australia's second-largest foreign investor and fourth-largest trading partner - has too often been underrated”. Mr Abbott criticised those who assumed that the American alliance enhanced republicanism here, a point argued by Mr Keating’s speech writer, Don Watson in A Quarterly Essay. Mr Watson’s curious argument, if I understand it correctly and he is serious, is that Australia should become a republic by becoming part of the United States! Mr Abbott said:” In a form of cultural cringe, the Australian left has sometimes embraced American symbols to undermine support for the monarchy and other British-derived Australian traditions, such as judicial restraint…” In arguing that Australia never had to choose between these two allies, Mr Abbott observed that the “either/or” approach to Australia's relations with Britain and America is founded on one rather overwrought statement that “Australia looks to America free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom.” He said that this statement by John Curtin was “… a cry for help rather than a fundamental reorientation of Australia's foreign policy. In a time of mortal peril, he was happy to accept whatever assistance could be had ... but he was no proto-republican.”
Mr Abbott recalled that in a 2001 speech to open the Magna Carta monument in Canberra, John Howard spoke of the values shared by the people of Britain, Australia and the United States and described September 11 as an attack on the people and values of all three countries.
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