[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 20 (Monday, February 6, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S748-S750]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
SENATE RESOLUTION 50--REAFFIRMING A STRONG COMMITMENT TO THE UNITED
STATES-AUSTRALIA ALLIANCE RELATIONSHIP
Mr. CARDIN (for himself, Mr. Alexander, Mr. Markey, Mr. Rubio, Mr.
Durbin, Mrs. Shaheen, Mr. Coons, Mr. Schatz, Mr. Booker, and Mr. Blunt)
submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee
on Foreign Relations:
S. Res. 50
Whereas Australia is a fellow democracy and vital partner
of the United States;
Whereas the United States and Australia share core values
as well as deep cultural, security, and people-to-people
ties;
Whereas Australia has been a treaty ally of the United
States since the signing of the Australia-New Zealand-United
States (ANZUS) Treaty in 1951;
Whereas an alliance bond is a sacred vow of friendship and
trust, and Australia has always been a faithful and reliable
partner to the United States;
Whereas United States-Australia defense and intelligence
ties and cooperation are exceptionally close, and Australian
forces have fought together with the United States military
in every significant conflict since World War I and over
100,000 Australian service members have paid the highest
price in the course of their service alongside United States
allies;
Whereas Australia was one of the first countries to commit
troops to United States military operations in Afghanistan
and Iraq after September 11, 2001;
Whereas Australia is a close partner of the United States,
sharing information essential to the defense and security of
the two countries, including through the Five Eyes
intelligence community;
Whereas the United States-Australia alliance is an anchor
for peace and stability in the Indo-Asia Pacific region and
around the world;
Whereas, United States and Australia signed the U.S.-
Australia Force Posture Agreement at the annual Australia-
United States Ministerial consultations (AUSMIN) in August
2014, paving the way for even closer defense and security
cooperation;
Whereas, on October 2015, United States and Australia
defense agencies signed a Joint Statement on Defense
Cooperation to serve as a guide for future cooperation;
Whereas Australia has welcomed proposals to reposition
United States Marines to maintain Marine forces in the
western Pacific and improve the United States strategic
posture in the Indo-Asia Pacific region;
Whereas Australia has led peacekeeping efforts in the Indo-
Asia Pacific, including in Timor-Leste and the Solomon
Islands;
Whereas Australia and the United States share strategic
interests in the Indo-Asia Pacific region and globally, and
have worked together to promote these shared goals and
objectives;
Whereas the United States and Australia have been free
trade agreement partners since 2005, and the United States
has a positive trade balance with Australia;
Whereas robust United States-Australia defense cooperation
contributes not only to the mutual defense of the two
countries but also to American jobs;
Whereas more than 300,000 United States jobs are supported
by United States exports to Australia and nearly 9,000
Australian companies sell or operate in the United States;
Whereas the United States and Australia work closely in the
numerous global and regional fora, including the World Trade
Organization and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum;
Whereas Australia shares many of the United States'
concerns in the struggle against Islamist militancy in
Southeast Asia and beyond, and is part of the global
coalition to defeat the ``so-called Islamic State (IS)''; and
Whereas the United States and Australia have enjoyed a
close relationship over many successive Republican and
Democratic administrations: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That the Senate--
(1) reaffirms the strong alliance relationship between
Australia and the United States;
(2) supports continued diplomatic, military, and economic
cooperation between Australia and the United States; and
(3) reaffirms the importance of a United States-Australia
relationship based on mutual respect and befitting a close
and longstanding United States alliance partner crucial to
the preservation of United States national interests in the
Indo-Asia Pacific region and around the world.
Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, tonight the Senator from Maryland, Mr.
Cardin, and I and a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators, have submitted a
resolution reaffirming the strong alliance between the United States
and Australia. I wish to speak about that for a few minutes.
I don't know what happened during last week's telephone call between
the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Australia,
but I do know this: The people of the United States do not have better
friends than the people of Australia.
We are more than friends. As one Australian told me when our family
lived there thirty years ago, ``Well, we're mates all right. The
English may be our ancestors but you Americans are our cousins. First
cousins. We started out the same kind of people. Underprivileged, a
long way from home, doing the same kind of thing, looking for a new
life. Found a hard life. Hoped it would be a better one for our
children. Each wave of new ones lifted up the last ones. A pioneering
spirit in the countryside here. In America, too.''
Even though they live down under on the other side of the world, for
a century Australians have stood with us every time we are at war, and
we have stood with them. During World War II, when Australian troops
were fighting in North Africa and Europe, and the Japanese were bombing
Darwin four times a day, the United States came to the rescue. In 1992,
Dick Cheney and I, as members of President George H.W. Bush's Cabinet,
traveled to Australia to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Battle
of the Coral Sea, when the U.S. Navy stopped Japan's advance. Today, no
two countries trust one another and cooperate in security arrangements
more than Australia and America. We trade, we visit one another, and
our
[[Page S749]]
students study in each other's universities.
Thirty years ago, our family lived an American dream and we moved to
Australia. We arrived on Australia Day, January 26, 1987, 199 years
after the first fleet of English settlers sailed into Sydney Harbor.
After 8 years of swiveling in the Governor's chair, on the very day I
was sworn out of office, my wife Honey and I and our four children flew
to Sydney for Six Months Off in the ``Land Down Under.'' It was my
wife's idea: an opportunity for a retreat from the merry-go-round of
power and to discover what really was important.
We rented a home in view of the most beautiful harbor in the world,
bought an Australian car, and I learned to drive on the wrong side of
the road. Our four children walked to Australian schools, and we all
sank deeply into the culture of America's favorite cousins. I attended
Chester A. Arthur Society meetings, where Australian Parliament members
competed to show that they know more about American history than United
States Senators do. We spent the night in the South Wales bush. We saw
9-foot crocodiles in the Northwest Territory. We traveled by train to
see the Melbourne Zoo and took a horseback trip across the Snowy
Mountains. It didn't take long for us to understand what Mark Twain
meant when he wrote: ``When a stranger from America steps ashore in
Sydney . . . the thing that strikes him is that it is an English City
with American trimmings.''
We made friends then that exist to this day. Last year, four of those
friends, the Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr and the Australian
Ambassador to the United States Kim Beazley and their wives, spent the
weekend with us at our home outside the Great Smoky Mountains in
Tennessee. We cherish those friendships and our country's relationship
with Australia. It is always appropriate for the U.S. Senate to
reaffirm the importance of that relationship, and I am glad to join
Senator Cardin and a long list of bipartisan U.S. Senators to do that
again today.
To offer a more complete understanding of what makes the Australians
our favorite cousins, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the
Record chapter 30 from my book ``Six Months Off,'' written after our
time in Australia.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Chapter 30--First Cousins
``When a stranger from America steps ashore in Sydney . . .
the thing that strikes him is that it is an English city with
American trimmings.''--Mark Twain, Following the Equator
You would have thought the Sydney taxi driver, who was
English, was speaking of his barely grown-up stepchildren.
``They hate the English, the Australians. Why? Because they
realize we're superior. Minute they find out you're from
England they've got a chip on their shoulder. It's the
convict thing--you know they came from convicts. It's the
darndest thing I've ever gotten myself into. I've been here
four years and now I've got a superiority complex.''
The taxi paused at the entrance to the harbor bridge, but
no one was waiting to take the toll. I had read in the
morning Herald how toll-takers were striking in support of
the postal workers, who had stopped carrying mail while they
bargained for a pay increase. We sped on across without
paying and the genealogy lesson continued. ``Master the
little quirks of living here and you know it's not a bad
place, but the Aussies still need convincing of the fact.
They'll find their own identity one day. Then they won't have
to come on so strong. Over the years England ruled a bit too
heavily here, but the Aussies are their own people now. They
don't have to always prove themselves to anybody, but they
do.''
The Grand Ballroom of the Sheraton Wentworth Hotel was
crowded with guests, black-tied and long-gowned for the
Australian-American Bicentennial Dinner. Honey and I found
our places and introduced ourselves and found that the other
ten who were dining with us at large round table number 27
were all Australian. We sat down and then were immediately
invited to rise so that the American ambassador could toast
the queen of Australia. The governor-general of Australia
responded with a toast to the president of the United States,
and we sat again.
``He is the only man in Australia for whom everyone will
always stand,'' explained the lady on my right, as the
governor-general began speaking so gently that the raucous
table talk in the ballroom quieted.
``It is a happy accident of fate that the Constitution of
the United States was being signed in 1787 just as our first
fleet was sailing eastward across the Atlantic from Rio to
Cape Town on the third leg of its ten-months long voyage. The
fleet carried a cargo of convicts who would have been on
their way to Georgia had not the American Revolution
succeeded and denied the British the opportunity to send
their prisoners to America.''
The lady on my right, who wore a white dress and dangling
gold earrings, whispered, ``It's the 'in' thing now, you
know, to trace back to see if your ancestors were on the
first fleet. A lot of people have always known they were
descended from lawbreakers, but very few had been willing to
spend money to prove it.''
The governor-general was proceeding toward a triumphant
conclusion. ``The links between our two nations have evolved
from earliest times. Out pioneers, like yours, were as
unlikely a band as one could conceive. Your gold rush spilled
into ours. Our constitution has been built on yours. Our
soldiers have died together and we have shared freedoms of
speech and of associations and of laws and of humanities and
of civil liberties--and now both of us are a melting pot. We
read your prose, we speak your poetry and watch your plays
and films. We even watch your terrible TV dramas!''
Applause and generous expressions of affection erupted all
around, and the governor-general smiled, cautiously
retreated, and sat, and Dame Leonie Kramer of the University
of Sydney rose and strode to the microphone and spoke
bluntly.
``We are profoundly interested in one another, but we are
more profoundly ignorant. Americans, for example, are
enchanted that this is the land of the crocodiles but they
don't seem to have enough sense to stay out of the water when
they are here.''
Dame Leonie Kramer then sat, and our table plunged into
grilled fresh fish and boiled asparagus tips and hot
conversation.
The car dealer on my left said, ``When I was in America,
they thought we had roos hopping in the streets and crocs in
the swimming pools and abos behind the fences.'' His short-
cropped hair and narrow tie and innocent eagerness would have
made him a perfect candidate for the role of father in a
1950s American family television series.
His plumpish wife agreed. ``Most Americans can't find
Australia on the map, and even when they do you always have
to prove to them that it's as bi as the United States.''
Her husband laughed. ``One bloke coming to the America's
Cup almost went back when he found out Perth is as far from
Sydney as L.A. is from New York.''
A tanned young blond woman, sitting between the car dealer
and me, said, ``I was skiing in Denver once, was on the lift,
and an American man was in the next seat and he was trying to
come on to me, and so he asks me, `In Australia it's summer,
isn't it?,' and I say `Right.' And then in a minute he says,
`And what month is it in Australia?'''
The Australians especially enjoyed that, which encouraged
the blonde, who turned to me and asked, ``How do you like
Australia?'' She asked this in the same worried way
Californians used to question visiting New Yorkers.
I said, ``It's beautiful and friendly, but what surprises
me is how much like America it is. Sometimes I think I'm at a
family on another planet.''
The blonde said, ``It is another planet, orbiting in sight
of the big ones but never to be one.''
The plumpish wife of the car dealer agreed. ``We always
seem to be missing something.''
I said, ``But, for an American, coming to Australia is
almost better than going home again. When you try to go home
again it's a disappointment. It's only nearly perfect. But
when you come to Australia it's such a pleasant surprise how
nearly perfect it is.''
The car dealer said, ``I reckon everyone in America must
have heard about your family reunion. Three hundred thousand
of 'em coming this year. That's what the telly said.''
The lady in the white dress and earrings on my right asked,
``Isn't Australia just the flavor-of-the-month in America?
Couldn't we just as well be Timbuktu?''
``It's more than that,'' her thin and red-faced husband
said. He was a member of Parliament.
Honey, who was sitting on the right of the member of
Parliament, suggested, ``Some Americans come here looking for
`The America that Was.' ''
The M.P. said, ``Some of us hope America is the ``Australia
the Might Be.' ''
The car dealer leaned across the table and said to them,
``And you'll both be disappointed. Australia's the land of
bushmen and sheepshearers and croc hunters in about the same
way America's the land of Hopalong Cassidy and the cowboys.''
His plumpish wife supported him. ``Crocodile Dundee's a
fairy tale, isn't that right? And America's not really like
Miami Vice.'' She didn't seem entirely sure.
I said, ``Sometimes we don't know so much about ourselves.
Sometimes we're visitors in our own countries.''
Waiters arrived with plates of an Australian dessert called
a Pavlova--whipped cream and fresh papaya in meringue shell--
and exclamations over its fluffiness only temporarily
diminished the conversation.
``Well, we're mates, all right.'' The car dealer could not
tolerate a lull. ``The English may be our ancestors, but you
Americans are our cousins''.
``First cousins,'' said the thin, red-faced member of
Parliament, whom I sensed correctly was preparing to make a
statement. ``We started out the same kind of people,
underprivileged, a long way from home, doing
[[Page S750]]
the same sort of thing, looking for a new life. Found a hard
life. Hoped it would be better for the children. Each wave of
new ones lifted up the last ones. A pioneering spirit in the
countryside here. In America, too.''
``I love America!'' exclaimed the wife of the Australian
bicentennial chairman who was sitting across the table. Her
cheerful face had been hidden behind an enormous centerpiece
of flowers. ``When they sing `New York, New York' I get
excited with the best of 'em. It's our second home. It opens
your eyes a bit, doesn't it, to get out of your own
country.''
``When you do, we look awfully small.'' The speaker was a
dour bald gentleman sitting next to her, who might have been
seventy, a plywood manufacturer who was rather obstructed by
the centerpiece. For the moment, he held the floor. ``Our GNP
is about the size of the GNP of Los Angeles.''
The blond woman said, ``Australia's a village, same names
always popping up.''
The plywood man said, ``Americans have got a head start and
size and location and better education, and they have more
self-confidence.''
This resonated with the blond woman's male guest, whose
name I never got in all the din and who now decided to talk
to me. ``We follow America. You regulate the stock market, so
we do it, too. You change school curriculum. We do it, too.
Don't think about it. Just do it.''
``We'd have been better off to start with pilgrims and a
revolution, instead of convicts,'' said the plywood
manufacturer.
``We could have used an Alamo,'' suggested the car dealer.
``We had Gallipoli,'' said the blonde's friend.
``Wouldn't it have been nice to have something in the
center besides a red desert?'' sighed the plywood man's wife.
The last of the fluffy Pavlova had been scraped from the
plates, and the coffee and mints arrived.
The young blond woman suddenly turned to me and insisted,
``I reckon I ought to have a quarter of a vote every time you
elect a president. I should. After all, we sit here half our
time waiting for American to do something. Our prime minister
can't make a deal with Gorbachev. No one's wondering what
Australia's trade policy will be. We have to depend on you.''
``We already do,'' said the member of Parliament. ``Do
what?'' asked the blonde.
``Depend on America. For defense. For things we really
enjoy. Ask any of our school kids. I've done it. `Where would
you like to go on this planet?' and nine out of ten say,
`Disneyland.' The script for every Australian Tonight show
was prepared by an American until recently.''
The car dealer was saying to Honey, ``We never can have
anything like the things that you have in America. There're
not enough of us Aussies. Disneyland and interstate
highways--things that are ordinary to you--are a wonder to
us. Space stations. All the museums in Washington, D.C.''
``Another reason we can't is what's happening on Pitt
Street,'' intoned the plywood manufacturer.
``The esplanade work?''
``The lack of it. Did you hear the workers complained about
passersby harassing them for leaning on their shovels? And
that yesterday the arbitration board awarded them a twenty-
seven-cent wage increase because of the harassment!''
The blond woman's date said, ``Watch them on MacQuarie
Street, at the restoration, the workers smearing suntan oil.
It would make a good frame for `still life.' I watched them
from my club window yesterday at lunch.''
The car dealer said, ``Sunday's Herald said United stewards
works twice as much as Qantas stewards.''
I said, ``You see that on flights to Tokyo. The same Qantas
crews going up on Monday and coming back on Thursday. And
last month the Bridgestone Tire Company president told me his
tire plants work three hundred forty-five days in Japan and
America, and the Bridgestone plant in Adelaide works only two
hundred ten.''
The plywood man looked positively funereal. ``We're
unusual, all right. We pay double time for afternoon work,
for overtime, for vacation. We pay for days off on a
butchers' picnic and a bakers' picnic--everybody has a picnic
and we pay for that. How are we going to compete with the
rest of the world when we're on a picnic?''
Now the men were enjoying long cigars and the ladies were
doing their best to survive the haze, and my watch said the
dinner had already lasted three hours.
Honey said. ``I see a lot of Japanese cars and American
fast foods, but I don't hear much proper English. Is it
because I'm American and just don't notice it?''
``It's because we've changed,'' said a lady across the
table who up till now had been mostly listening. ``We moved
here in 1978. We decided Sydney winters were better than
English summers, so we sold our house in London. Then,
Australians still spoke of `going home' to England. Now, no
one talks about `going home.' Australianness is coming out
all round. We're more American, too, but mainly we're prouder
of being Australian.''
The wife of the member of Parliament said to Honey, ``Read
our children's books. I'll send you some for your children.
Instead of stories about English hobgoblins, there are more
about aborigine spirits and stories full of the sounds of
frogs croaking and of the didgeridoo, hostile and growling
like the bely of the earth.''
Honey said, ``The new Sheraton in Yulara was lovely, brown
like the desert and built like sails.''
The wife of the M.P. said, ``Our Australianness came out
all right when they tried to kill the brumbies in the Snowy
Mountains. Put a stop to that.''
Honey said, ``We've seen a lot of Australia in David
Williamson's plays and Mary Gilmore's poetry and Ken Done's
bright splashy painting . . .''
``. . . and Fred Elliot's old marine watercolors even if he
was drunk a lot,'' I added.
The wife of the plywood manufacturer said, ``And I believe
we're learning that our harsh vast spaces and distance from
everyone sometimes can be a wonderful advantage.'' Those were
the first words she had uttered in nearly two hours.
From behind the centerpiece of flowers came the cheerful
contribution of the wife of the bicentennial chairman.
``Eight hundred ten of our eight hundred thirty shires have
bicentennial committees.''
The member of Parliament added, ``At least now we toast the
queen of Australia instead of the empire.'' His wife, on my
right with white dress and earrings, asked me, ``Have you
tried the wichety grubs, the moth larvae the abos used to
eat? They're all the rage. Large and crispy and in all the
best restaurants.''
``No,'' I said, ``but I have been to the beaches and I have
thought about those convicts who were laughing at the
aborigines standing there sandy and naked and greasy. Now,
the descendants of some of those first-fleet convicts are on
the same beaches, sandy and naked and greasy.''
The member of Parliament had arranged himself into speaking
position. ``Remember. The English left us. We didn't leave
them. They joined the Common Market. Gave us five years to
adjust our exports.''
This roused the car dealer, who said, ``It goes back to the
last war. Churchill said, `Let them have Australia. We'll win
it back.' Our boys were on the other side, fighting in North
Africa and in Europe and the Japanese were bombing Darwin
four times a day. The Americans saved us.''
His wife, who was finishing off his mints, too, agreed.
``Two Christmases ago there were ten thousand American
sailors in Perth and some family took every one of `em home
for the holidays.''
The lights dimmed and the official bicentennial film began.
Trumpets heralded the arrival of the first fleet of
``settlers'' on Australia's Identity Day, January 26, 1788,
and violins moved the story quickly along into the nineteenth
century, and then lingered amid the excitement of the gold
rush at Ballarat.
I whispered to the wife of the member of Parliament, ``It
didn't mention that the `settlers' were convicts.''
``No worries,'' she said. ``The first bicentennial logo
forgot Tasmania. Had to make a new one. But it's a good
thing, our bicentennial. Helps us remember important
things.''
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