Year: 2012 (Page 2 of 7)

One of the best speeches I have read from an Australian politician; erudite, amusing, positive. Even Prime-ministerial.

A couple of excerpts to get you started:

The idea that each person should be free to become his or her best self: that, I’m sure, is what the Founding Fathers were grasping towards when they declared these truths to be self-evident, life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The United States and Australia are separate legal entities but few Australians would regard America as a foreign country.

We are more than allies, we’re family. Around the world we seek no privileges, ask no favours, crave no territory.

Our objectives are to promote trade, prevent aggression and, where possible, to foster democracy based on the rule of law.

Narrow self-interest would have kept America out of Iraq, as it did the French and German governments of the time.

It would have kept Australia out of East Timor. Likewise, narrow self-interest would have kept America out of the toughest parts of Afghanistan, at least once the Taliban had been defeated.

Money, not military power, was enough to secure oil supplies.

Stand-off missiles, not boots on the ground, are normally enough to eliminate terrorists and degrade their bases.

America’s military expeditions may sometimes be mistaken but they’re always well-meaning; even if others are tempted to conclude, with Graham Greene of the Quiet American, that he’d never known a man with such good intentions for all the trouble he’d caused!

Australians are less self-consciously idealistic than Americans but Prime Minister Chifley’s “light on the hill…working for the betterment of mankind, not just here but wherever we can lend a helping hand” might be considered an antipodean version of Reagan’s “shining city on a hill”.

Australians have been proud to go into battle with Americans, starting at Le Hamel when Pershing’s doughboys fought under Australian command, and subsequently in the Pacific, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The United States shouldn’t take Australia’s support entirely for granted.

Australia’s national interest might not always be identical with America’s.

Our values, though, invariably coincide and Australia’s foreign policy should be driven as much by our values as by our interests …

The question now being pondered right around the world and, especially in Washington, fuelled by the rise of China, an inconclusive and unpopular war, and congressional gridlock here is: Have we reaching a tipping point in history? Has the United States passed from being a dominant to a declining power?

Facts, as opposed to fears, support no such conclusion.

First, America remains by far the world’s largest economy and has no systems-shaking transitions to manage.

Second, the world instinctively looks to America and to like-minded countries whenever trouble looms or disaster strikes.

Third, other countries’ success largely depends upon and substantially vindicates American traits such as intellectual curiosity, economic innovation, and political liberalisation.

And finally, the more other countries come to resemble America, the more likely they are to be forces-for-good in the wider world.

What’s remarkable is that right now, perhaps for the first time, the world appears to have more confidence in America than America has in itself …

Australia will continue to respect China’s economic achievement and to strive to improve the relationship on everything where we can sensibly work together.

We will try to avoid indulgent gestures over, for instance, live cattle sales to Indonesia or uranium sales to India where our friends want us to be a secure source of supply.

We intend to play our part in the wider world through contributing to humanitarian relief and fully participating in the security partnership with our principal allies.

Over the past decade, there’s been much “expert” advice that Australia would be a better ally by ostentatiously refusing to participate in America’s so-called follies, such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

To their credit, both the Howard government and the Rudd/Gillard government have refused to carp from the sidelines.

These days, America does not need to be told where it is going wrong but where it is going right.

By a large margin, the United States has the best universities, the most creative research, the most sophisticated intellectual property and the most accomplished high-end manufacturing.

America needs to believe in itself the way others still believe in it.

It needs once more to take to heart President Roosevelt’s advice that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

America is exceptional so exceptionalism has its place.

American world leadership might only truly be appreciated were it to disappear.

None of us should want to find out the hard way what a shrunken America might mean. 

Australia wills America to succeed because a strong America means a safer world.

The West has faced problems before; wars, the plague, depressions, climate change. We have survived and continued to move forward.

The level of comfort, medical care and nutrition taken for granted by the average Western family now is superior to standards expected even by royalty two or three hundred years ago.

We have moved forward by recognising problems, by researching them and overcoming them. We have always been good at facing reality.

We will keep moving forward. There is no reason for despair.

But there are reasons for concern. Poor economic management is one. Focussing vast amounts of attention and money on non-existent problems like global warming is another. It has been pointed out before that the amount of money spent by governments so far on global warming could have eradicated malaria and provided clean water and basic medical care for every person on the planet.

Another reason for concern is the unwillingness by Western leaders to acknowledge the threat to freedom posed by radical Islam.

Over the last week I have been reading William Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Shirer says early on that even after all the horrors that came after 1933, the German people and the world at large could not say they had not been warned. The policies of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party were clearly set out from the beginning.

So when we have another large totalitarian movement which says it wants to exterminate the Jews, kill gays and destroy democracy, it might wise to consider the possibility, at least, that they mean what they say.

This unwillingness to be face the truth, or even to be truthful, is evident in our media in smaller ways. Over the last week I have been struck by three quite different news stories.

First, the mother of an autistic boy complaining to the media when, after five years of taxis to and from his school, paid for by taxpayers, he got a new driver. I understand routine is important to some autistic people. This is why someone went out of his or her way to ensure that for five years this child had the same driver every day.  But both SA Education Minister Grace Portolesi and Opposition education spokesman David Pisoni said that she had a legitimate complaint. Why? If consistency is so important, why not take your own child to school and back? Most parents do.

Second, the story of a Georgia (US) woman suing her husband’s new doctor after her husband died of a heart attack while engaging in three way sex with another woman at a motel. The doctor was found to have been negligent because he should have warned the husband about the dangers of strenuous activity. The wife was awarded $3 million.

Third, a South Australian woman convicted of stealing over $800,000 from her employers to play the pokies blamed hotel staff for not stopping her from gambling. Nick Xenophon offered his support. No surprises there. Nick Xenophon will offer his support to anything that will get him a headline. But why should anyone else consider her a victim? She stole money from people who trusted her and spent it in multiple pubs and clubs.

There have always been people who are lazy, dishonest, greedy, unwilling to take responsibility. What is different is that now these people are often told they are victims, that they need support or therapy, that what has happened to them is someone else’s fault, that someone else should pay. Anyone who disagrees ruins the risk of being called uncaring. But real compassion is based on truth and responsibility.

In foreign relations, in economic planning, in energy infrastructure, and in personal life, we need to make decisions based on reality. This has been the West’s great strength. It is the only way we will continue to make progress.

We should not have to be afraid to call a spade a spade.