- Jul 2, 2018
- 3,706
 |
PRIME MINISTER |
SECURITY CLASSIFICATION: PROTECTED |
| 3 January 2009 |
| Dear President-elect LaFleur, Please let me be one of the first to congratulate you on your election. I know that this process has been drawn out and complex, but nevertheless the strength of American democracy and the U.S. Constitution prevails. The Constitution of Australia took much inspiration from the Constitution of the United States, as a basis on how to create a new nation in the new world on the ideas of federalism. We also had to bring together a handful of British colonies with seperate Constitutions, seperate forms of self-government, seperate values and seperate priorities to say that our collective priority should be unified strength in a vast and barren continent at a time in the world where great imperial powers were vying for land and strength. The Constitution established the Parliament of Australia, which mirrors the United States Congress with a House of Representatives and a Senate with equal representation from the states. During the term of President Sinclair I was privileged enough to visit the United States in 2005 and address Congress. At the time I extended an invitation to President Sinclair to visit Australia, should he continue on for a second term. Unfortunately, this is not to be, but I continue to extend the same invitation to you. I understand that you ran on a platform of stronger ties with Australia and likewise your opponent also did, which means the election of Vice President Kennedy should not pose any issues to our continuing relationship which has endured since World War II under many Presidents and Vice Presidents, Democrats and Republicans alike. At this stage, we are prioritising the ratification in Congress of the Australia, New Zealand, United States (ANZUS) Security Treaty. This was signed by President Sinclair and I, but is still pending ratification. With a new Congress we hope that this is passed swiftly and may require pressure from the White House. President Sinclair and I also discussed and agreed in principle to an Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement. We understand that you ran on a platform opposing such agreements without protections, but I can ensure you that any agreement would absolutely have protections as we also reserve our own interests, but that it would broadly eliminate tariffs and provide for a wide range of areas to be economically integrated between Australia and the United States. I know that your Vice President may have a different viewpoint on this and would probably be enthusiastic about the idea. What I can tell you is that Australia is one of the few nations and one of the largest trading partners of the United States that the United States actually has a trade surplus with. We concede that this agreement would benefit U.S. exporters more than Australian exporters but that we are eager to take the concession to strengthen the relationship. We understand there may also be some disagreements with your Vice President about the relationship with Thailand. Whilst it is certainly not my position to give advice to the U.S. administration, you are newly elected and it may be needed. We encourage any normalisation of ties with Thailand to not be taken lightly and anything they do say to be taken with a grain of salt, this is based on years of my own personal experience. Australia still maintains diplomatic relations with Thailand and we cooperate in some areas, but we are extremely precarious with how we approach them. Certainly if there was a different government in Thailand, we would've already formalised a Thailand-Australia Free Trade Agreement by now because that's how much we value trade with South East Asia, but it's just simply off the table with this government. Yours sincerely, Julia Gillard. |
Parliament House, CANBERRA, ACT 2600 Telephone: (02) 6277 7700 |
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Odinson
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