Embassy of Australia
United States of America
Embassy address: 1601 Massachusetts Ave, NW Washington DC 20036 - Telephone: (202) 797 3000 - Fax: (202) 797 3168
ADDRESS BY DENNIS RICHARDSON

AUSTRALIAN AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED STATES

TO THE AMERICAN AUSTRALIAN ASSOCIATION

NEW YORK, NY

25 MAY 2006

 

 

 …Transcription: Proof Copy E & OE

AUSTRALIA AND THE UNITED STATES – PERSONAL LIVES AND SHARED VALUES

Rather than cover the usual areas of foreign, defence, strategic and trade policies I thought I would explore some of the personal dimensions which sit at the base of the relationship and which, in my view, explain so much about its vibrance, depth and quality.

And it is the personal dimensions which are captured so well by the American Australian Association. Whether it be bringing Australians and Americans together across professional boundaries, your Annual Gala Dinner honouring achievements by Australians in the United States, your highly valued scholarships for young Australians and Americans to study in specialised areas not available in their own country, or your role in the decision to create an American Studies Centre at an Australian University, the American Australian Association has been at the forefront of the people connections since 1948. I think the AAA should be congratulated for its record of sustained achievement, and I thank it personally for your welcome and assistance in the eleven months I have been in my job.

Like everyone who comes to such a big and diversified country, I have been trying to get my mind around it. And travel is an essential part of the discovery process. While it comes as no surprise to those who have lived in the United States for some time, as a newcomer you can’t help but be impressed by the number of Australians you run into everywhere.

At one level, this is hardly surprising. Australians are global in outlook and are great travellers. Twenty four per cent of all Australians were born overseas, compared to twelve per cent of Americans. Twenty million Australians have twelve million passports; three hundred million Americans have fifty million passports

- almost 400,000 Australians visit the United States each year, about 3,000 Australians are studying in the United States at any one time, and about 1,200 Australian scholars are teaching or conducting research at American universities

- in the other direction, over 400,000 Americans visit Australia and over 12,000 American students study in Australia each year.

We do not know the precise number of Australians living in the United States. The US census of 2000 produced a figure of 60,965. The Lowy Institute which is a privately funded think tank based in Sydney undertook a study in 2004, entitled, ‘diaspora, the world wide web of Australians’, and working from Australian immigration data and from information provided by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, it put the number of Australians living in the United States at well over 100,000 but probably less than 130,000. Indeed, according to that same Lowy study, about 7 per cent of the 800,000 to 900,000 Australians living abroad are in either Los Angeles, San Francisco or New York.

One interesting trend noted in the Lowy Institute study, was that, in relative terms, the United States appeared to be becoming a more popular destination for Australians to work and live, than the United Kingdom. That said, the Australian diaspora in the United States is considerably smaller than the diaspora from many other countries. It is, however, a diaspora from another highly developed and successful country. It is highly educated and skilled and, individually and collectively, constitutes a quality presence.

As you would expect, the statistics mask a multiple of fascinating stories. Of course, we’re all familiar with Rupert Murdoch, Greg Norman, Nicole Kidman and others such as Andrew Liveris, the CEO of Dow Chemicals. They’re the flag bearers and deserve the recognition for their unqualified success in the biggest, richest and most competitive market in the world.

But the stories without public profile are equally fascinating. Maude and Richard Brown live in Washington, DC and have been married for almost sixty years. They met in General McArthur’s headquarters in Tokyo in 1947, where Mr Brown, an American, was working as the Chief Legislative Officer, and the then Miss McKenna, an Australian, was working for General Whitby

- Miss McKenna was one of the 10,000 to 15,000 Australian women who married US servicemen in the 1940’s and who settled in the United States. Their children and grandchildren number anywhere between 30,000 and 40,000 today, almost all of whom are now American. A former head of the CIA’s Counter Terrorism Center is numbered among them

- Australian war brides deserve recognition and the Australian Embassy is in early planning, and will bring something together around ANZAC Day in either 2007 or 2008 and it will be significant.

James Lloyd, in his mid-thirties, is an Assistant Professor of Astronomy at Cornell University. An honours graduate in physics from the University of New South Wales, James spent two years at the South Pole undertaking research. A Fulbright scholarship in 1997 led to a PhD from Berkeley.

Rodney Brooks came to the United States in 1977 to do a PhD. Today, he is Professor of Robotics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and co-founder of the NASDAQ-listed iRobot Corporation, designing and manufacturing behaviour-based, artificially intelligent robots. iRobot innovations are today contributing to the protection of US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Fraser Henderson was five years old when his parents moved to Australia in 1959. Fraser did his schooling in Australia, after which he spent three years working as a jackaroo on his family’s cattle station in the Northern Territory. He subsequently returned to the United States and is today Professor of Neurosurgery at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, DC. His siblings live in Australia.

Literally, thousands of such stories are there to be told, including I think one today - Felicity Gates is here, is that right? Felicity Gates works with Deutsche Bank here in New York, and I think Felicity, your grandfather, as an American citizen, served with Australian forces in the First World War; Geraldine Brooks, the author whose book ‘March’, won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction; Graham Ashton, Professor of Trumpet at the State University of New York; and Catherine Britt, the successful young country singer in Nashville, from Newcastle in Australia.

When we think of successful Australian investments in the United States, we understandably and rightly point to, amongst others, News Ltd, to Pratt Industries, to Westfield, to Macquarie Bank, to the Fosters Group, and to Boral, which is the largest clay brick manufacturer in the United States.

But the Australian investment story is also remarkably rich in both its breadth and its depth. Two examples:

- TZ Limited is a small, publicly-listed Australian company specialising in intelligent fastening technology, with a market capitalisation of around $100 million. A few years ago the company moved its team of 13 engineers and designers and their families to Illinois. It has since sold part of its Intellectual Property portfolio to a major US company, has expanded to 150 employees.

- Nufarm is a leading agricultural crop protection company listed on the Australian Stock Exchange and based near Melbourne. Starting its US venture with one person in 1986, its US operations today enjoy a turnover of over $350 million per annum.

Beyond publicly listed companies, Australian investment also encompasses individuals simply doing their own thing and taking their own initiative. Mark Allen and Neville Steel used to run a café together in Bendigo, Victoria. Since 2001 they have owned and operated the ‘Australian Bakery Café’ in Atlanta, Georgia. Today, they run the café, manage a business which ships Australian meat pies and sausage rolls made by them all over the United States – it’s a big business. And they run a program introducing school kids to Australia, about 60,000 school kids have been through that program.

In short, the success stories at the individual level are mirrored at the enterprise level. Indeed, they probably reinforce one another. Little wonder that the two-way investment relationship with the United States is our biggest by far (worth over half a trillion dollars US), and that Australia is the eighth largest foreign investor in the United States.

In contrast with the Australian communities in countries such as China, Lebanon and Greece, a very small percentage of the Australian community in the United States was born here or have parents who were born here. There is an absence of a longstanding immigration flow, as from the UK to Australia. The network of personal connections between Australia and the United States is, in its depth and breadth, probably unique in that it does not derive in large part from an immigration core. It neither derives from government programs, nor from active policy decisions - although the FTA and subsequent visa arrangements will increase the flow of people. Rather, it is a fabric woven by individuals themselves. And a good question is why is that so?

Some of the reasoning is plain enough, with perceived self-interest driving much of it. Ambition, opportunity and adventure all play a part. Globalisation and the world’s richest economy is a central factor. A common language no doubt helps. But other factors are at play - a mixture of the intangible and what we take for granted. We are immigrant societies with a tradition of welcoming both the talented and the dispossessed. We are both open, tolerant and pluralistic societies, valuing our democratic traditions and the rule of law. And without those fundamentals, if you think about it, the Australian diaspora in the United States would be much smaller and would have a very different look.

The fact that both Australia and the United States value hard work and advancement on merit also helps. Perhaps it is no coincidence that, according to the OECD, the United States and Australian workforces put in more hours during the year than any other OECD countries. We both value innovation and creativity and enjoy political systems which are conducive to that. Of course, there are differences in the way we communicate, and the way we approach things, but these differences are differences of nuance and not of fundamentals.

There is real parallel between the drivers at the base of individual and government relations; self-interest and values in the case of the former, and national interest and values in the case of the latter. When the word ‘values’ is used in the context of the relationship, we need to understand that it has a meaning and a resonance beyond a narrow foreign policy and strategic application. It has real substance to the tens of thousands of Australians who work and live in the United States and to the hundreds of thousands of people who move between the two countries every year.

‘Values’ is not sweet talk: it has hard meaning, both at an individual and government level. 'Values' is one of those central, bedrock elements which are difficult to capture in a poll. It is clear that when Australians and their families discuss study, work and other opportunities in the United States, views about Hollywood or the Administration barely rate, if at all.

The Australian diaspora in the United States appears to be one of our fastest growing and one of our most highly skilled. It is now visible across the spectrum of human activity. It has probably already developed into a third ballast in the relationship, after the alliance and the economic relationship. There is growing awareness of it, but its implications are yet to be fully felt, explained or understood.

You could ask the question: is the diaspora in the United States a good thing for Australia? It consists of some of our best talent - as in this room. Not everyone returns to Australia. Probably many of you in this room, for very good reason, don’t pay Australian taxes. And some of you probably don’t vote.

But I think the answer to the question “is the diaspora good for Australia”, is clearly an unqualified yes. What the diaspora does is acquire new skills at the centre of globalisation, create new linkages in such diverse areas as the financial services sector, the wine industry, science, medical research, the professions and the arts. For instance, Rodney Brooks, the Professor of Robotics at MIT, who I mentioned earlier, maintains an active link with the Australian scientific community, including research collaboration with the CSIRO. And Richard Pestell, the Director of the Kimmel Cancer Center at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, regularly collaborates with his former Australian colleagues in cancer research. He’s been doing that over the fifteen years or so that he has lived in the United States, both in the job he is currently in and also when he was previously the head of the Lombardi Cancer Research Centre in Washington and also when he was the head, early on, of a cancer research centre here in New York.

In terms of the diaspora and its contribution in overall terms, I think I could probably do no better than to quote from an editorial which appeared in The Australian on the 11th of August 2001. It said, speaking about expatriates generally not just Australians living in the Unites States, but looking at it from an Australian perspective:

Expatriates… are our foot in the door to the world’s most dynamic markets, a conduit for ideas and trends. Without them, Australia would be more insular and inward-looking, left behind by forces driving globalisation and denied its benefits. Expats are also our ambassadors-at-large. Their achievements — whether in business, academia, the arts or sport — strengthen our reputation as a diverse nation with an advanced economy. They are, in fact, an underused national resource.

In the broadest of terms, our own society is richer for the international experience of its people, whether that experience being in Indonesia, China, India, Greece, the UK, or the United States.

One of the great strengths of the Australian diaspora in the United States is the depth and breadth of its talent, and its diversity. That diversity is driven by Australian individuality as much as anything else. The American Australian Association, other groups such as Advance, and the various Australian-US Chambers of Commerce which you will discover in Houston, Seattle, Atlanta and a number of other places, they all play a role to varying degrees in providing a focal point for Australians wishing to give collective voice to their aspirations, and wishing to make a contribution to the wider bilateral relationship. I would however like to pay particular tribute to the American Australian Association which has been at the centre of it since 1948 and I think some of its recent initiatives such as the scholarship fund and the like I think really are outstanding. And I’d like to thank you for the invitation to be here today and share a few thoughts about yourselves, excluding Americans citizens who are here and I hope the Americans who are here don’t mind that little bit of self indulgence but I hope that it has also shed some light on the Australian experience in the United States. I’d be very happy to take any questions on anything I’ve spoken about, but also on the state of the relationship that I was down to talk about.

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