Scott Morrison has said that pursuing freedom is a shared commitment between Australia and the US, and that the partnership offered security benefits as well as global prosperity.
“The United States and Australia have always shared a partnership that is about a world order that favours freedom, and that’s why we’ve always stood together,” Morrison said.
“It goes to global freedom, the freedom of our seas, the freedom of our region.”
The prime minister made his remarks from New York, where he met with US president Joe Biden on Wednesday morning Australian time. He outlined that the Australia-US friendship was built on more than 100 years of partnership, which would rise to meet future global challenges.
Morrison thanked Biden for understanding the need to focus on the security of the Indo-Pacific region
“But it’s not just about our partnership, because our partnership reaches out to so many others, whether it be our friends in the ASEAN nations or in Europe or elsewhere, where we share so many like-minded interests,” the pm said.
“The issues we discuss in our partnership today really do reach out to so many others in terms of how we address the global challenges.”
Biden will welcome Morrison at the White House on Friday, where they will be joined by representatives from Japan and India for an historic quad meeting.
The US president said that geopolitics and the current challenges facing the world, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the climate crisis, defending democracy, and shaping the ‘rules of the world’ for the 21st Century — had created an inflection point for change. Everybody must either ‘grasp the change and deal with it’ or be left behind, Biden warned.
“The United States has no closer or more reliable ally than Australia. Our nations have stood together for a long, long time. And [….] we can rely on one another, and that’s really a reassuring thing,” Biden said.
Referencing the ANZUS treaty, which marks its 70th anniversary this year, Biden said the US was grateful for the enduring partnership with Australia. He said the US and Australia were ‘working in lockstep’ on the challenges that he laid out at the United Nations this week.
For the first time in 20 years, the United States is not at war. We’ve turned the page.
All the unmatched strength, energy, commitment, will, and resources of our nation are now fully and squarely focused on what’s ahead of us, not what was behind. pic.twitter.com/4n3HlIiUlY
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) September 21, 2021
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