President Obama
Mr Harry Jenkins, Speaker of the House of Representatives
Senator the Honourable John Hogg, President of the Senate
The Honourable Tony Abbott, Leader of the Opposition
Honourable Members of the Australian Parliament
Distinguished guests
Mr President.
It's good to see you again after so long, it's been what, two days?
Now I'm not saying our Air Force is faster than yours, our Air Marshal Brown did ask me not to lay down any challenges on his behalf but the Royal Australian Air Force did beat Air Force One to Canberra from Hawaii.
Prior to leaving Hawaii my partner Tim did get a small lecture from the First Lady.
Michelle instructed Tim to make sure we fed you up in Australia because she's worried you work so hard you forget to eat.
So we've responded to her request by making sure you eat a hearty dinner and that there are several hundred witnesses.
Mr President, you come to Australia with the honours of a Head of State.
You come as well, as an ally and a partner and a friend.
And you come as a person for whom many Australians feel great personal warmth.
Not just for the substance of your leadership abroad and at home.
But for the style of modern leadership you display as well.
Australians, not given to overstatement, see you leading a great nation amid all the passions of politics in a democracy and we see in you a combination of clear vision and a deep calm.
And we admire your own unique journey in life and law, community and politics.
Australians who know your memoir Dreams from My Father can't help but experience the “shock of the familiar” as we read your remembrances of times past, of a life lived with roots in many places.
From Hawaii and Indonesia to Kansas and Kenya, from Boston to Chicago to Washington.
We know that in this respect, you embody the American dream of opportunity.
But Australians also recognise, in your wider reflections on identity and place, the value of a world view that looks outwards rather than inwards.
Like ours, a state of mind that is inclusive, rather than exclusive, that sees diversity not as a weakness but as a great strength.
Like ours, an acceptance of responsibility in the world, of an obligation to all, that goes with maturity as a people and a nation.
That is your story, that is our story, that is part of what our two people hold in common.
Part of our common cause for the common good.
Mr President
We have been allies for sixty years.
Comrades in arms for decades before then.
And friends for longer still.
In what is a year of anniversaries, we share a long history but we know it is a history defined, more than anything else, by our shared, restless, forward questing.
Defined always, then and now, by the things we do together to honour our national pledges, to be young and free, to be home to the brave.
Mr President - welcome to Australia.