SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTER, THE HON P. 3. KEATING MP
CORAL SEA RECEPTION, GREAT HALL, PARLIAMENT HOUSE
4 MAY 1992
It is my great privilege tonight to host this reception in
honour of those American and Australian servicemen and
women whose courage and sacrifice fifty years ago did so
much to keep us free.
The Battle of the Coral Sea was the first major check to
Japanese miiay expansion in our region. It forced a
seemingly invincible enemy to rethink and reconstruct
their plans for domination of the area.
Plans which, after the battles of New Guinea, the Solomon
Islands and Midway they were forced to abandon altogether.
in stemming the tide of Japanese aggression, the Battle of
the Coral Sea had great consequences for the war.
It also had great consequences for the peace: for it
forged a bond between Australia and the United States
which will endure for as long as the cause of democracy
endures with us.
The bond has its most obvious manifestation in the
alliance between our countries.
The war in the Pacific was the foundation of that
alliance. But its resilience derives from more then our experience
of World War II.
It derives principally from our long friendship.
Americans have been coming here for 200 years.
They came to trade in the earliest days of European
settlement. In 1840 the united States Exploring Expedition
came in the course of their remarkable scientific survey
of the Pacific.
in 1908 the Great White Fleet came and received a
stupendous welcome.
Austra liens have always recognised something of themselves
in Americans as well they might.
We are both countries of the New World as one great
Australian patriot of a much less complex age exclaimed
Christopher Columbus and James Cook were the saviours of
mankind. These days we don't imagine ourselves, or even the two
explorers, in such exalted terms.
But we do remainz countries whose strength has been the
strength of those who not only imagined a better life, but
who had the courage to seek it.
And who sought it and made it in the New World, in our
countries. We both derive our strength from individual effort and
initiative.
We derive it therefore by enshrining those values which
encourage and protect the rights and opportunities of
individuals I mean tolerance, freedom and justice.
Our strength, and the strength of our alliance, is derived
from our shared liberal, democratic and humane values.
These remain, I believe, our common aspirations: they
are, I have no doubt, our areatast aspirations.
It follows that It is our common duty, our duty to the
heroes of the Coral Sea, to see that those values are not
eroded. Nor can we say that we have fulfilled our duty, if we fail
to create in this generation faith and hope of the kind
which inspired those men and women of 1942 to risk
everything for the cause of their countries.
That is why it is not enough on this fiftieth anniversary
of the battles which decided our future, to merely pay
homage to the past we will most truly honour the Coral
Sea heroes when we find the ways to guarantee the future
of the next generation as they guaranteed ours.
if we are to r. eiuain countries of hope and faith, it seems
to me that we must be countries of renewal. We must be
prepared to move on.
While taking care to preserve those great democratic
values and traditions on which our way of life is built,
and for which so ma~ ny fought and died, we must change.
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That is why Australia seeks a renewed sense of national
purpose. It is also why the Australian government now directs so
much of its attention to its economic transformation and
its trade and political focus to the Asia-Pacific region.
For us, it is the direction of the future: a rapidly
changing reality which Australians are now accommodating.
For the same reason Australia would like to see the United
States reaffirm its role in the region.
We would like to see a US institutional and investment
presence to match the trade and strategic one.
We think it would be in the Uinited States' interests, and
very much in the interests of the region, if the world's
greatest liberal democracy were integrated with Asia and
the Pacific to a degree at least equivalent to that
obtaining with Europe.
A greater US presence in the Pacific can on ly help the
region fulfill the promise of its name as an ocean of
peace and stability.
We would like to see the friendship so manifest fifty
years ago renewed and regenerated in this year of
cornmemioration and in the years to come.
I take this opportunity to welcome Secretary Cheney and Dr
Cheney to Canberra.
And to welcome all of you particularly, of course, those
veterans to whom we are all so indebted and in whose
honour tonight's reception is held.