The United States would like to see Australia become the innovation hub of the southern hemisphere, US Vice President Joe Biden has told a business roundtable in Sydney.
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Mr Biden said he had spent a lot of time with China’s President Xi whom he said “acknowledges that the growth and progress in China has been a direct relationship of the stability encouraged by United States presidents”.
Mr Biden said Australians were always welcome in America.
As former Prime Ministers Bob Hawke, Tony Abbott and John Howard watched on, Biden spoke fondly of the relationship and history between Australia and the U.S. “And they look for one thing – they kiss their wife good-bye or their husband and they want to go home and tuck in their kids”, Biden said.
During his stay he will also meet Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, tour a $1.5 billion Landing Helicopter Dock (LHD) Navy warship, and dine with Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove.
A 300-member Australia and New Zealand team is now operating inside Iraq, training the Iraqi army for the fight against Islamic State. Our governments and peoples share a deep and abiding interest in maintaining peace, prosperity and stability in the region.
The vice president has made a push in his final year in office to double the pace of cancer research toward a cure. During the meeting, he discussed the importance of investing in modern infrastructure, protecting intellectual property rights and passing the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an ambitious trade pact with Asian nations.
Biden’s visit comes five years after President Barack Obama announced that U.S. Marines would begin rotating through the Australian city of Darwin as part of the U.S. military pivot to Asia.
“That’s who we are”. While in Australia, he met with the nation’s leaders and troops in a bid to reassert America’s standing as a so-called Pacific power in the region.
Later, Biden took a sunset cruise along Sydney’s famed harbor, chatting with Foreign Minister Julie Bishop as their boat glided past the Sydney Opera House. We are going nowhere.
China has long claimed sovereignty over the sea but the U.S. and a number of countries that border the sea challenge China’s presence there. On the flight deck of HMAS Adelaide, one of the country’s two new large landing ships, he told the assembled crew that U.S. troops had huge respect for Australians, due to their “Aussie grit” and “the fact you never, never leave anybody behind”.
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John Beezley of the RSL said the flag was restored after the Ivanhoe branch made a request to the U.S. embassy.
