Prime Minister Albanese, thank you for this warm welcome, and for this great honour.
Leader of the Opposition Taylor, thank you for reminding us of the importance of beer and competition.
I would recall our trilateral with Prime Minister Starmer, a time of great consequence, and Prime Minister Albanese brought four of Australia’s finest tins, which just happened to bear his name.
Mr. Speaker, President, Honourable Members and Senators, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you for this warm welcome to myself, my wife, and my colleagues to Australia.
Let me also thank the Australian firefighters who are here today in the chamber with us. They came to my home province of Alberta last summer, when we faced record wildfires, just as Australian firefighters have done for Canadians over the years. This is just one of the many testaments to the profound and practical friendship between our two nations.
Friends, it is a distinct honour and privilege to address the Parliament of Australia – one of the world’s great chambers of democracy, and a testament to our shared Commonwealth heritage.
Canada and Australia have been close friends for a very long time. Trust is the core pillar of our relationship.
When Canada and Australia act together, we make a big difference.
In this moment of rupture, our cooperation is even more strategic: we can both reinforce our sovereignty and deliver real results for our citizens, as well as for our economies.
Mr. Speaker, the last time a Canadian Prime Minister stood here, it was a different era with different challenges.
2007 was the eve of the global financial crisis. Australia and Canada sailed through that storm because of the soundness of our banks, the probity of our public finances, and the resourcefulness of our people.
And while much has changed since then, these qualities endure, as does the friendship between our nations.
Although we could not be physically further apart, Canada and Australia are “strategic cousins.”
We may look to different skies – the North Star in our hemisphere, the Southern Cross in yours – but we have the same orientation. We share a common heritage, have developed a common perspective, and can build together a common future.
Two sovereign nations. Two proud democracies: the True North and the Land Down Under, navigating with the same values.
What makes our relationship rare is that it was not built by geography or by great power design. It was chosen, repeatedly, over centuries.
In the mud of Flanders, on the shores of Normandy, in the hills of Korea and the valleys of Kandahar, Canadians and Australians have stood by each other when the hour was darkest and victory most in doubt.
We have done so because we believe that people everywhere deserve to live freely, to govern themselves, and to determine their own futures – and that these values are worth defending even at great cost.
Together, we helped build the post-war international system, draft the United Nations Charter, and create a global economic order that brought prosperity to our peoples.
We helped write its rules from Basel to Brisbane. We were at the table when the G20 was formed, when the Trans-Pacific Partnership was negotiated, when the standards governing trade, finance, and security were set.
Yes, that system was imperfect, but it functioned: keeping sea-lanes open, resolving disputes, growing trade and investment, narrowing the gaps between rich and poor across the world.
With that global architecture now breaking down from consecutive crises, I have come to Australia to reaffirm our alliance, and to suggest where we can go next.
Because it is my fundamental belief – the result of an optimism I have picked up from this great country – that from this rupture we can build something better, more prosperous, more resilient, and more just.
It is often observed that our countries have much in common. The Westminster system, federalism, common law, the Crown.
Yet the foundations of our relationship go much deeper.
We intuitively understand how each other’s system works, how power is constrained, how our institutions function, and the values that underpin them.
This is the product of centuries of parallel development, common inheritance, and continuous exchange. It is not something that can be replicated by treaty or sustained by rhetoric.
On this common foundation, we have built civic nations: societies held together not by blood or soil, not by a single faith or culture, but by something more demanding and durable – a shared commitment to live together, to accommodate our differences, and to pursue the common good.
Canada’s founding insight is that unity does not require uniformity. That we can share a country without conforming to a single identity. That our differences, honestly acknowledged and respectfully navigated, are a source of strength.
Australia arrived at the same destination by its own path. Let us remember that Australia was the first nation in the world to give women the right to vote and to stand for Parliament.
Your example has inspired the world ever since. That act of democratic extension – choosing to widen the circle rather than guard its edges – is the fundamental instinct that defines our common civic nationalism.
Our two nations were built by voyageurs and by drovers – adventurers, risk-takers, and families who left everything behind to start again. They crossed oceans with uncertain prospects to bet on themselves and on each other.
That commitment to building something together, rather than resting on something inherited, is bred in the bone of our national characters.
Of course, we are both nations still in the making. The important work of reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples is ongoing. We continue to strive so that everyone has equal opportunities regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, or their starting point in life.
This work is not a sign of weakness – rather, it is the product of a confidence that honestly acknowledges when we fall short and relentlessly strives to do better.
Mr. Speaker, the institutional depth we share, our friendship forged by shared values and common battles, creates a trust that is also a strategic asset. A source of power.
And the question today for middle powers like us is whether we establish the conventions and write the new rules that will determine our security and prosperity or let the hegemons dictate outcomes.
In the new global environment, the ability to form effective coalitions is becoming a central strategic capability.
Great powers can compel. But compulsion comes with costs – both reputational and financial.
Middle powers must convene to matter, but not everyone can.
In a post-rupture world, the nations that are trusted and can work together will be quicker to the punch, more effective in their responses, more proactive in shaping outcomes, and ultimately more secure and prosperous.
Middle powers like Australia and Canada hold this rare convening power. Because others know we mean what we say, and we will match our values with our actions.
We have earned this trust throughout our history. The question now is what we do with it.
Canada is choosing to create a dense web of connections to build our resilience.
We have adopted a new framework for engaging the world: variable geometry – creating different coalitions for different issues, based on common values and interests.
This is not a retreat from multilateralism. It is its evolution.
To be clear, Canada’s support for the United Nations, the Bretton Woods institutions, and the multilateral system is, like Australia’s, unwavering. But while we are committed to reforms of these institutions to better reflect today’s world, we need these coalitions now to address emerging challenges.
As these coalitions work, they will help demonstrate the power of multilateralism and reinvigorate global institutions.
Right now, many countries are concluding that they must develop greater strategic autonomy. That impulse is understandable. When the rules no longer protect you, you must defend yourself. A country that cannot feed itself, fuel itself, or defend itself has few options.
In the 21st century, the requirements for economic security and prosperity of our countries extend far beyond food, conventional energy, and defence, as important as these are.
Today, sovereignty requires reliable access to space-based communications and storage. It requires vaccines, semiconductors, payment systems, and capital.
Because governments and businesses long prioritised efficiency over resilience, we have developed supply chains and trading relationships that create dependence on great powers, and sometimes even individual corporations, for essential elements of our sovereignty. As integration is weaponised, this creates fundamental vulnerabilities.
In response, Canada’s strategic imperative is to build sovereign capabilities in these critical sectors, at home and abroad, by convening coalitions with trusted, reliable partners like Australia to ensure that integration is never again a source of our subordination.
Let me give five examples of what this means in practice.
The first is critical minerals. Canada and Australia are the world’s two most reliable and like-minded mining giants. We are both committed to sustainability. We have each developed the most advanced extractive ecosystems from prospecting to engineering, logistics, and capital markets.
We are both rich in the foundational metals that power the batteries, electric vehicles, smartphones, and the AI systems of this century.
Together, we produce one-third of global lithium and uranium, 40% of iron ore, and have a combined war chest of over $25 billion to fast-track projects. Globally, we are number one and number two as the most attractive mining investment jurisdictions in the world.
We are the world’s critical mineral superpowers.
In the old world and, even to a degree, today, the temptation has been to see ourselves as competitors. In this new world, we should, as Prime Minister Albanese suggests, be strategic collaborators – to boost investments, accelerate technical cooperation, enhance supply chain resilience, expand our domestic processing abilities, while boosting our strategic autonomy.
Which is why, earlier today, we signed a series of new agreements on critical minerals, including Australia joining the G7 minerals alliance – the largest grouping of trusted democratic mineral reserves in the world.
The second area is defence. Both our countries are building up our capabilities so the next generation of drones, surveillance aircraft, cyber, and AI are created in Adelaide and Alberta.
Canada’s first-ever Defence Industrial Strategy is catalysing half a trillion dollars of investment in our security and resilience over the next decade, creating enormous opportunities for cooperation. We are already cooperating with Australia on your world-leading Over-the-Horizon Radar and will explore new opportunities to protect our vast territories together.
Australia and Canada are core members of the Coalition of the Willing, which provides vital military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine in response to Russia’s illegal war. The outcome of this war is not in doubt, although its duration is still uncertain. When peace comes, the Coalition will provide robust security guarantees to support a just and lasting peace in Ukraine and Europe.
As we have seen in Ukraine, satellite communications are now a fundamental requirement for security. Middle powers must have choices – and Canada does.
A Canadian-based constellation of low-Earth-orbit satellites will launch next year to provide reliable and secure global communications. We are working with other like-minded partners who possess similar capabilities to build out a deep and resilient system we can all share and each control in our own territories.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a third example. As AI begins to transform our economy and our lives, strategic autonomy requires sovereign intelligence infrastructure including secure clouds, data, large language models, and enterprise applications.
Canada is well placed. We are the number one global destination for master’s and doctoral graduates, produce some of the world’s most renowned AI developers, and are home to leading AI institutes and AI start-ups.
At the same time, we know that we must work with other middle powers to build our sovereign AI capabilities, so we are not caught between hyper-scalers and hegemons, which is why Canada is collaborating with like-minded nations in Europe and why we are partnering with Australia and India in a trilateral AI initiative to bolster our cooperation and sovereign capacity.
Fourth, on trade. Our two nations are championing efforts to build a bridge between the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the European Union. Canada is already a member of both trading blocs. Soon you will be, as well.
Both of us know this is a global public good, creating a new trading bloc of 1.5 billion people, grounded in common standards and shared values, capable of anchoring a new rules-based trading system even as the old one falters.
This ad hoc trading coalition of middle powers has a larger GDP than the United States, three times the trade flows of China, the largest combined central bank balance sheet in the world, 62 of the top 100 universities, and is the largest source of cultural exports globally.
My final example is capital. Over the past two decades, access to capital has been increasingly weaponised, and in the coming period global volatility will likely test once again the resilience of national financial systems.
Canada and Australia retain the advantages of sound banking systems and sophisticated and reliable financial infrastructure. We have the solid foundations to maintain openness to cross-border capital flows.
Our pension funds and your supers constitute one of the largest pools of capital in the world with nearly $7 trillion under management and growing fast. This is a strategic asset for our citizens and future generations in a riskier world where it will increasingly matter who owes whom, and who owns what.
As we are underinvested in each other’s economies, it is high time to modernise our bilateral tax and investment treaty. I welcome today’s agreement to do just that.
Mr. Speaker, these new connections between Australia and Canada are greater than the sum of their parts. This is an alliance reaffirmed, a friendship strengthened, and a partnership to build greater prosperity and security in the Indo-Pacific and beyond.
Australia and Canada have never waited for others to write our futures.
We have written it ourselves through a century of choices, standing together in the darkest hours, building the postwar order with optimism and purpose, and now helping to create what comes next.
Yes, the world will always be shaped by great powers. But it can also be shaped by middle powers that trust each other enough to act with speed and purpose.
Australia and Canada have demonstrated that trust again this week. Every agreement signed, every coalition deepened, every commitment made is variable geometry in practice. We both understand the scale of the task ahead because we have travelled this road together.
Canada cannot have a better partner than Australia.
As one of my predecessors, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, said in the 1970s, Australia is “self-possessed and confident about the future, believing in the future of mankind.”
Two nations under different skies, with the same orientation. A friendship built over a century that is ready to build the century that awaits.
Thank you very much for this honour.