By Michelle Grattan
The US Congress this week will see a very different Julia Gillard than the fiery, toss-it-all-at-them performer we've been hearing recently in parliament. Just the fourth Australian prime minister to address the Congress – the others were Robert Menzies, Bob Hawke and John Howard – Gillard, whose speech is to mark the 60 anniversary of ANZUS, will be acutely aware that her performance will be as important for the home market as the American one. The big occasion has come early in her time as an international player (Kevin Rudd must be green with envy), and the drafting of the speech was under way before she left Australia yesterday.
Gillard's trip is her first outing to Washington since becoming Prime Minister. She has already struck up a rapport with Barack Obama at various conferences last year, so they will be taking up where they left off. But with the Libyan crisis occupying the administration's mind, the President's attention isn't too focused right now on our part of the world.
Gillard has a packed schedule, including meetings with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. In Washington, former Labor leader Kim Beazley will hold a reception for her.
Later she'll visit New York where she'll lunch with Rupert Murdoch. In campaign mode, she'll meet representatives from up to 50 African countries to promote Australia's bid for a United Nations Security Council seat.
The alliance anniversary is a reminder of how often, during those 60 years, Australian soldiers have been fighting side by side with the Americans, as they are now in Afghanistan. Gillard, who on Friday attended another soldier's funeral, will be briefed on US plans to draw down some of its troops in a war that has no foreseeable end and is imposing a serious cost in terms of Australian lives.
The Gillard agenda is notable not just for the many items on it, but for those which are not. In an interview with The Age last Thursday, Gillard said she would not be raising with the President the issue of Julian Assange, whose WikiLeaks exposes have caused their two governments so much grief. Nor, she said, would she be bringing up the topic of uranium sales to India, which Resources Minister Martin Ferguson will push to be allowed at the ALP national conference in December. These sales are not permitted by Labor policy because India isn't a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but Ferguson shares the US view that India is a special case.
Presumably Gillard and Obama will talk about climate change. But on this, the US and Australia have diverged, of necessity. Obama would have preferred a cap-and-trade system but has been thwarted by political circumstances. The American retreat from a market-based approach doesn't make it any easier for Gillard to prosecute her case for a plan that would eventually lead to a trading scheme.
In the US Gillard will get a respite from the hand-to-hand carbon combat. That's got pluses and minuses. She'll be getting some feel-good TV images from the trip. But she'll also (temporarily) be leaving more room for Tony Abbott. These trips always prompt the question on the airwaves: should the Prime Minister be away at this sort of time? The answer in this case is yes.
But with the Prime Minister now locked into a lot of international conferences as well as the need for bilateral visits, Gillard must stay master of the quick dash.
Michelle Grattan is Age political editor.
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