AUSTRALIAN AND AMERICAN RELATIONS – AN ALLIANCE OR A GREAT SWINDLE? – KIERAN KELLY

Australia and the United States are enduring and successful democracies. Since World War II, Australia has been a staunch American ally, but the relationship has often struggled. Kieran Kelly is both writer, financial adviser and explorer. His many visits, over almost half a century, to the USA has produced a new look at how Australians and Americans intersect – how much the same; how much we are different. Kieran Kelly spoke for The Sydney Institute on Monday 31 August 2026.

AUSTRALIAN AND AMERICAN RELATIONS – AN ALLIANCE OR A GREAT SWINDLE?

KIERAN KELLY

Good evening. This is my third appearance at The Sydney Institute, and I appreciate the opportunity.  

I don’t come to you tonight with a list of postnominals. I’m not Philip Adams. The reason I’m addressing you is because I’ve been to the United States every year, at least once since 1979. That’s about 45 trips.  

As an investment banker and stockbroker, I had clients in Boston, New York and Los Angeles. I did a lot of business in the US and, subsequently, travelled there as a climber, skier and to visit family.  

The first part of my career was dealing with Wall Street Americans but later interacting with the broader American community on the Great Plains between the Appalachians and the Rocky Mountains and between the Great Lakes and Texas. I’ve come to a different view of America, its people, and how close we are to them than what you will read in the newspapers. 

How did this book start? Nearly six years ago, I was lying unconscious in a pool of blood on the bathroom floor of the Novotel in Darling Harbour, during my second period of hotel quarantine after returning from America. If you want to know how I ended up in that situation, you’ll have to read the book. 

The following morning, in a discussion with a psychiatrist and a psychologist, it was decided that I wouldn’t get through the fortnight of quarantine without going to hospital. And I wasn’t going to hospital. We needed something diverting. So the psychiatrist suggested I write a book. I got through my first quarantine by keeping a very detailed journal, recording every minute of every day. After a fortnight, I arrived home with a 50,000-word manuscript called What They Don’t Tell You: Things You Will Hate About Australia. A guide for American Travellers. 

I had an offer to publish, but when I sat down and read it, it was a bunch of whinging by entitled Americans, some who’d been to Australia and some who hadn’t, about what they didn’t like about this country.  Examples are: we drive on the wrong side of the road; we go the wrong way around roundabouts; there’s far too many roundabouts; car parking spaces are too small; light switches are upside down; you can’t plug your hairdryer or phone charger into the wall plugs because they’re too weird. Portion sizes are too small; you can’t bring guns through the airport even if you have a license, and no pets are allowed on aircraft.

Along with speed cameras everywhere and random breath testing, we write dates backwards, and you can’t leave your car idling while in a supermarket. I didn’t like it. So I added what Australians don’t like about Americans. That entailed about another 40,000 words. During that process, I asked myself: What’s an Australian? What’s an American? 

The two countries should be the same, freedom-loving democracies that evolved from former British colonies, embrace the rule of law, have written constitutions, regular elections, and an Anglo-Celtic and Christian heritage, and are successful capitalist meritocracies. They should be the same. But why do citizens of each country dislike one another? 

I decided to ask someone I knew – Glenda Korporaal, a former bureau chief for Fairfax in America and a Washington correspondent. I blame Glenda for the following five years because she said, much to my surprise. “Americans and Australians are nothing like each other, and they’re getting further apart each year.” And she explained to me why she thought that.

So that’s it. Glenda set the hare running, so to speak. Then I thought it wise to ask a few people who professionally managed the relationship. First was John Howard, who believes there’s a special relationship and that the US will always come to our aid, given Australia’s loyalty through numerous shared military conflicts. So did Joe Hockey. Hockey believes nations can have friendships, just like people can. He believes “Mateship” defines the relationship 

I don’t agree with him, and I told him so. Mick Mulvaney, Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, when I asked him, “Will the US come to our aid?” said, “Maybe, maybe not depending on the circumstances.” Kym Beazley was equally equivocal.  When I suggested to Bob Carr, a former Foreign Minister, that Australia has a special relationship with America, he laughed.  “The only country in the world that has a special relationship with America, where America will always turn up, is Israel,” he said.  

Together, I have 16 boxes of diaries from my trips to America, dating back to 1979. Every time I went to America over the last ten years, I talked to ordinary Americans – the lady behind the checkout at Safeways or the ski instructor for whom I bought a drink, the bus drivers, the Hispanic people cutting my daughter’s lawn, people from all parts of America on hiking trips, – ordinary Americans. I asked what they thought about Australia. I also met people at gas stations, and a farmer I helped load hay that had fallen off his truck on a snow-covered backroad in Montana.  

The result is a book reflecting on America since its revolution and its impact on Australia. And surprisingly, Australia’s impact on America, which I had underestimated and most Americans do too.  

I identified four stages in the development of the relationship between Australia and the United States. 

The first was The Age of Indifference. I hitchhiked across America in 1979 on my way home from England. It took six months. I didn’t meet anyone who’d been to Australia. Very few knew where it was; I didn’t even meet anyone who had a passport. All were indifferent to Australia. They confused it with Austria. And they just weren’t interested.  

This lasted until 1986, when I was standing in a queue at a United Airlines check-in counter in Kansas City. The attendant who served me heralded the arrival of The Romantic Period by pulling a copy of The Thorn Birds from her bag. She was excited to meet an Australian and to share her book about Australia. 

When people heard me talking to her, the queue erupted. They were watching the miniseries, and they thought it was a factual representation of Australia. It’s not. Colleen McCulloch, the author, is from my hometown of Wellington, in western New South Wales. She was educated by the same nuns as I was about 15 years earlier. 

But The Thorn Birds was a ripple on the surface of a relationship. And a tidal wave broke over it with this romantic era. Americans remember the period for The Wiggles, two Crocodile Dundee films, and the Qantas I Still Call Australia Home ads broadcast across the US.  However, in Americans’ minds, Steve Irwin was the exemplar Australian of this period. When I interviewed young Americans aged 20 to 40, the first name they gave when asked about Australia was Steve Irwin.

During this period, Australia had become a cliché in Americans’ minds. 

The Howard-era gun reforms following the Port Arthur massacre killed off the Romantic Period and ushered in the third epoch: The Age of Disappointment. Americans discovered that Australians are nothing like the frontier people that they thought they were. This third era began the National Rifle Association’s relentless and often inaccurate criticism of Australian policies, politics and people. Its tirades are ongoing. Australians were described as weak people who didn’t stand up for their civil rights and allowed their guns to be taken away  

The Age of Disappointment lasted until COVID arrived in 2019 and into 2020, ushering in The Age of Antagonism. We are still in it.  

It was surprising how high-profile Australia was in the US during this period. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis claimed that Australia is more oppressive than China; an authoritarian, communist country, according to him. 

Senator Ted Cruz said the same, arguing the US shouldn’t have an alliance with countries like Australia.  He was playing to the Republican base in Texas and saw an advantage in giving Australia a kicking. Most Australians couldn’t travel during the Covid years, so they don’t realise how sustained DeSantis and Cruz’s criticism was during this period, or how much exposure it received across the country. When combined with the relentless National Rifle Association campaign of demonising Australia, perceptions are nothing like they were 40 years ago. 

I spent a lot of time in the mountain states. I know a lot of gun owners. Some of them are my friends. And the National Rifle Association has extraordinary power. It’s starting to wane a bit, but it’s probably the most successful political lobby that’s ever existed in a democracy. And, inevitably, I occasionally read their newsletters to get a feel for where Australia is going. 

Almost every NRA newsletter mentions Australia, and it’s always critical: Crime is out of control; murders are up; gun reforms are a failure; and everyone in Australia opposed Howard’s gun laws and would like to see them dismantled. The term “police state” referring to Australia began appearing in US newspapers and on podcasts. This is just another cliché, but it’s dangerous for Australia’s relationship with the United States as it impacts voters.  

So, after five years of work, what do you get if you read this book? The structural editor in London said that I’d written three books and tried to weld them together. One was a personal memoir of 40 years of dealing with Americans. Another is a geopolitical, economic and historical analysis of relations between America and Australia. The third is a travelogue of journeys across America over many years. Glenda Korporaal enjoyed the travelogue style. Australians seem to particularly enjoy my experiences hitchhiking across America. The book includes a chapter on poetry and another on films, literature, language, sport, music and coffee. The Australian film industry has had an enormous impact on America. And I think a lot of Australians don’t realise this.  

 I would encourage people not to read this book from cover to cover. It’s not a novel. I’m not Hemingway or Steinbeck. The book is designed to let readers choose chapters about the American relationship they’re interested in, so they can decide whether Australia and America are close enough for Washington to help us if we get into trouble. 

That’s the question that the book seeks to answer, and everybody has a different opinion. 

So far, I’ve had more feedback on my book from Americans than from Australians.  

Americans said they didn’t know the extent of the massacres that occurred in Australia, even up till the 1930s. Many Australians are surprised about Aboriginal cruelty to women. Interestingly, the day this book was published, Sydney University announced it was redacting all the Edward John Eyre quotes I’d used from his journal, which is housed in the Sydney University collection. I wouldn’t be given access to them now, and neither will the public, except in a redacted form. When I asked them why, they said because they needed to create a safe cultural space. And I said, well, what about the truth?  

Many American women have found the Voice chapter difficult to read. One of my friends, a widely read, part-Native American woman, said it was informative, but she also said women would find that chapter confronting, and she disagreed with some of the conclusions. Many Americans haven’t heard of the Battle of Brisbane, and that their army created so many problems for Australians, especially civilians living in Brisbane. Surprisingly, a lot of Americans didn’t know Australia was involved in Vietnam and Korea, and all are surprised that some of America’s most important military bases are in Australia.  

Joe Hockey told me that if I had spent more time in Vermont, Maine, or California, the book would have reached different conclusions. I agree that the United States is five different countries, and that my book reflects experiences in the Western states and the mountain regions of Utah and Colorado. Still, I stand by my claims in the book, including that America is not as polarised as it has been in the past. In the 1860s, it became so polarised that it led to a civil war. The elections of the 1890s were more bitterly contested than elections are today. The commentary was vile, even compared to contemporary discourse. 

Finally, I stand by the book’s main conclusion: the difference between Americans and Australians is that America is a nation of individuals, and Australia is an individual nation. America is what you get when you give a group of human beings an unfettered right to pursue life, liberty, and happiness, with no obligation to the broader community, not even to vote in elections.  

So don’t think America is finished, because it isn’t. And that’s the point of this book. America is not finished. As the last sentence says, “I agree that America’s got its failings, but it’s the only America we have.”