Australia-US Alliance

Some "moments" seem more important in hindsight than they were at the time. David Day, for example, looks at John Curtin's famous "Australia looks to America" statement of December 1941, a moment remembered as embodying a fundamental shift in Australia's strategic alliance away from Britain towards the US. As Day points out, the shift to the US as our primary ally was a long, drawn-out process which occurred over half a century. Curtin's statement is iconic - it represents and symbolises the shift - but in and of itself it made almost no difference. Russell McGregor makes similar arguments with regard to the 1967 referendum, falsely hailed in our memories as a huge advance in Aboriginal rights.