I want you to know what I have told Australia's Parliament in Canberra - what I told General Petraeus in Kabul - what I told President Obama in the Oval Office this week. Australia will stand firm with our ally the United States.
My guiding principle is that prosperity can be shared. We can create wealth together. The global economy is not a zero-sum game.
If you believe, as I do, that merit is equally distributed between the sexes, then any result that isn't around half and half should be troubling.
Through hard work and education, we can deliver a strong economy and opportunity for all.
We know that literate people are more likely than others to participate in their societies' democratic institutions and that the risk of war drops as more of a country's citizens receive a secondary education.
I know people are looking at what's happening in Washington and then they also look at events in Europe, in Greece and Portugal and other places and worry about that.
