This is my final blog from Australia. My 205th. I hope someone’s been reading them.
It has been one of the greatest privileges and pleasures of my life to represent Britain in Australia as the Pom HC. There is no country to which we feel closer. It has been a fantastic time to be here. Over the past four years Australia has played a particularly prominent role in world affairs, hosting the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in 2011, the G20 in 2014, and spending two years on the UN Security Council. Its economy has been the envy of the western world, making it very attractive to British business – our exports are up 60% over the last six years. And it’s been a time when governments on both sides have a made a real commitment to rejuvenate the relationship.
Over the last few weeks I’ve been blogging about my farewell visits to the major cities, and the memories they evoked of things we have done all around Australia. I hope the blogs haven’t been too self-indulgent. But I think they give a good feel for the breadth of the relationship between the two countries, and the diversity of activities that British diplomatic missions abroad carry out.
When I first came here I reported to London that Australia was a very big country and a very long way away. Not particularly original I know, but both factors impact on almost every aspect of our work. I don’t think I have ever travelled so much in my life before. But it’s essential to get out to the major economic and population centres, and to the resource-producing regions of Australia, spread around this vast, continent-sized country into which you could fit the whole of Western Europe.
Although it is true that Australia is a long way from Britain, both in travel-time and in time-zones, in every other respect we could not be closer. At the last census more than half of Australians reported British ancestry, and we are still the third largest source of annual migrants today. Of course Australia has a proud and distinctive identity, with its unique landscapes and marsupials, its indigenous peoples who’ve been around for 40,000 years, and its lively modern demographic mix. But Britain and Australia still feel incredibly familiar to each other. When we look at the many challenges in the world today, it’s good to have such staunch friends and allies to face them together with.
Of course we’re happy to be going back to Britain after eight years away. London is one of the greatest cities in the world, and the UK is where our children and families are. But Sarah and I are very sad to be leaving Australia, a country we have come to love, and a place where we have made many friends. Australians, like their country, are warm and sunny. Australia, we will not be strangers to your shores in the years ahead.