Julia Gillard went all out to land visit by Barack Obama

Labor was willing to do whatever was needed to avoid Barack Obama cancelling for a second time.

Barack Obama and Julia Gillard in Parliament House in 2011. Picture: Alex Ellinghausen

The Gillard Labor government was willing to arrange whatever fitted the “White House’s needs” in 2011 to avoid the political ­disaster of Barack Obama again cancelling a visit to Australia.

The Australian government was also signalling months before the visit that it would allow US marines to train at bases in the Northern Territory.

As Julia Gillard struggled in the polls an email showed defence minister Stephen Smith had told assistant secretary of state Kurt Campbell that Australia was even willing to “buy more” from the US “if needed”.

It’s believed the reference was to buying another C17 aircraft, which it was proposing to do, and announcing the purchase while Mr Obama was in Australia.

According to one of the emails released in the US from the store of Hillary Clinton’s private email list, Mr Smith told Mr Campbell “how disastrous” it would be if Mr Obama cancelled a trip to Australia as he had previously when Labor was in power.

The email said Mr Smith had made it clear “how important it was that POTUS come to Australia (and how disastrous it would be if he cancelled again)”.

“They would arrange whatever fit the White House’s needs, even buying more from us if needed,” the email of July 27, 2011, said.

On the US marine training in the Territory, Mr Smith told the US, ahead of the Australian-US Ministerial meeting, that Australia could not agree to “permanent bases” but would agree to US troops “coming in and out”.

In November 2011 the prime minister and the US President ­announced that there would be a growing number of US marines training in Australia but not permanently based near Darwin.

In her autobiography Ms ­Gillard said there were cabinet concerns about “the likely views at home of another nation’s soldiers training on our soil”. “I understood these concerns but was determined to agree to the whole ­proposal, which we did,” she wrote.