Meet Australia’s best friend in Washington... no, not Kevin Rudd

Washington: US congressman Joe Courtney was at his home in Connecticut on an otherwise quiet Monday evening when the call came through from Kevin Rudd.

As the Albanese government’s ambassador in Washington, Rudd had the job of informing Courtney that he had just been awarded an Order of Australia, in recognition of his tireless advocacy in progressing the US-Australia alliance and facilitating the AUKUS submarine pact through an often hostile US Congress.

US congressman Joe Courtney with Australian ambassador to the US Kevin Rudd. Credit: X/Kevin Rudd

“We don’t give them out like confetti,” the former prime minister told Republicans and Democrats at an Australian embassy dinner in Washington where the congressman received his accolade earlier this month.

“These are specifically designed to recognise our friends and partners around the world who have seriously gone the extra mile in supporting our common interests.”

There’s no doubt Courtney has gone the extra mile when it comes to advancing the partnership between the two nations.

In 2017, when the first Donald Trump administration was considering tariffs on Australia, Canberra’s then-ambassador Joe Hockey asked him if he would be interested in establishing a Congressional Friends of Australia Caucus after realising there was no such thing on Capitol Hill, where there’s a bipartisan group for everything from shoes (the “Congressional Sneaker Caucus”) to other countries (the “Congressional Friends of Ireland Caucus” is one of the most active).

Former ambassador Joe Hockey and President-elect Donald Trump. Credit: Fairfax

Courtney, a Democrat who had struck up an earlier friendship with former Labor opposition leader Kim Beazley, soon became the caucus co-chair alongside then-Republican congressman Mike Gallagher.

For the past few years, his work has helped make AUKUS a reality by creating the training pipeline for Australian sailors to attend submarine school in South Carolina and Connecticut, boosting funding for the US industrial base, and ensuring the passage of legislation allowing the sale of Virginia-class submarines to Australia.

But with Trump in power once again, is he worried about the future of AUKUS under the new administration?

Anthony Albanese, Joe Biden and then-British PM Rishi Sunak at the AUKUS announcement in San Diego in 2023.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

“Trump is somebody that can change his mind on a dime, so you never quite know 100 per cent what way he’s gonna land,” Courtney tells me during a quiet moment in his Capitol Hill office.

He admits, too, that the submarine pact was a slow burn for many in Washington, and that the Biden administration could have done more in the early stages to communicate its significance.

However, he is confident that AUKUS now has the bipartisan support it needs to succeed, pointing to two of Trump’s key cabinet picks as people who have been broadly supportive of Australia over the years – Marco Rubio, who will likely be secretary of state, and Mike Waltz, who Trump has tapped to be national security adviser. Both are also China hawks with an eye to safeguarding the Indo-Pacific.

“I think that the momentum behind AUKUS is very strong,” Courtney says. “By the end of the legislative process, it was almost like both sides of the aisle were competing to show their love for AUKUS.”

Joe Courtney receives his Order of Australia from Kevin Rudd on November 13.

A lifelong resident of Connecticut, Courtney learnt the value of public service from his parents, Bob and Dorothy Courtney, who met working for the FBI’s New York headquarters during World War II.

His father was an FBI agent assigned to tracking Nazi infiltration of America’s war effort, while his mother was a stenographer who recorded classified investigative files and interrogations of “fifth columnists” (people who undermine groups or nations from within).

But while Courtney cut his teeth as a lawyer, he shifted to politics in 2006 and was elected by a wafer-thin margin of 83 votes out of 241,000 votes cast – the closest race in the country.

Colleagues gave him the humorous nickname “Landslide Joe”, but as former Australian ambassador to the US Arthur Sinodinos points out, he also earned another nickname – “2SubJoe” – after he successfully increased Virginia-class submarine procurement from one per year to two.

Anthony Albanese, then-Australian ambassador Arthur Sinodinos and Joe Courtney in discussion after the 2023 AUKUS announcement in San Diego.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

According to Sinodinos, Courtney is “one of Australia’s best friends in Washington”. Rudd agrees.

“When we found ourselves last year seeking to advance AUKUS in the House [of Representatives] and the Senate, my continuing source of counsel every time we ran into a roadblock was Joe Courtney,” he says.

Like all Democrats, Courtney will enter a new political landscape on January 20 when Trump returns to Washington to be inaugurated for a second term.

Asked if he was surprised by Kamala Harris’ election defeat, Courtney said Democrats were still absorbing the loss and admitted that the Biden-Harris administration could have done more to spruik its “pro-working-class agenda and accomplishments”.

But he adds that Harris had “a really difficult task, with only 107 days to campaign in a country of 330 million people”.

“Part of the problem is just that she just did not have enough time for people to be comfortable enough about the fact that she was really on their side,” he says.

“There was the desire for changing the status quo, which is now very apparent, but Trump became the change candidate, and she became the status quo candidate.”

Whatever happens over the next four years, Courtney has now joined a select group of non-Australian citizens to receive an AO. The others include former Republican co-chair of the Friends of Australia Caucus Roy Blunt; former commander of the Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Harry Harris; and former CIA director, General David Petraeus.

“You are a seriously good man,” Rudd told him at the event. “You are a great member of the Congress, you are deeply engaged in the affairs of the world, and you’ve become deeply engaged over the years with the Commonwealth of Australia.”

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