on the agenda'. But you can bet all of your walking around money that Hillary Clinton and her colleagues will be making their displeasure with Smith and Gillard brutally plain. Not in public, where it will be all smoochies and hand-holding, but in private, where they can speak their mind without embarrassing their so-called allies. Dr Kurt Campbell, the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, told Fairfax last week : ''I know this is one of the topics we are going to be addressing at the AUSMIN in Perth next week". In classical power realist terms, Australia secured for itself a considerable benefit by convincing its ally to base the better part of a Marine Expeditionary Unit here. It then did that ally a grave disservice by cutting from its budget the money it would have spent to achieve the same benefit on its own. It's freeloading in American parlance, bludging in ours, and it's a disgrace. 278 comments But JB, we NEEEEED to get back into surplus. Haven't you heard? The public debt is over $250 Billion!! That's over 15% of GDP!! If we were a household earning $100k per annum that would be like having a MASSIVE debt of over FIFTEEN GRAND! Oh the humanity! Oh and the US debt of over $15,000,000,000,000 is nothing when you have reserve currency status and an economy the size of theirs. I mean really, that's only around 100% of US GDP. Hardly worth worrying about such a