Canberra, 15 April 2004
ASEAN Australia 30 Years of Development Cooperation
Your Excellency, Mr Ong Keng Yong, Secretary-General of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen
I am delighted to welcome Secretary-General Ong to Australia for his visit to mark the 30th anniversary of Australia's dialogue partnership with ASEAN. I am also pleased to launch the publication, ASEAN Australia 30 years of development cooperation. Mr Ong's visit itself is a high point in this anniversary year and further underlines the importance Australia places on the partnership that has developed since we became ASEAN's first dialogue partner in 1974.
The first formal meeting started in Canberra exactly 30 years ago tomorrow. From the beginning, our program of economic - or development - cooperation has served as a practical base for the wider ASEAN-Australia relationship. It has complemented ASEAN's growth and reinforced Australia's policy dialogue in the region. And all the time, ASEAN-Australia development cooperation has been characterized by a collegial and practical working relationship. Over the past 30 years, the program has witnessed some major successes across a broad range of fields.
Today, the focus is economic and trade-related assistance in the context of both regional and multilateral trade policy priorities - and the challenges and opportunities presented by globalisation. The ASEAN Australia Development Program is a $A45 million five-year program developed and implemented through close cooperation between the Australian aid program and the ASEAN Secretariat. Our goal is to contribute to sustainable development and greater stability and security within ASEAN by supporting regional trade and development activities and helping promote economic integration and competitiveness. A recent example is the work we are undertaking together on the liberalization of financial and capital services in ASEAN.
Our development relationship has always been, and remains, an important component of our relationship with ASEAN, and with the members of ASEAN. But that relationship also encompasses a deep and ever-expanding web of people-to- people links and relationships among our governments, private companies, schools and universities, non-government organisations, religious organisations, communities and individuals. Our trade relationship, for instance, is strong and growing. Last financial year (2002-2003) Australia's two-way merchandise trade with ASEAN totalled $34.6 billion - an increase of 58 per cent since 1998.
Australia, together with New Zealand, is working with ASEAN on a Closer Economic Partnership. Most recently we have undertaken some very useful work to identify non-tariff barriers between ASEAN and CER. It is important, now, that we translate that work into practical action to realise our shared vision of doubling ASEAN-CER trade and investment by 2010.
We are working together with ASEAN, too, to ensure that we enhance the security of our region as well as its prosperity. Australia highly values its membership of the ASEAN Regional Forum, the region's primary regional security forum. And our membership of the ARF is underpinned by a comprehensive set of bilateral dialogues, agreements and activities with individual ASEAN members in the areas of security, defence cooperation and counter-terrorism. In February of this year we co-hosted with Indonesia the Bali Regional Ministerial Meeting on Counter-Terrorism, which I am very pleased to say was attended by 25 countries, including ministers from all ASEAN countries.
Ladies and gentlemen
In the presence of the ASEAN Secretary-General, it is appropriate that I express Australia's understanding and appreciation of the crucial role which ASEAN has played, over recent decades, in helping to bring peace, stability and growing prosperity to a region of the utmost importance to Australia. To paraphrase a well-known saying: if ASEAN did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it.
Australia is delighted to have been a partner, with ASEAN, during that time. We are pleased that our cooperation with ASEAN and its member states - through our development program but also more widely - has contributed to a more prosperous and secure region, and one that is able to reap the benefits of international trade and investment. We are pleased to have been able to support ASEAN's goal of building an economically integrated and competitive region. Equally, over that period, ASEAN has made an enormous contribution to Australia's security, and to Australia's prosperity. It is important that Australians understand this.
As one of ASEAN's closest neighbours we continue to have a stake in its success. We applaud the decision of ASEAN leaders, taken at their summit in Bali in October last year, to work towards an ASEAN Security Community and an ASEAN Economic Community in the coming years. These decisions are evidence of ambitious and creative forward thinking. And it is just that sort of thinking which will be necessary to surmount the many challenges which continue to confront the region, and also to inspire policymakers, businesses and populations more generally. Australia hopes that future decades will bring ever closer and mutually beneficial cooperation between us.
In conclusion it is with great pleasure that I officially launch this publication, documenting our productive relationship in the field of development cooperation over the past 30 years.
Thank you