Speech
24 May 2007, Honolulu
Speech to the East West Centre
ALEXANDER DOWNER: Thanks very much Charles, and ladies and gentlemen. It's good to be at the East-West Centre. I haven't been here before but I've heard a lot about the Centre. I'm delighted to come along and say a few words to you. I was thinking about some of those things that Charles was saying and the longest serving foreign minister in APEC is the Foreign Minister of Brunei, Royal Highness Prince Mohamed Bolkiah. He is the Sultan's brother and he hasn't had to run the gauntlet of an election at any time but he would have been there for 23-24 years. And how many days have I travelled for? It's about 90 days a year for 11 years. So that's about 1000 days and that's about 3 years worth of time just travelling around the world in the last 11 years, to all different parts of it including the Pacific.
For Australia, our foreign policy is built around a whole series of different rather complex propositions. I often like to compare Canada to Australia as it has somewhat similar size and historic origins and challenges. One of the great differences is that Canada's foreign policy is built around one simple proposition, and that is its relationship with the United States. And our foreign policy, if you look at the map, is built around a whole series of different and rather complex propositions. The power balances of the Asia Pacific region, the emergence of China as a great power in the region and the implications of that for Australia? The relationship of Australia and other great powers, obviously the United States first and foremost, and countries like Japan, India and Indonesia. So there is, if you like, a power diplomacy of the region to engage in and we have to navigate through, which is not always very easy.
We have a view that with the emergence of China, it makes sense for the region to embrace the newly emerging China and make the most of that relationship with China. China has become, this year, our largest trading partner, overtaking Japan. It has well and truly overtaken the United States as our largest trading partner. We have a good modus vivendi with China. We have very different political systems and historical traditions, but we need to work with them. Having said that, we don't want to be dominated by any one power. We need to ensure that there are strong relationships between Australia and Japan, and we've been strengthening that relationship in recent times as well. Through, in particular, developing more of a security component to that relationship and there is now an Australia-Japan security declaration. We have with the US and Japan a strategic trilateral dialogue which includes meetings at Ministerial level with the United States Secretary of State, Japan's Foreign Minister and me. We have looked at other ways of enhancing that relationship and we can do that, I don't know that China always feels terribly comfortable with us building our relationship with Japan and maybe Japan doesn't always feel very comfortable with us building our relationship with China. But we need to do both of those things simultaneously whilst maintaining our strong relationship with the United States and whilst building a better relationship and a broader relationship with the newly emerging power of India. All of those relationships are stories in themselves - you could write a book about every single one of them.
The second component of Australian foreign policy is dealing more specifically with our immediate neighbourhood - with South East Asia. How we manage that, what are the problems are in South East Asia and how we engage in that. We obviously have neighbourhood issues - you know illegal fishing, illegal people movements and common environmental issues and so on - that we have to deal with our neighbouring countries, of course, in this case, particularly Indonesia.
More broadly, we have in recent years had to engage in the issue of counter-terrorism with South East Asia. I just want to make one point about that and that is this: there is a lot of discussion internationally about the war on terror and how is the war on terror going and how the United States and its allies are doing, is it going forwards or backwards? And problems in Iraq you are more familiar with, and the difficulties in Afghanistan. And hey, it's just: could this be going better? And one of the points I often make to people is that when you think about the Islamic world in the US, or for that matter Europe, you tend to think about the Middle East. Maybe in Europe they think about Turkey a fair bit as well, it's a big issue for the Europeans. But you don't think much about SE Asia. But Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world, around 200 million Muslims, so it's the largest Muslim country in the world. But what's interesting about Indonesia is it's the third largest democracy after India and the United States.
Here is a country which has very successfully in recent years, working with Australia and also other countries including the United States, taken up the challenge of counter-terrorism. Both physically, if you like, particularly through police and military action, but also very importantly through what is commonly described as a 'hearts and minds' campaign. They have not only dealt with terrorists themselves, but they have suffered from them too, I might say. But they have very successfully reduced public support for terrorism. So public support for, if you like, extremism in Indonesia has declined very substantially. Here you have a situation where it is, if you like, a counter-narrative. The narrative of the West is that we should be doing much better in the 'War on Terror', it's been mishandled, the problems with Iraq and Afghanistan, I hate President Bush - all this sort of stuff is a very popular narrative. It's not one that I say I subscribe to, obviously, but it's a popular narrative. Whereas, what is left out of that narrative is what I just said about Indonesia and to some extent Singapore and Malaysia and in recent times the Philippines, where they have been making progress with assistance. But they have been making good progress against extremism in the southern part of the Philippines.
I think the one real concern - well it's all a concern, but the one real special concern we have - is southern Thailand where the situation is not getting better, where large numbers of people are being killed. But the extremism you see in southern Thailand is not linked to, despite an attempt to do so, is not linked to a broader international jihadist movement. So for Australia dealing with this problem in South East Asia, as well as dozens and dozens of others, is a very major priority and I think we've made pretty good progress in doing that.
We have put a lot of weight on our relationship with Indonesia. In November last year, I signed with Indonesia's foreign minister what's known as the Lombok Treaty. This is a treaty on security relations between our two countries, which is a historic agreement to cooperate in a whole raft of different security areas. And I think our relationship with Indonesia today, not surprisingly because it's a democracy, is better than it's probably been in any time since 1949, or 1947 to 1949. It was pretty strong then because Australia supported Indonesian independence against the Dutch. The last point that I'll make in these introductory remarks, is a bit about you know where we are in the Pacific.
When you go to other parts of the world, outside of the Pacific, there is not a lot of interest I suppose in the rather complex world of the Pacific, particularly for us in the South Pacific. But the truth is, this is an important part of the world and it's a complex part of the world and a difficult part of the world. There are a number of issues there, one is the development agenda. We want to see growing prosperity in a region with small populations very widely spread - it's quite hard to run an economy on that basis. Not impossible but quite hard to do it.
Therefore we have a very significant focus on what we can do as a very prosperous country to try and lift the living standards of the countries in our region. Well, one of the things you have to do is make sure that there isn't intercommunal violence and tension, and there has been a bit of that, as you know, in the Solomon Islands. There was quite chronic tension, especially between Malaita and the Guadalcanal. In the end so bad was this, that despite a number of efforts that we made to try to bring these people together we, at the request of the Solomon Islanders, sent in our military and some police to try and restore a bit of order there. And to assist the Solomon Islanders in building a better structure of public administration, that is in the form of what is now RAMSI, Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands, which is supported by the Pacific Islands Forum more generally.
I can't pretend to tell you that this is not without difficulties, it's one of the most difficult things in the world to try and help build up countries which have become if not failed states, failing or weak states. We know that from the high profile issues of Iraq and Afghanistan. But I can tell you that where we have been playing more of a leadership role - we've been involved in and still are involved in Iraq and Afghanistan, we are not playing the lead role there obviously - but we do in East Timor and we have in East Timor and we do in the Solomon Islands and other parts of the South Pacific. It's incredibly difficult and often these endeavours to try to rebuild and strengthen societies are resisted not by the ordinary people of these countries for example, in the Solomon Islands, RAMSI - the Regional Assistance Mission is very popular, very popular with the ordinary people because it's re-established the education system, health clinics, it's got the economy growing again and it's growing quite well.
But there are certain elements in the political class for whom this intervention is, of course, extremely inconvenient. As I often say, brutal as this may sound, RAMSI stands between some of the political class in the Solomon Islands and the honey pot. And long may that last, say the general public. Short may that last, say those who are trying to get to the honey pot. We are, with the best will in the world, trying to assist in Papua New Guinea with improvements in governance. We've been helping in Vanuatu and in places like Samoa, Tonga - which has had it's own round of difficulties in recent times, particularly at the end of last year when there was rioting. This is enormously challenging stuff, I have to say. Of course in Fiji there has been a coup, that's another issue.
The greatest challenge is, in my view - and some people might like to argue with me about this - the greatest challenge is to take the so-called Western Economic model, which of course has proved to be so exceptionally successful in lifting people out of poverty creating prosperity, and lifting it up out of the West and trying to transpose it to other parts of the world, who have there own ancient and rich cultures and traditions. And people don't often remember this. You know, I think people like Bob Geldoff and Bono and so on, they are fantastic people. The way they care about those who are less well off than they are, which is, by the way, in their case just about everybody on the planet. But they have hearts of gold, is the way I would put it. And I mean that generously and sincerely. But it's not that easy to lift people in the South Pacific, or wherever it may be - but I am focusing these remarks on the South Pacific - to lift them out of poverty just by sending a bunch of cheques.
The problems are much more fundamental than that. They're not lack of access to money, it's a structural issue. What do you do in Papua New Guinea or Solomon Islands where there is a tradition of collective land ownership? When prosperity in the West depends absolutely and fundamentally on the notion of individual property rights, which are tradeable and protected by the rule of law? It is very, very hard to transpose that into another society. And what do you want to do? Break up the traditional cultures, rich cultures and their traditions? Even if you want to break them up, there will always be enormous resistance to an attempt to break them up. And there will be accusations - and make up your own minds whether you think they are fair or not - of cultural imperialism and paternalism. That being: well your system doesn't work, ours does so let's get rid of your system, but this is our country, these are our traditions, thousands, maybe tens of thousands of years of history, have led to the creation of our own very special culture and the way that it is. Those very special cultures don't necessarily lend themselves to, you know, Western style prosperity.
So we are confronting those, making it sound rather philosophical, we are confronting those issues in force in the South Pacific, where it's extremely difficult to address, and we try to get the balance right. We probably don't always succeed, I'm sure we are flawed as human beings but we are certainly ... we certainly are very opposed to corruption. The sort of notion that the nationalistic kleptocrat, is one that in Australia we oppose and we try to deal with that. We have thousands of other issues in our foreign policy to deal with day by day, and I hope I have been able to convey to you a certain complexity in managing Australia's foreign policy. And certainly when it comes to the Pacific part, we acknowledge the work of the East-West Centre, the expertise that exists here and the ideas that emanate from here which we look at and appreciate, as we are always looking for people wiser than us to provide us with still more ideas. So Charles, thank you very much for having me along.
Charles Morrison (President of the East-West Centre): This I think is an invitation to a discussion. Very good opening remarks and I was going to ask the first question but I see that Richard Baker has his hand up.
Richard Baker (Special Assistant to the President of the East-West Centre): Minister, Indonesia - you have just come from discussions with Pacific Command and, as you know, the United States has just recently, in effect, re-established normal relations with the Indonesian military after a long gap. Australia basically maintained a relationship with the Malaysian military through most of this period and the question I would ask is: are there any insights in the way in which Australia managed its relationship, that you think the United States might keep in mind, particularly given the fact that human rights issues in Indonesia continue to exist, and there are a lot of people in Congress who are not sure that we did the right thing in re-establishing these ties?
Alexander Downer: Well, I am not sure what those particular types of people, well I can't think of anyone by name, but what those particular people would have in mind in terms of Indonesia. It seems to me that Indonesia's PR has been just a little low profile and the view that some people have of Indonesia and human rights today is anachronistic. People haven't quite got over the Suharto era. I mean, they had long periods, Sukarnoputri and Suharto. ARBI, as it used to be called, or TNI, as it is now called - being the Indonesian military - they were involved in a large number of human rights abuses over a long period of time. It's hard to shake that off. It's hard to shake the memories of that off. It's hard to shake the reputation off. And perhaps in some cases it's not easy to shake off the practice, at least amongst every single person in a very, very large numerically - very large, defence force. An enormous number of people belong to TNI but I have to say to you that TNI itself has substantially changed its whole role in Indonesian society which has completely changed under the new democracy of Indonesia. Now you know it used to have seats in parliament, it used to rig elections, it used to back Golkar in particular - not only the President's party but ABRI and TNI's party.
TNI keeps right out of politics now, doesn't have seats in parliament anymore, has been neutral in its approach to political activity. And I think, in terms of human rights - I wouldn't say there hasn't been any abuses, there have - but its performance is very, very substantially better than it used to be. So what does America want of the Muslim world, since Indonesia is part of the Muslim world? America says that it believes in democracy, not only says, America really does very passionately believe in democracy, freedom. And you have seen in Indonesia in the last few years the most extraordinary transition from dictatorship, relatively benign, but nevertheless, dictatorship, to a free and democratic society. And when I became the foreign minister of Australia, President Suharto was the President and you wouldn't say that Indonesia was a free society. Today - not because I've been the foreign minister, I hasten to add, that may be a bit of an over claim - this is a country that has joined the family of democracy.
Now smart thinking in Washington, and I mean here we are talking about the Congress, the Administration understands all of this. But smart thinking in Washington would recognise these tremendous achievements in the Islamic world and would embrace them and would try to do everything America can do to make sure that the democratic and freedom revolution in Indonesia is a success. And I think, you know, that's the message that I would have to America. Help Indonesia. It's not got a high per capita achieving GDP, its economic performance is ok, 5 to 6% per annum growth but it's not spectacular, but it's not as good as it needs to be. They need some help particularly in that sort of area. The military has partly - because of American sanctions they couldn't get spare parts and equipment and so on - become substantially degraded yet they need a capability to assist with disaster relief and alike. And when it came to the tsunami at the end of 2004, they could barely get a C130 to Aceh because they didn't have spare parts and the like. So I think America should embrace and be excited about the democratic revolution that's taking place in Indonesia and do all it can to make sure that this democratic revolution is a success.
Leif Rosenberger (Economic Adviser, Pacific Command): I had a question about the economic rise of China, which you had mentioned earlier. It seems to me that the United States and Australia agree on a lot of things but we have different perceptions on the economic rise of China. You probably saw the cover of the Economist, the cover said "Fear of China in America" but there is a perception of a commercial threat despite the fact that we have strong ties economically and financially to China. And people like Senator Graham and others want to see a much stronger [inaudible] will be threatening or else they are threatening 20 to 30% tariffs. And I think coming into the United States from China. I was in Australia about a year ago and what struck me was a different political culture regarding the rise of China. Obviously you know it's an economic lesson in many ways, you are exporting like crazy. You don't seem to have any Lou Dobbs over there, you don't seem to have any Senator Grahams. Or at least they don't seem to be as vocal. Give us a little insight into the political culture regarding China, there must be some trade unions or others that are a little intimidated by China but they don't seem to be nearly as strong as in the United States?
Alexander Downer: Yes that is definitely true. Of course the US runs a very big trade deficit with China which Australia does not. And I know only to well - you get these arguments, in the manufacturing sector especially, in the United States - that China is eating up our jobs, though the US has very low unemployment. So I'm not sure that the argument necessarily - well you're an economist - I'm not sure that the argument stands up to a great deal of scrutiny but it's an emotive argument. I think it's fair to say we are educated, I'm not a great expert on American political and economic history as you can imagine - I'm just from the Adelaide Hills, and what a great success that was. If you think that dealing with international competition is an effective way of dealing with international competition is to whack up tariffs, in other words to declare a trade war on a country, then you are not learning anything from the lessons of history. I think that would be an exceptionally foolish thing to do, an exceptionally foolish thing to do.
Our attitude is this: look, there has been a massive increase in Chinese imports into Australia. We were saying on Christmas Day, our family were ripping open their pathetically humble offerings that we give each other, I turned to my wife and said "Gee, the Chinese have had a good Christmas in our house." And they had, I think just about everything that everyone gave everyone was made in China. But so what? If it was all made in Australia, it would be much more expensive and we would have less disposable income to spend on other things. We'd have a smaller turkey for Christmas Day, we would be able to go to the movies less often and restaurants less often. I mean, our economy has become much more of a service economy. China's is much less of a services economy. You are already seeing in China a substantial increase in wages along the coastal fringe in places like Shanghai. I was with Hewlett-Packard yesterday and they were telling me that they do quite a bit of manufacturing in China but now they are thinking about Vietnam and Cambodia and places like that because wages are actually lower. And also it's not just a question of wages, it's a question of productivity, and it's a question of tax systems.
So I think the rise of China, by the way, is a great boon to everybody in the world. That's what I think, call me radical but I reckon it's a tremendous thing. This is somewhere between one sixth and one fifth of the world's pop, people who have for a very long time lived in dire poverty. And you now have those people being lifted by the ten-million-load out of poverty. I think if you are a humane person, whether they are Chinese or whether they are American or whether they are from Vanuatu, to see people lifted out of poverty is a great thing. You have seen million upon millions of people in China lifted out of poverty, as China has used a lot of common sense in exploiting its comparative advantages. And I think the world should rejoice in that. I think that if America decides to go - I mean, the American Administration absolutely is not thinking of doing this - but some people in Congress and out there in the labour unions are thinking about it and I think if they go down the trade war with China route it will of course lead to a very substantial downturn in the global economy. It will impose more poverty on China and other parts of the world. It will stop Chinese growth in its tracks and it won't be good for America either. It won't help American growth.
I think America, like every country, needs to recognise, to use that famous phrase - you're an economist - "the destructive power of capitalism". It's true, companies rise and fall. How many companies on the Forbes Top 500 when it first came out in 1955 or something, how many of these companies even exist anymore? There are about 5 of them. They have been taken over, subsumed, gone bankrupt, they have changed. How many blacksmiths are there in Adelaide today? When my grandfather was a boy there were probably 50 or 100 blacksmiths in Adelaide. I reckon you'd be lucky to find one now. You know why? Because we have cars, not horses. So the economy is always going to go through transitions, and if you maintain a liberal, open and dynamic economy you'll adjust to that transition very easily. And that's what's happening in America. I was in the Silicon Valley yesterday and mentioned Hewlett-Packard, that's part of an open and dynamic economy and I think America in the end doesn't have anything to fear. Don't worry they'll buy treasury bonds, but will they sell all those bonds? No. No, they have a lot of savings there and it's not in their interest to tank the global economy any more than it should be in America's interest to do the same thing. It's worth remembering that.
Unknown Audience Member: Mr Minister I met you last year, I think you gave us the best advice we've ever had. But my question is: given what has happened in the region? Particularly with regard to the rural community, Papua New Guinea, the conflict in Bougainville, the record of human rights and what's happening in Fiji, what's happening in Tonga? I guess my question is: what is your opinion, as Foreign Minister of Australia, with regard to the role of the military in small island states, where resources are very, very scarce and, as you said in the beginning, what we need is development?
Alexander Downer: Well I think either way it's an excellent question and an issue just as your country has done last year and still does a bit preoccupy me, it's an issue that does preoccupy me. I watched the coup in Fiji at the end of last year in horror. Honestly, I just thought it was an appalling thing to do. Commodore Bainimarama, I have very strong views on what he has done to that country, and a very simple view about his motive. I was the foreign minister though the Sandline crisis, you mentioned Bougainville, through the Sandline crisis in Papua New Guinea in 1996-1997, so I've seen how the military in Papua New Guinea behaved, how they were circumvented, how they responded. Papua New Guinea in 1997 came very close to a military coup.
So why do you need a defence force? This should always be a threshold question that any government should ask itself. And the answer to that is, first and foremost, to defend your nation from some sort of outside aggression. Well, you tell me who Fiji thinks it's defending itself from with its 4000 strong defence force? Is Fiji defending itself from Tonga? These days there is no need to worry about Tonga. It's not about to invade Fiji, or Samoa. See, when you put it like that, it's just silly. Of course it's not. Are Australia and New Zealand going to invade Fiji? And even if Australia did invade Fiji, would a Fiji defence force - don't get me wrong, we're not going to invade Fiji - but if we did, you know with our war ships and our F18 fighters and F1-11 bombers and things, I mean is a defence force of 4000 going to be able to stop it? And I mean, what are they there for? And in Papua New Guinea, if TNI wanted to invade Papua New Guinea their defence force is about - someone will correct me here - it's a similar size about 3000 to 4000 something like that. I am not sure what TNI size is? How big is TNI? 150,000, they are going to have some trouble stopping us. So it's not going to happen either, don't get me wrong.
But if you set up a defence force, those are the kinds of thoughts you are going to have to have in your head. You are going to work out what is the raison d'être of a defence force? Let's just say that the proposition of all these countries that I've been mentioning are going to invade Fiji and Papua New Guinea. Let's just say for the sake of this discussion that is completely absurd, which by the way it is, then what is the defence going to do? And in fragile states, defence forces without a real raison d'être become political players. And they can become very dangerous political players and it seems to me, what you need is a strong system of law and order, I believe in that. Good, well trained police. You might have a few from that cultural tradition, some sort of Gendarmerie, some sort of more mobile, active component of the police. But do you need an army, a navy - but they don't have an air force? I think not. So I am in favour of those defence forces being on the smaller side. Not because, if they are bigger I think they will be a threat to Australia because frankly - not to be rude - but they won't be. I want the defence forces to be smaller and the resources to be redeployed into the process of development and the maintenance of law and order, more than I want those resources deployed into defence forces. But you know what it's like, I'm not sure what countries you all come from, but in a lot of countries the defence force is a symbol of the nation, of nationhood and of national pride. It's a matter [inaudible], and you know downsizing the defence force is very unpopular.
Rear Admiral Sally Brice-O'Hara (14th District United States Coast Guard): I have jurisdiction over the Pacific in the same areas you have been talking about and it's clear that what these countries need are coast guards, given that the types of [inaudible], many of which are travelling in the maritime global commons. Your patrol boat programme has had ups and downs in its successes, not for want of Australia, but for employment by the islands where they are placed. Would you comment on the future, and how we might collectively work to increase better use of those assets?
Alexander Downer: Well, I think the only time that a patrol boat that we've given to a Pacific Island country under our patrol boat programme has turned its guns on its own country was in the Solomon Islands. Where one of them started shelling the Weather Coast about 4 years ago. But otherwise though, on the balance, it's been quite a good programme. They need to have some capacity for surveillance EEZ because licences will go to a conservation issue first and foremost. You need a fisheries regime, a forum fisheries agency. And there is an attempt at monitoring fisheries in the region but sometimes there has to be enforcement. And so there has to be some capacity for that and I think where the patrol boat programme has been quite effective is in doing that. It's difficult, there have been real maintenance problems and I am sure you are alluding to that. It's been more maintenance problems than anything else. We do have people in those countries though to help with maintenance, I think we do in every case actually. They have had crewing problems, training problems, all sorts of things. The principle is that in any case, is one component of surveillance but they have to have a lot of outside assistance.
I think what we and New Zealand and to some extent France, and I hope increasingly the United States, can do in the South Pacific is providing some aerial surveillance from PC3 Orions, and that sort of technology. And then communicate with them if there is an actual interdiction needed. I think other than that, it is important to look at ways of using new technology effectively. I think the methods of surveillance are obviously improving, and new technologies are making that more and more possible. Including in the Pacific, but you still may need to intercept vessels. You'll still need to do that with some sort of patrol boat or vessel. You can't do that with an aircraft, you certainly can't do it with a satellite. So we will be maintaining that programme and in fact we've been upgrading a lot of them, upgrading all of them, nd renewing them and we'll make sure that it works as best it possibly can. But I mean the dimension of the issue is just massive, with the EEZ of Kiribati. Kiribati's population is about 15,000 or 14,000 or something of that number. And it has an EEZ of hundreds of thousands of square miles. I mean it's ... perhaps even more than that actually. Oh, the advisers are telling me it's 3 million. The size of Australia's land area is 3 million square miles and that's how big Kiribati's EEZ is. Have you ever got a bus from Melbourne to Sydney, but imagine trying to do all of that [inaudible]. It's alright on the land, but it's a very, very big challenge.
Unknown audience member:Could you comment on the effectiveness of the asylum seeker programme? How has it benefited Australia, what has it meant for Nauru? And Papua New Guinea? And is it true that Australia wants to send new asylum seekers to the United States?
Alexander Downer: Nobody wants to go. Just a joke! I saw the other day that some Haitians who had arrived in the United States said that the incentive for them to come to the United States, was for them to get to Australia. Now I don't know how many of you are Haitians here? But we encourage you to go through the normal process of making an application through our Embassy. Well there are a couple of things here. There is Nauru, and there is the issue of asylum seekers and the two should coincide with one another and even if they didn't there would still be the issue of Nauru. Under the MOU we have with Nauru we provide support for Nauru, well obviously for the processing centre there. But we provide a lot of support for Nauru more generally, in terms of its power generation, its desalination plant and just trying to get its finances in order.
Here is a country, the only country I reckon I have ever come across which was about 20 years ago in per capita terms the richest country in the world. Is anyone here from Nauru? In per capita terms it was the richest country in the world which then in 2001 effectively went bankrupt. The President of Nauru, they were hosting the Pacific Islands Forum meeting - or they were meant to be hosting it - and he rang me 3 weeks before the leaders were all descending on Nauru for the forum meeting and he said to me, "We have no money left to buy fuel to power our power generator and desalination plant. We will have no electricity or water for the leaders' meeting. We have no access to money needed [which was about $300,000], would you mind helping?" Now when you think about it, they don't have much left in terms of sources of revenue. I don't know if you've ever been to Nauru, but there is not a lot of ground there for agriculture. It's not an agricultural paradise. It's not the sort of market garden of the South Pacific. This is a phosphate country, and the phosphate is not completely mined out but it's almost completely mined out. There is a little bit left. So they have no prospect of much more revenue, they have little prospect of more revenue from phosphate, they have no realistic prospect of revenue from agriculture or even being about to feed themselves in any substantial way. And their fisheries are, I think I'm right in saying, it's all deep sea fisheries there. So it's pretty difficult as well. It doesn't lend itself to industry. So they have negligible sources of revenue, what was once per capita the richest country in the world, investments all over Australia, United States and Europe, they mortgaged them all, they spent the money and it's gone. So it's a massive problem. And we just have to help out, now they can help us out as well. We will just make this a bit of a quid pro quo.
We are one of the great migrant societies of the world, as of course is the United States. We take about 130,000 migrants a year but if you want to go to Australia, you need to get a visa. And I don't know if you have been to Australia, but when you get to Sydney airport you go through customs and immigration and they look at your passport and so on. And therefore if you try to get into Australia, without any of those documents, well you are kicked out. Now there are people smugglers based mainly, but not exclusively, in Indonesia and they have been collecting money trying to bring people illegally into Australia. Circumventing our laws and running some story about how all these people are embattled refugees fleeing from oppression and so on, and Australia has to take them. Very familiar are these people smugglers with our laws, and our international obligations, so we have to find disincentives for this type of activity without being inhumane.
So when people try illegally to get into Australia and we catch them and they make application for asylum, well we can't just throw them away, you know, kick them out and send them back to Indonesia or wherever they have come from. We have, under our law and our international obligations, to process those applications, but if we do it in Nauru then they haven't got to Australia and it's much more complicated for them and it's proved to be a very effective disincentive. We still do get people coming illegally but we get many, many fewer than we did 6 or 7 years ago when we started this system. So it's not perfect, but it has been pretty effective.
So we have an arrangement with the United States through where we might exchange asylum seekers but only in very limited numbers. There is only a provision for about a couple hundred a year. It doesn't translate into any sort of major scheme and it has its own particular genesis.
Charles Morrison: I am involved with a Second Track of APEC and last year we did a survey on regional opinion. APEC is a very large region, about the effectiveness of APEC, and as an [inaudible] supporter I was distressed to find that the conclusions were that APEC was not very effective. People don't think that it's meeting the needs of the people in the region and that altogether it's not a very good sign. The Minister has been to more APEC meetings than any other person, except the brother of the Sultan of Brunei. I'd like your opinion on what might be done particularly this year with Australia's leadership?
Alexander Downer: There is of course a link between Iraq and not so much APEC, but I am not sure if I can quite make the link there. One of the questions I was asked was about the military in the South Pacific, the Fijians have quite a lot of soldiers in Iraq guarding the United Nations operations. So there you are! I can bring Iraq into the conversation so none of you will be disappointed. But as far as APEC is concerned, I don't think it is actually a question of public opinion because I don't for a minute think that you will ever be able to market something very technical like APEC to the generality of the public. But I reckon when APEC was founded in 1989 the average tariff rate in the APEC economies was 16%, I think you'll find today around 4.5%. So what do I think of that? I think that's fantastic. Now I answered the question earlier about free trade, you can tell I'm a big economic liberal. And I think that it's fantastic the way that APEC, and the Bogor Declaration in particular, has helped to generate [inaudible]. It might have happened to some extent anyway but it helped to generate respectability for the liberal market model throughout the APEC economies, encouragement, support, enthusiasm, and a lot, if you like, intellectual drive for the liberal economic model. So I wouldn't underestimate that.
APEC is looking now at not just reducing tariff barriers, because a lot of that work has been done, and non-tariff barriers - still more to be done there - but tremendous success in that area. But with restrictions behind the boarders, liberalising internal economies more, APEC can be of assistance there. So that's the first thing I'd say about APEC.
Secondly APEC has been good at helping to harness regional resources to deal with a whole raft of different issues from the 1999 APEC Summit in Auckland when the East Timor issue was, well East Timor itself was on fire, would be the best way of putting it. And there as luck would have it, were the leaders of the Asia Pacific region all getting together in Auckland for the APEC Summit. And it helped to focus Bill Clinton, then president's, mind on what we are going to do about East Timor in flames. It was true that the APEC meeting, although not under the flag of APEC, but through the APEC meeting that the initiatives which led to us leading a UN authorised peace-keeping force occurred. Through to the way, I think very effectively, after 9/11 APEC started addressing counter-terrorism recognising the economic impact of not just terrorism but the threat of terrorism and the security measures that have to be taken. Through to the very genuine and understandable concern in Asia for avian flu and APEC getting together and working out contingency plans for how you handle the spread avian flu.
I think this year - and this started last year - but I think this year there will be a very significant focus in APEC on environmental issues, in particular climate change. I mean we've had Kyoto Protocol, when the sort of world has thought that's ok, it's not ok. Emissions, even if everybody in the Kyoto Protocol adheres to the targets that they signed up to but even if they do, will see CO2 increase from 1990 to 2012 by 40%. So I mean we are not going to solve problems of CO2 emissions by increasing them every few years by 40%. So we need to find ways engaging the major developing countries and, other than India and Brazil, they are in APEC and developed, including of course countries like the United States, Japan, Australia and South Korea.
So I think APEC is a ready made forum to be looking at ways we can take the climate change agenda forward in a much more inclusive and practical way and focussing upon improving energy efficiency. Maybe even setting energy efficiency targets. Dealing with issues like deforestation in the APEC region and the economics of deforestation, reforestation - the economics of reforestation. How is this all going to be done? These are key issues for the region to face. So APEC is a ready made forum for all of that. You know, there is a view of some that multilateralism is the only way to solve problems and when I saw Zimbabwe elected as the Chair of the UN Committee on Sustainable Development I thought, well you know, maybe not. And Libya as Chair of the Human Rights Commission in the United Nations? I wasn't so sure that that was a great tribute to multilateralism. It's okay if you get everyone to agree, but you need to set yourself objectives and work out what tools you are going to use, diplomatic tools you are going to use, to achieve those objectives. Some objectives you can achieve bilaterally, sometimes you can do it with small groups of what is very unfashionably these days called a "coalition of the willing". You can sometimes do it through existing institutional structures and APEC is one.
I have given you a bit of a list of things that I reckon APEC has done pretty well. Now I often say to people, well you don't think APEC has done well enough? What is your expectation that it would have done otherwise? Create a free trade area of the Asia Pacific already in so few years, between 1989 and 2007? Of course not. Could we end up with a free trade area of the Asia Pacific? Unless the WTO process does better, unless the Doha Round does better, I think we could. And I always think we should leave that option on the table. I think the more you keep that option on the table, you keep that as a prospect, the more you'll encourage the WTO process by the way. But anyway, if that fails then maybe we should do it ourselves within APEC. So I think it's a great structure, I think it's done some good things, I think it's had some tremendous ideas and we look forward to hosting a very successful APEC Summit in September this year in Sydney just before our elections. So it needs to be successful.