Australia and Mexico: Building bridges across the Pacific
18 November 2008, Mexico City
Thank you for that warm welcome and for giving me the opportunity to speak to this distinguished group of guests about the Australian Government’s foreign policy approach, and our desire to enhance our engagement with Mexico, in particular, and Latin America generally.
I’ve just come from very enjoyable and productive meetings with my counterpart, Foreign Minister Espinosa, whom I first met in the margins of the UN General Assembly in September, and with the Minister of Education, Josefina Vázquez.
I’ll have the opportunity to talk to Minister Espinosa again this week, at the APEC Ministerial Meeting in Lima.
Looking East, looking West
What struck me in these meetings is how much our interests and approaches to critical international issues overlap – on multilateralism, climate change, free trade and non-proliferation.
That highlights the fact that there’s very much more we could – and should – do together.
Australia’s foreign policy approach rests on what we describe as three pillars: our alliance with the United States; our comprehensive engagement with and within the Asia-Pacific region; and our engagement with the United Nations and other multilateral institutions.
They are the foundations from which we operate our foreign policy.
But over the past year it has become increasingly clear that these regional priorities and global interests require us to do more with countries and regions we have until now neglected.
Latin America is one of these regions.
We need to take much more advantage of what we have in common in order to advance successful solutions to global challenges.
Mexico and Australia are both members of the G20 and APEC. We have similarly sized economies and we are both strategically positioned in our respective regions, Mexico in the Americas, and Australia in Asia.
Where as traditionally, you have looked North – to the United States and to Europe – you are now looking to the East and to the West – especially towards Asia and the Pacific, and towards Australia.
We both have a stake in the Asia-Pacific century and we both share a strong record of involvement in, and commitment to, multilateralism.
Our common membership of multilateral and regional organisations and groupings underpins significant contact between us.
Like Mexico, Australia is strongly committed to open international trade and to strengthening our international trading system.
We have cooperated closely with Mexico and Brazil in the Doha Round negotiations. Ten members of the Australian-led Cairns Group of agricultural exporters are from Latin America.
Australia also shares with Mexico, Chile and Peru membership of APEC. Together with almost all the countries of Latin America, we are members of the Forum for East Asia Latin America Cooperation (FEALAC).
In this confluence of views and approaches there lies considerable potential for much greater cooperation.
A bridge across the Pacific
This century is witnessing the inexorable shift in global economic and strategic influence to the Asia-Pacific.
We are both fortunate to be part of that shift.
Australia continues to energetically promote greater engagement with the countries of the Asia-Pacific, reflecting our interest in the surging regional prosperity that has underpinned our own economic growth.
By 2020, it is forecast that Asia will account for around 45 per cent of global GDP, one-third of global trade, and more than half of the increase in global energy consumption.
In 2007, Australia’s total global merchandise trade stood at over A$350 billion. Of that, over A$200 billion, nearly two thirds of our merchandise trade, was with Asia.
Mexico is increasingly looking to its partners in the Asia-Pacific region to strengthen and diversify its trade relationships.
We support that endeavour and we look forward to being partners in it.
Mexican businesses, like so many around the world, rightly see Australia as a springboard to markets in the Asian region.
Last year, Mexico’s Cemex, the world’s third largest cement producer, took majority control of Australia’s Rinker Group. That deal, worth over US$14 billion, represented the largest takeover in the history of the global building-materials industry.
Despite encouraging examples like that, and the continuing growth of our bilateral trade with the countries of Latin America, the region as a whole still accounts for less that 2 per cent of Australia’s total trade. That tells us that there is much more that can be done together.
The Australian firm Securency, which specialises in polymer bank notes, for example, has a joint venture with the Central Bank of Mexico. The factory in Queretáro opens on 9December and will supply banknotes not only to Mexico but to other countries in the region which use the technology.
Australia and Mexico have been exploring ways to strengthen our bilateral economic links, through the formation of a Joint Experts Group.
The Group’s recommendations will be considered by my colleague Simon Crean and Mexico’s Economy Minister, Mr Gerardo Ruiz Mateos, when they meet in Lima this week.
Latin America is becoming an increasingly popular destination for investment by Australian companies, in particular the mining and resources sector.
These investment flows are of course accompanied by flows of mining technology, an area in which Australia is a world leader.
Education represents an area of rapid growth in trade: over 22,000 Latin American students came to Australia last year, the majority from Brazil, Colombia and Mexico.
When I met Minister Vázquez, we signed a Memorandum of Understanding on Education, one outcome of which is a new Australia-Mexico Education Committee.
I’m very encouraged by this new initiative and by the steady growth in the number of young Mexicans choosing to study in Australia.
There’s nothing like the experience of education for building the people-to-people links that underpin long-term relationships between nation states.
Multilateral diplomacy: a shared commitment
When the Australian Government came to office almost a year ago, we were determined to put in place a new foreign policy approach for a new century.
Many of the challenges now confronting individual nation states are not susceptible to individual action. They require a collective response.
Our foreign policy approach to these challenges and opportunities is also found in the capitals of Latin America.
That provides us with a real chance for us to build bridges across the Pacific.
Our shared commitment to the principles of multilateralism provides the avenue for cooperation.
From the outset, the new Australian Government’s foreign policy has been guided by our determination to make a difference as a good international citizen.
This approach is both shaped by and reflects our democratic values as a nation, our respect for the rule of law, domestic and international, our tolerance and our deep-seated belief in a fair go for others.
We may be only the 50th or so largest country in terms of population, but we rank among the world’s top 15 economies, among the top 20 countries measured in income by capita, and among the top dozen in military or peacekeeping spending.
We are a regional leader with a history of active engagement in global affairs.
As a prosperous, principled nation, we have an obligation to help promote solutions to global challenges.
The Australian Government does not accept the false dichotomy that reinvigorating our engagement with the United Nations must come at the expense of promoting bilateral relations, or vice versa.
These are distinct but mutually reinforcing tools: they are necessarily complementary.
Only by cooperating with other nation states in multilateral frameworks can we address the pressing transnational challenges that threaten us all.
Climate change is foremost among these global challenges. Australia can only address dangerous climate change in concert with the international community.
Acting alone is as futile as not acting at all.
Our first act as a Government was the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. Since then, Australia has played a leading and constructive role in international climate change negotiations. We’ll continue to do so.
Australia welcomes Mexico’s active response to the climate change challenge. The leadership shown by Mexico on domestic mitigation is particularly impressive.
This week, a delegation from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Australia’s peak scientific organisation, is in town to work with the Mexican National Water Commission to identify areas in which Mexican and Australia can cooperate on water resource management.
Nuclear proliferation is another issue which must be addressed through effective multilateral action.
The need remains for real progress towards the Nuclear Non‑proliferation Treaty’s objective of a world free of nuclear weapons.
That’s why Australia recently established, with Japan, an International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament.
By setting up the Commission we aim to reinvigorate the global effort against the proliferation of nuclear weapons and seek a recommitment to the ultimate goal of a nuclear weapon-free world.
I’m delighted that former President Ernesto Zedillo has agreed to serve as a Commissioner. I was pleased to meet him in Sydney at the first meeting of the Commission.
I recently chaired a meeting at the UN in New York of Member States of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban-Treaty (CTBT), which all Latin American states have ratified.
It remains one of our key priorities to see this Treaty enter into force.
Australia and the United Nations
Australia has a long and proud history of involvement with the United Nations, dating back to when Foreign Minister Evatt contributed to its establishment in the final days of World War II.
The UN has a critical role to play in the global struggle for a peaceful, secure world free from poverty, disease and famine.
The Australian Government will work to ensure that the UN and its agencies fulfill their potential as agents for economic and social reform, for peace and as a protector of human rights.
From its early years, Australia has been heavily involved in the practical work of the United Nations in bringing peace and security to nations riven by conflict.
We were arguably the first nation state to have personnel on the ground in any modern peacekeeping operation, in 1947 in Indonesia.
We’re proud to continue the noble tradition of peacekeeping to this day, as do so many countries of Latin America.
In East Timor, for example, Australian troops and administrators have over the years worked closely with colleagues from Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, El Salvador and Uruguay.
The Security Council is at the heart of international responses to issues of peace and security.
Australia played a leading role in drafting those articles of the UN Charter that deal with the Security Council’s work and its relationship to other central organs of the UN, such as the General Assembly.
We have a record of long and active engagement with the Security Council and our wider contribution to the United Nations places us in good stead to serve again.
That is why we have decided to seek election to the United Nations Security Council for the 2013‑14 term.
Australia has much to contribute. We bring creativity, energy and a practical problem-solving ethos; we also bring a wealth of experience in peace-keeping, conflict prevention and peace-building.
Our commitment to renewed engagement with the United Nations is not, of course, limited to the Security Council.
We have worked to strengthen our cooperation with, and support for, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, and to ensure our increased humanitarian settlement program, one of the three largest in the world, is used to maximum effect in the international system of refugee protection.
Like many countries in Latin America, we acknowledge that some UN bodies need to improve their performance.
But it is counterproductive and wrong simply to criticise the United Nations from the sidelines, to stand outside throwing rocks at the building.
We should be engaged in working hard to build the UN’s capability, responsiveness and creativity from within.
Australia’s focus in supporting UN reform is on improving the effectiveness, efficiency and accountability of UN operations.
We, like Mexico, want to see reform of the Security Council, whose working methods need to improve and whose membership should expand to reflect the modern world.
The Australian Government has been active, at home and abroad, to reclaim Australia’s reputation as a leader in the international protection of human rights.
The Prime Minister’s Apology to Indigenous Australians in February was a defining moment in Australia’s history and was recognised as a symbolic and momentous step forward by the international community, including by groups in Mexico and Latin America
Mexico, of course, was instrumental in the finalisation of the important UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Detailed consultations on this Declaration are being undertaken in Australia with State and Territory Governments, as well as with Indigenous organisations and other key stakeholders.
As a prosperous nation, Australia is determined more energetically to help those less fortunate than ourselves.
Guided by our commitment to the realisation of the Millennium Development Goals, we have pledged to increase our official development assistance from 0.3 to 0.5 per cent of gross national income (GNI) by 2015.
This reverses a regrettable trend which for most of the last decade saw Australia’s commitment to official development assistance going backwards.
We have also committed $200 million over four years under the ‘UN Partnership for the MDGs’ budget measure. Through this initiative, Australia will work closely in partnership with key UN agencies leading international efforts to achieve the goals.
Conclusion
Australia and Mexico have from time to time in the past sometimes regarded each other as competitors. Today, that approach is not warranted, if it ever was. We’re partners, bilaterally and multilaterally, with great potential to do much more together and with other regions.
Through our work in APEC, in the Cairns Group, in FEALAC and in the UN, we are not only building bridges across the Pacific but helping shape collective responses to the most pressing challenges of our times.
There is scope to inject that same energy into our bilateral relationship.
The conversations I’ve had with Ministerial colleagues here in Mexico City have been very encouraging. I very much look forward to taking them further.
Australia is fortunate in that it can rely on our good friends here today to assist in the process of deepening what is a relationship of great potential.
Thank you.