E&OE
10 April 2008
Interview with Karon Snowdon, Radio Australia
SMITH: I think India's emergence is under-appreciated. I think our relationship with India is underdone. Both Australia and India want to take that relationship to a new and a different level, because of India's role in our region and because of India's emergence as an economic and a strategic player in the course of this century.
SNOWDON: How are you going to do that?
SMITH: Well, the first thing you have to do is turn up and put your shoulder to the wheel. I've spoken to a number of senior Indian officials and made the point that there's not enough contact leader to leader, minister to minister, official to official and we need to enhance, not just our economic relations, but also our people to people exchanges.
SNOWDON: When are you off to India then?
SMITH: Well, the Prime Minister and I both want to go to India in the course of this year and we're in the process of arranging dates with our Indian counterparts.
SNOWDON: The Australian Government now is making a strong push for membership of the UN Security Council from 2013. How much does that risk being a distraction given in many fields the Security Council really is a toothless tiger and some say is quite ineffective at times when it needs to be most out there in the world and making strong decisions?
SMITH: Well, wanting to enhance our activity within the United Nations and wanting to enhance the United Nations activities within international relations is not a distraction. It's a centerpiece. One of the things we've come to office with is a view that Australia's activity in international institutions, like the United Nations, hasn't been as active as it could or should be. The United Nations is not a perfect institution, but the United Nations and the Security Council remain the premier international institution so far as international security and peacekeeping is concerned.
But we also believe that the Security Council, for example, should reflect the modern world. We strongly believe that India and Japan, for example, should both be permanent members of a reformed Security Council. We want the Security Council and the United Nations to reflect the modern international era, not to be a reflection of the 1940s or the 1950s.
SNOWDON: In a recent speech Prime Minister Kevin Rudd highlighted his idea about enhancing China's engagement in multilateral forums and its role in the Asia Pacific region. And his suggestion was that enhancing, perhaps expanding the six-party talk format would be one way to do that. Talk to me a bit about that if you would because it excludes Australia?
SMITH: Well China's engagement with the international community and the international community's engagement with China is a good and sensible thing. We think that will encourage and help openness and transparency so far as China is concerned.
So far as the six-party talks are concerned, the point we've made is that the six-party talks, which are currently focusing on North Korea and the nuclear issue, if that is successful ultimately and if that emerges into some more broader regional security framework, we've made it clear to all concerned that we would like to be, as I have put it, in on the ground floor in that regional arrangement.
That's the sensible thing for us to argue and I've made that point myself to the United States administration just as the Prime Minister has made the point to all concerned on his recent trip.
SNOWDON: An emerging crisis it seems is food scarcity and food crisis. What do you think is a way of nations like Australia responding to that emerging crisis?
SMITH: Yes it's an emerging problem. We've having a very careful look at what we can do in terms of our international development assistance. We run a number of food programs which are important, Zimbabwe is one example, East Timor is another.
SNOWDON: Is the government getting some assessment of its potential to create instability in Asia Pacific countries?
SMITH: Well there are a whole range of issues that have the potential to cause instability in fragile or weak nation states. Food insecurity is one of them, energy insecurity is another, adverse consequences coming from climate change or transnational crime or the illegal or unlawful people movements: all of these things potentially set the scene for adverse consequences for nation states. They also set the scene for international terrorism emerging. So all of these things are issues and the more fragile the nation state, the more there's a responsibility on regional leaders and the international community to try and address them for the more fragile nation states.
Ends
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