E&OE
4 July 2008
Interview with Karen Percy for Radio Australia
Percy: What kind of progress are you making in talking to regional leaders about the Asia Pacific Community that has been proposed by the Prime Minister?
Minister: Well, we’re making good progress. I’ve been very pleased with the response from my Vietnamese counterpart and also from Thai my counterpart. Our rationale was quite straightforward. This century, all the portents are that economic and strategic influence shifts to our region. There is no one piece of regional architecture where all of the interested parties are in the same place at the same time having a conversation about both economic and strategic matters. India, for example, is not a member of APEC. The United States is not part of the East Asia Summit.
Now, all of the forums themselves all do good work and it may well be that something emerges from the existing piece of architecture or something new emerges but we have to have a conversation. And the Thai Minister, in particular, today was very, very enthusiastic about having that conversation.
Percy: He might have been enthusiastic about having a conversation but he did say along the lines that “well I won’t reject it, we won’t reject it until we have a look at it”. It seems like he was hedging his bets a little.
Minister: It seems like an admirably sensible position so far as I’m concerned. We’ve indicated that we want to have the dialogue. I will do that at the ASEAN-related conversations in Singapore towards the end of this month. It will certainly be a subject of conversation with the Prime Minister and his counterparts at the East Asia Summit back here in Thailand in December. And in the meantime we’ve indicated the appointment of a special envoy, former Ambassador and former Department Head Woolcott to pursue the conversation as well.
But, if we’re looking at where we might be in 2020, no one would expect that nation states would make a decision overnight or in advance of substantive conversation. We are more concerned about making sure that as we move through this century, we get the architecture right then whether it’s a new piece of architecture or evolves from existing architecture. When ASEAN was struck, for example, no one expressed or contemplated the ASEAN+3+3 arrangement that we have now or the East Asia Summit. These things evolve and sometimes someone like Australia comes up with a good idea like APEC.
Percy: You were talking to the Foreign Minister Noppadon Pattama in Thailand about democracy and welcoming the fact that democracy has been restored here. Yet there are great degrees of uncertainty and political instability. There are protests, ongoing protests. There are coup rumours constantly, rumours that the Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej is going to be arrested. Are you concerned about this at all?
Minister: Well, I’ve made a point and part of my visit here is to reinforce Australia’s enthusiastic welcoming of Thailand’s return to democracy. This is the first bilateral visit by an Australia Minister since the coup and the first visit by a member of the new Australian Government. And part of that underlines a return to democracy. I’ve made the point consistently over the last couple of days that we very much welcome the return of democracy and the last thing we want to see is the reversion or regression to a coup. And certainly the response I’ve had is that people don’t want to see that either.
There is a qualitative difference between having political difficulty or disagreement. And there’s not necessarily anything wrong with people having demonstrations. We actually laud that in Australia, it’s called freedom of expression. As long as these issues are resolved politically and in a democratic way, then we don’t have any difficulty whatsoever. And we encourage Thailand to resolve these issues in that manner.
Percy: The former Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has stepped down this week. He is moving on. What is it you’ve learned from Alexander Downer as Foreign Minister? What you take from his experience?
Minister: Never wear fish nets. Don’t wear the fish nets.
Look, we’ve had plenty of policy disagreements with Alexander Downer over the years. But you put those disagreements to one side. He is our longest serving Foreign Minister. We think he will do a good job as the envoy to Cyprus. Behind the scenes we support him for that. And we think that in Cyprus there might just be a glimmer of hope for some progress after years of being an intractable problem. But what have I learned from Alexander Downer…never wear the fish nets.
Percy: What will you wear instead? You’re going to have to come up with some kind of signature piece of clothing, aren’t you?
Minister: Well, as my daughter says to me, “Dad, you are in your uniform which is my suit”. So, I’m sorry I’m old fashioned. My mother always said you need to be tidy in public and that’s what I do.
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