E&OE
22 April 2009
Doorstop interview
Subjects: Comments on the Government's response to the 2020 Summit, Sri Lanka and other issues
STEPHEN SMITH: Thanks very much for coming. Firstly, I welcome very much the fact that the Cabinet is meeting in Perth, in the seat of Cowan, and I very much welcome my Cabinet colleagues to Western Australia.
Chris Evans and I, of course, are very pleased that the Cabinet's meeting here. And later this evening, of course, there'll be another community Cabinet meeting just down the road in Ballajura.
Today, the Prime Minister has released the Government's response to the 2020 Summit. We were very pleased with that process. There are a very large number of good ideas, very many of which the Government is taking forward.
If I can just comment on a couple in my own area, firstly, the deployable civilian capacity. This is an idea from the 2020 Summit which AusAID, as the lead agency, has been working on for some time and we expect that by about August-September of this year we'll have a complete policy framework in place.
We see civilian deployable capacity, of course, in other countries: United States, United Kingdom, and our ambition here is to complement the good work, for example, that our military and defence assets do and perform in the aftermath of disasters, whether, for example, it's the Chinese earthquake or the tsunami.
What we've discovered in recent years is that the initial response is often coordinated between defence or military assets of different countries. But in the aftermath, we need very much to look at technical assistance and reconstruction.
So we're very pleased that we're able to take that idea from the 2020 Summit forward. Also, I'm very pleased to see that the Prime Minister has announced that his Australia-
Asia Endeavour Awards, funded to the tune of $15 million, will also be progressed. This will enhance the educational engagement and the people to people engagement between young Australians and our Asian neighbours. This is also a very good initiative.
Very quickly, can I just make a couple of remarks in other areas? Sri Lanka, I've released a further statement today. We remain very concerned about the risk to a very large number of civilians in Sri Lanka. We again call upon the Sri Lankan Government and the Tamil Tigers to cease hostilities, to enable civilians to withdraw from the area of hostilities.
We welcome the fact that there are reports that many thousands of civilians were able to leave the hostile areas in the last 24-48 hours, but there are, clearly, very many thousands more who are caught in the hostile territory, and we call upon both the Sri Lankan Government and the Tamil Tigers to allow civilians to remove themselves from the area.
Finally, later this evening, tonight, I will be leaving Perth to go to Turkey. I have the great honour of leading the Australian delegation at the Anzac Day celebration or commemorations in Gallipoli. I'm looking very much forward to that. Anzac Day these days, of course, not just commemorates the Gallipoli battle, but also, I think, commemorates the sacrifice that Australian servicemen and women have made over a long period of time. I think Anzac Day, the modern celebration or commemoration of Anzac Day, also underlines some of our great Australian characteristics and values and virtues. So I'm very much looking forward to getting to Gallipoli for the Anzac Day commemorations.
I'm happy to respond to your questions.
QUESTION: On the civilian capacity, can you explain how that would actually work, who would be involved? Would it be attached to a department? Would it be like the US Peace Corps?
STEPHEN SMITH: Well, AusAID will be the lead agency and we will have, potentially, a civilian contribution. They may be civilians who are already engaged in public service or civilians from private enterprise who have the necessary technical expertise and capacity to assist in either long term reconstruction or other non-military activity. For example, I was recently in China in the aftermath of the earthquake in Sichuan Province and had a look at some of the contribution that Australians are making there, including the rebuilding, effectively, of a hospital.
So, whether the technical expertise is in construction, whether the technical expertise is building the capacity of the adversely affected communities, it takes on a role which is non-military, non-defence assets.
Generally, we have found that they are used in the immediate aftermath, in the immediate crisis where you need to quickly deploy emergency relief. It's the longer term rebuilding of communities, rebuilding of infrastructure, rebuilding of societies that this complementary effort is aimed at.
QUESTION: On the 2020 priority list, the Republic is left off. Was it something that was still popular or...
STEPHEN SMITH: We've made it clear that, of course, we support Australia becoming a Republic, but the Prime Minister has made it clear that we don't see it as being a priority in terms of timing. The Prime Minister has also made the point from time to time that he sees the best opportunity for Australia to move to a Republic when the current monarch ceases in that role and that's a personal view that I also share.
But, of course, the 2020 Summit wasn't the first institution or gathering to contemplate Australia being a Republic. We support that, but we think it's best done in due course. It's not a timing priority for us.
QUESTION: Are you aware of the extradition process of Hadi Ahmadi has begun?
STEPHEN SMITH: I was in Bali last week for the Bali Process conference, which was very successful. I had a bilateral meeting with my counterpart, Foreign Minister Wirajuda. He made the point to me at the time that the extradition approval was subject to the President's approval. That's now occurred. And now the normal processes will take place.
Our officials will now be pursuing that extradition in conjunction with the Indonesian authorities. So I'm very pleased that the Indonesian authorities have made that decision. I'm very pleased to see the extradition processes start.
QUESTION: When can we expect to see him back here?
STEPHEN SMITH: That will depend upon the Indonesian legal and judicial processes, but the threshold level has been reached and that's a very good thing.
QUESTION: The civilian force, is there going to be any military component at all, training or escorted by the military?
STEPHEN SMITH: The only time that we would see a role for the military would be if, for example, the civilian deployed capacity required force protection or security arrangements. We're not envisaging that on an ongoing basis, but that is a possibility.
We've also learned a lot of useful and good experience from the civilian reconstruction work we do in the Solomon Islands and in East Timor. There, of course, you have Australians and, also, New Zealanders, as part of a defence or military attachment, but there are also civilian attachments to that.
It's also possible that people who can become part of the civilian deployable capacity are also reservists. There are a lot of army or armed services reservists who, for example, from time to time are rotated through either East Timor or the Solomon Islands. So we don't discount the possibility that some people who had experience in East Timor or the Solomons might form part of a civilian deployment - deployed capacity, having had prior experience as a reservist in one of those two locations.
QUESTION: But for civilians involved, would they have to take time off work to do this?
STEPHEN SMITH: We're certainly not proposing to make it compulsory. It would be effectively a voluntary community effort. That's one of the issues we want to look at in terms of the formal policy framework, the extent to which people might be able to be compensated for taking time off from work and the like. So that's one of the precise points that we'd want to have a closer look at.
QUESTION: So they might get paid to a certain minimum level while they're away?
STEPHEN SMITH: It's a possibility but I don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves. It's one of the issues that we do want to have a look at.
QUESTION: Mr Smith, should Indonesia sign up to the United Nations convention on refugees?
STEPHEN SMITH: That's, of course, a matter for Indonesia. That was one of the issues which was the subject of discussion at the Bali process but as a general proposition I'm very, very happy with the cooperation that Australia has with Indonesia.
Foreign Minister Wirajuda has indicated, for example, that he proposes to continue to pursue through the Parliament the question of people smuggling becoming a domestic offence in Indonesia.
Whether Indonesia chooses to join up for the convention is a matter for Indonesia and I'm very happy to leave that to Foreign Minister Wirajuda.
QUESTION: Given how close - I mean, obviously, the latest boatload of asylum seekers isn't from Indonesia but given how close they actually came, is it time that we put a bit more pressure on Indonesia to make sure, especially with rumours…
STEPHEN SMITH: I won't make that assumption. My colleague, the Home Affairs Minister, Mr Debus, has made a detailed statement today and answered questions. We, as a matter of longstanding process, announce when there's been an interception. My understanding is that this boat was under surveillance for effectively a 24 hour period, was intercepted - that was aerial surveillance - was intercepted when it came into the Australian migration zone and is being escorted to Christmas Island. I think there are about 30, 32 adult males on board.
They'll go through the assessments, the usual assessments at Christmas Island, to determine where they're from and how they arrived there so I'm not making any assumptions but what we do know is this and I've made this clear in the past, in the run-up to the Bali process meeting, in the aftermath of that and before, is that we see the dangers and the risks of very considerable push factors and those push factors, historically or in the recent period generally, so far as Australia's concerned, have come from Iraq and Afghanistan. More recently we've become very concerned not just about Afghanistan but also the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area and also Sri Lanka.
And I've made some separate remarks about Sri Lanka, but there is clearly very grave potential for displaced people coming from Sri Lanka so we're acutely conscious and concerned about these things. That was one of the reasons it was at Australia's request that we saw, for the first time in half a dozen years, a Ministerial meeting of the Bali Process which is aimed at regional cooperation so far as displaced people and people movements are concerned.
QUESTION: In terms of the push factors in Sri Lanka, do you have discussions with your Sri Lankan counterparts about what they can do to try and stop people coming over or is it too hard over there?
STEPHEN SMITH: The Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Bogollagama was in Australia last year. That was one of the issues that I discussed with him but our officials in Sri Lanka and our officials in Canberra have been in very detailed conversations with the Sri Lankans about the risks posed by displaced people from Sri Lanka.
Historically, of course, we've seen Sinhalese people coming to – or Sinhalese people being displaced from – Sri Lanka or leaving Sri Lanka and coming close to our shores and there's, of course, a very significant risk that in the future it'll be Tamils who will be displaced and seek to move to Australia via the sea and it's an issue that we're very concerned about and very conscious of.
QUESTION: Are you expecting that number to rise, given what's happening at the moment?
STEPHEN SMITH: As I've said, you know, we're seeing very serious difficulties for civilians in the north-east of Sri Lanka. We continue to urge the Sri Lankan Government to not just attempt to resolve these matters through military means but to enter into a political dialogue. We continue to urge the Tamil Tigers to lay down their arms. We continue to urge cessation of hostilities to enable civilians to remove themselves from danger zones but the ongoing conflict in Sri Lanka is seeing a very considerable number of displaced peoples and that does add to the risk that some of them will seek to leave Sri Lanka by boat, heading in Australia's direction. We are acutely aware of that.
QUESTION: But do you know if the Sri Lankan authorities are actually doing anything to patrol their coast or is that just unrealistic given the situation?
STEPHEN SMITH: We have been in contact with the Sri Lankan Government and officials but we obviously want to, and will be, doing much more so far as Sri Lanka is concerned. So we have, for example, a very, very good relationship with Indonesia and the work that we do with Indonesia, the work that Indonesia does on our behalf, the work that Indonesia does in this area, is first class work and we appreciate it very much. We need to make sure that other transit countries, whether it's Sri Lanka, whether, for example, it's Malaysia, that we have the same working basis and arrangement with them and that's what we're working very hard to achieve.
[ENDS]
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