Transcript E&OE
15 October 2009
Interview with Matt Wade - Sydney Morning Herald
Matt Wade: It was a very positive statement that you came out with Mr. Krishna yesterday. Is there any damage to the bilateral relationship because of the student process?
Stephen Smith: There's no damage to the bilateral relationship. The Indian Government and educational institutions have understood the nature of the problem and how we have moved at a range of levels to deal with the difficulties.
But I think there is no point denying that in sections of the Indian public, Australia's reputation has been damaged. I think, it will be foolish for us to not acknowledge that. So in addition to what we're doing on the policy front, we are working closely with the New South Wales and Victorian governments, and working closely with the educational institutions making policy changes. Because what the safety issue did was throw some attention on some quality issues, process issues such as the quality of education, conduct on some of education agents, conduct of some of the migration agents. We've moved to put them on much better footing.
It will take some time for all of those issues to cascade through the system but I think it will be foolish of us not to acknowledge to ourselves that our reputation in sections in the Indian community has suffered a bit of damage and we have got to think of ways to repair that. That'll take some time but I am confident that it will occur.
I am very pleased with the progress we've been making and there is a shared view between Australia and India that we can do much more to our relationship and that's a good thing to do. To use a sporting analogy, historically the problem with Australia's attitude to India is that we've treated India like a Twenty20 game, not a test match. So we've had bursts of enthusiasm, now what we need is just consistent, diligent application on an ongoing basis.
In any relationship, there'll be things which might be difficulties or problems, or we have a different view on policy. These things just need to be managed and that's what we're doing. But I am confident that the inexorable strength and momentum of the relationship will enable these matters to be dealt with in a businesslike way.
Matt Wade: Have you got an assessment of the economic impact that may flow from the controversy?
Stephen Smith: I've seen the estimate. It'll take a bit of time before we see what the drop in student numbers is. There is clearly going to be a drop. I suspect the drop will be more in the vocational and training sections than in Universities. There's a range of factors at play here.
Maybe someone knows, what for example will be the adverse impact generally of the global financial crisis and down turn economic circumstances. What will be the effect of applications to Australia as a result of adverse publicity on the safety.
Having said that, I saw an IDP survey yesterday, from over 6000 students completing, over a 1000 Indians and it portrays Australia as being the safest place to go to. Underlying that of course is our absolute confidence that Australia is a safe, welcoming and tolerant place to go not just for Indian students but for everyone.
Will numbers be down? Everyone's predicting that. Common sense told you that'll be right but I think they'll be down worse, I suspect, in the first year after these difficulties which also coincides with the global financial crisis. So, it'll be in the future years that we'll need to check carefully.
But, our capacity and potential for educational collaboration is not just Indian students coming to Australia, it's potentially Australian students coming to India, but in some respects more importantly collaboration between our institutions.
We are now just starting to see Australian Universities wanting to collaborate with Universities here and one area of great potential for the relationship, I think is science and technology and research. So, it's not just from our perspective, Indian students, we welcome that, we think it's a very good thing. The great advantage of students coming to Australia is that when they return home they effectively become ambassadors for us so that helps our national interest.
Matt Wade: Do you think the Indian media has been fair in its portrayal of these incidents?
Stephen Smith: That's like asking me whether I think if the Australian media has been fair. Irrespective of my views of fairness about the Australian media, it's just something to deal with. So, I think the key thing is, whether it is right or wrong, whether it is fair or unfair, whether accurate or inaccurate, the bottom line for me is, in sections of the Indian public our reputation has taken a hit. So we've got to accept that, understand that, acknowledge it. There's no point wailing about the reasons why it occurred, but what are we going to do to move forward.
Matt Wade: Onto some other issues, we've had asylum seekers from this region making a lot of news in Australia even in the last couple of days. As reports of this boatful of Sri Lankan people, in a stand off situation - Do you have any comment to that?
Stephen Smith: In the first instance, that's a matter for the Indonesian authorities. We've been working very closely with Indonesia, ever since we came to office, on these issues and we welcome very much the fact that they have intercepted a boat in their own territorial waters.
On all accounts, on all available evidence, the boat was heading towards Australia. It was interdicted by Indonesian authorities in Indonesian waters. That's a very good thing, we welcome that very much and it's now a matter for them to work through the current situation. We've been working very closely with them just as we have been enhancing our engagement with other countries in that region as we all face these push factors. Malaysia is one example, Sri Lankan government another.
Matt Wade: Do you see any change in Australian policy as more and more boats come?
Stephen Smith: We've done a number of things, and people can describe these as change of policy, if they want to. The first thing we've done is that we've applied much greater resources to the border protection and surveillance capacity.
Secondly, we've also tried to apply much greater priority to cooperation and collaboration with friends and partners in the region to enhance the capacity of transit countries to stop the flow. That's why we've enhanced our engagement with Indonesia, we've enhanced our engagement with Malaysia, we've enhanced our engagement with the Sri Lankan government and we'll do that across the region.
We've known for some time and we've no secret about it, the Prime Minister , the Immigration Minister, Home Affairs or Police Minister, myself , we've all stated we are now facing very significant, considerable push factors. Afghanistan, Pakistan border area, Sri Lanka and we just, like the rest of the world have to deal with this problem.
I certainly don't subscribe to the theory put about by the Opposition that what's occurring is somehow a result of changes that the Government and the Immigration Minister have made to processing or Visa arrangements, they keep saying this, the suggestion that abolition of TPVs is the cause of this. The last time I looked when the previous government introduced TPVs, in the two years following the introduction of the TPVs there are about 10,000 arrivals. So, I certainly don't accept that suggestion.
We face a very difficult situation that we are applying ourselves very conscientiously and diligently to. At the heart of that work is cooperation with neighbors in that region, cooperation with International institutions like the International Organisation for Migration and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees to address it.
Matt Wade: If the numbers continue to rise, what will be the response?
Stephen Smith: In all of these circumstances, if you've got to take it in my view step by step. We have seen a very successful interdiction by the Indonesian Government. That's a very good thing and we'll continue to work very closely with them. But there's never any point in these circumstances in engaging in hypotheticals or engaging in predicting the future or trying to predict the future. And there's certainly no sense in banding around numbers as I've seen in the last 24 hours.
Matt Wade: One of the things I find here is that, there's more than a hundred thousand Sri Lankan Tamil refugees in the South of India, two and a half million Afghan refugees in Pakistan. A lot of Afghan refugees here. You think, we've lost perspective?
Stephen Smith: It's precisely the point I am making. With just drawing attention to those factors underlines: one, this is a regional and international problem; two, I don't think all of those things are caused by the Australian government's abolition of Temporary Protection Visas.
Matt Wade: Do you think the Australian public maybe, is over reacting to the scale of the problem?
Stephen Smith: I think it is very important to Australia and to Australians to have the migration system of integrity. Historically when we've seen irregular arrivals, irregular boat arrivals, whether it is the arrival of the asylum seekers or refugee seekers from Vietnam. Whether it was in the Howard years or whether it's now, Australia and the Australians don't like to see irregular arrivals because that impinges about the integrity of our migration procedures.
That's why we've been working very hard to try and stem the flow. It's also why, both this Government and historically Australia has run a generous humanitarian refugee program through the UNHCR. It is the irregular nature of the arrivals that is what the Australian community and Australian Government want to see addressed and in the Government's case is moving and trying to address.
Matt Wade: I've just been up in Pakistan, I value your comment on the events in the last week, where there has been this resurgence in very active sort of awful terrorist attacks. Are you concerned that there's a growing problem of militancy in Pakistan?
Stephen Smith: We've been concerned that the difficulties faced in the Pakistan Government for some time and the recent events which Australia has obviously condemned. The recent events just continue to underline the difficult circumstances that Pakistan and the Pakistan government is in.
But, I was in Pakistan in January, February of this year and one of the things that Australia had been saying to Pakistan and in general was that the difficulties that Pakistan was facing were not just difficulties on the Afghanistan, Pakistan border but they were deeper than that.
At the first meeting of the Friends of Democratic Pakistan in New York in the margins of the UN General Assembly in September 2008, I made the comment that Australia regarded these difficulties as a threat to Pakistan's very existence. It took some time for Pakistan to acknowledge that but I think that real progress has been made in the course of this year.
Firstly, that's now being acknowledged, not just by the Pakistan Government, but essentially by the Pakistan political elite, and by the Pakistan military. As a consequence of that you've seen the Pakistan Government, supported by the Parliament, the media, the community, move militarily against extremists in the North West Frontier Province and the border areas. As a consequence of that you've seen some corresponding responses from the Pakistan Taliban but progress is being made.
No one should under appreciate the difficulty of the circumstance, but also we've been saying for some time Pakistan is strategically a very important country. It's importantly strategically placed in South Asia, on population projections by the middle of the century will be the largest Muslim populated country in the world. It has Nuclear weapons.
It's a significant strategic country and the international community and regional community including Australia can't afford to allow Pakistan to allow to fall to the hands of the extremists and terrorists. That's why we support them, not just Australia, but the international community through the Friends of Democratic Pakistan in New York this year. At the General Assembly, there was a Friends of Democratic Pakistan meeting, leaders led which was chaired by Obama, Zardari and Gordon Brown which the Prime Minister and I, both attended but leaders of about a dozen countries attended that.
So there is significant international community support. In our case, when I went to Pakistan, I announced the doubling of our development assistance to Pakistan and also announced an increase in the number of Pakistan officers that we will train.
In New York the Prime Minister announced a further increase. We are now gearing up to train, on short and longer term courses up to a 140 Pakistan military officers a year. That will see us to be the second largest trainer of Pakistan Army after the United States. That's a significant and important contribution and that's been welcomed by the international community. Pakistan faces very difficult, economic, social and security problems and it's in our interest and in our region's interest and the international community's interest for all of us to be giving Pakistan as much assistance as we can.
Matt Wade: Just two quick questions on Afghanistan. There's an announcement overnight that the British government would be committing 500 more troops to Afghanistan. Brown's expected to announce it today . There's speculation, the US may also increase troops . Are you going to rethink Australia's troop commitments?
Stephen Smith: Two things, firstly, I'll await until Prime Minister Brown makes an announcement, if any. Secondly, I was in London last week as part of the European Union consultations and I spoke to a number of UK Officials. So, I'll leave Prime Minister Brown to make any announcement about that. Of course, what the UK government does is a matter for the UK government but they are making a very substantial contribution.
So far, as United States is concerned, as I've made clear in the past publicly and privately, we recently increased our contribution in Afghanistan from 1100 to 1550 that was now three or four months ago and we believe now we are the largest non NATO contributor. We are the tenth largest military contributor over all and we are not expecting to receive a request from the United States or from NATO or from ISAF colleagues for additional military contribution. We certainly haven't received one to date and we're not expecting or anticipating one.
But I have made it clear that we are happy to look at what more we might be able to do on the development assistance or capacity building front. Having said that, we have of course, as part of the increasing military contribution also previously announced some increased contributions and I am happy to have a look at what more we can do, but we are not expecting to receive any request for military contribution.
Journalist: On the election, what is your reading of the quest to come up with the conclusion to the problem?
Stephen Smith: We've been respecting the wishes of the UN Secretary General's Special Representative Kai Eide to not come to a concluded view in advance of the Afghan Election Commission and the Election Complaint's Commission going through their processes. Of course, like everyone else, we are concerned about allegations of fraud and we've made that clear. But, we will give that process the chance to come to a conclusion.
I've made the point, and I think, importantly made the point both before and after the election, that whoever emerges as the government of Afghanistan whether it is a reelected Karzai government, whether it's Abdullah Abdullah, whether it's a combination of the two, because I have seen suggestions, as you were saying, suggestions of government of national unity.
Whatever emerges from the Afghan processes, Australia and the international community do need to see significant progress on what we regard as some key issues: on corruption and governance, on anti-narcotics and also respect for people's human rights in particular respect for the rights of women. I've made these points directly to my counterpart Foreign Minister Spanta in New York and the international community would also require that.
So, we are patiently waiting for those processes to complete. We will of course deal with whatever Afghan Government emerges from the process, but whoever, or whatever the shape of the Government, our first point would be that we need to see substantial progress on these fronts.
Matt Wade: Are you concerned that the Commonwealth games could, if there are security problems in India, could fall onto diplomatic issues?
Stephen Smith: Again, there is no point in dealing on this front in hypotheticals. We know and India knows and South Asia knows that there is a potential for terrorist attacks in this region. We've seen them in the past, just as we've seen them more directly in our region in South East Asia. No one's blind to that, that's the first point. The Indian authorities are certainly not blind to it.
India wants to have a very successful Commonwealth games and we wish that for India as well. The key thing is we've of course been involved at official level, for the planning for the security arrangements. We've been consulted as we should, we are happy with that consultation that's been occurring with other Commonwealth countries. So the key thing that I am satisfied about at the moment is the consultations occurring and the planning occurring. And, as the event comes closer, then the heightened activity so far as the security preparedness and the like would occur.
But there is no point in speculating about what-if's. There are some fundamentals that we know. That in the modern world however so regrettably, we can't just walk out and enjoy a sporting spectacle without paying some attention to security issues. The last thing we can do is to be complacent and the last thing that the Indians are doing is being complacent. We've also said, as I said, previously we have our own experience from the holding of large sporting and other events and we are very happy to share this experience with India. Whether it's shared thing that we've learnt from Sydney Olympics or from Commonwealth games in Melbourne.
Matt Wade: How come it's set for you to go to Mumbai two days before Diwali and it wasn't set for Mr. Brumby to go?
Stephen Smith: Mr. Brumby reads our travel advice as does his officials and makes his own judgment. I read our travel advice and I make my own judgments and it'll be no surprise to you that I am of course satisfied with the security arrangements that have been made for my visit, both to Delhi and to Mumbai.
[ENDS]
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