Transcript E&OE
26 October 2009
Doorstop interview
Subjects: Visit by the Chinese Executive Vice-Premier to Australia; asylum seekers; people smuggling; foreign investment in Australia.
QUESTION: Mr Smith [inaudible] the visit of the Chinese Vice President [sic] to Australia later this week?
STEPHEN SMITH: He's a very significant figure in the Chinese system. We welcome his visit very much. He's, of course, in their top nine in the Politburo and if you follow the commentary on succession, then there's a very distinct prospect that he may succeed the Premier as Premier. So he's a significant player in the Chinese system and we welcome his visit very much.
QUESTION: Is it a sign of thawing of the relationship?
STEPHEN SMITH: As I said yesterday and again, effectively, today, we have been going through some tense times but we're very confident that we're now effectively back to business as usual and that's a good thing.
We need to deal with whatever difficulties emerge in a long-term context and that's what we're doing.
QUESTION: Minister, there were almost certainly Tamil Tigers among the Sri Lankan refugees. Are you concerned about this and does the fact that someone fought with the Tamil Tigers necessarily preclude them from getting asylum in Australia?
STEPHEN SMITH: I certainly wouldn't be drawn in any public way on particular individual cases or examples. What you can be absolutely reliably assured of is that the Australian Government, and this is consistent with longstanding practice, the Australian government, when it comes to considering people for immigration status in Australia - whether that's refugee or other status - conducts very strenuous health, quarantine and security assessments.
There are very strenuous and significant security assessments which are done on people who come to Australia. That includes, in particular, those people who come in an irregular way, such as people who come on boats, so I'm not and won't be drawn on particular assertions in public or particular examples or particular illustrations, but we do very much and very strenuously apply very high security arrangements to these applications.
QUESTION: Do you condone the use of force to remove the asylum-seekers off the Oceanic Viking?
STEPHEN SMITH: The Oceanic Viking is due to arrive in Indonesia and to port in Indonesia in the course of the day. The precise arrangements will be a matter for the Indonesian and Australian officials, border protection and customs officials. The people on board the Oceanic Viking from border protection and customs officials have as their priority the safety and wellbeing of those people on board. We hope and expect very much that they will, in an orderly way, be transferred from the Oceanic Viking to Indonesian authorities' responsibility and we'll just take that step by step.
I've seen such suggestions. Let's just wait and see how the transfer occurs. We would want that to be done in a peaceful, peaceable, orderly and civilised way and at this stage I'm confident that that can occur.
QUESTION: Can you tell us any more about the deal that's been struck between Australia and Indonesia with regards to asylum-seekers?
STEPHEN SMITH: As I made clear repeatedly, both last week in the Parliament and generally and also yesterday, we have our Lombok Treaty agreement which sets the basis for the modern relationship between Australia and Indonesia. That has, as part of it, a provision, a capacity for arrangements on people movements and people-smuggling.
We also have the Bali Process, which we chair.
We've agreed with President Yudhoyono that our officials will discuss what more we can do, whether it's on information sharing, intelligence sharing, on disruption, on assistance for detention, on assistance for processing and assistance for settlement and resettlement.
Those people who are detained in Indonesia, of course we want very much to see them detained in appropriate conditions. That's why successive Australian governments have made a contribution to detention facilities in Indonesia. Our predecessors did that. We've done that and I've made it clear publicly, as Australian officials have made clear to Indonesian officials, that Australia is very much open to providing further assistance so far as the detention facilities are concerned because it's absolutely essential that people are detained in appropriate conditions and appropriate circumstances.
QUESTION: [Inaudible] the China policy and also the policy for Chinese investment in Australia, and will there be a clear mines China policy or the policy about guiding China's investment in Australia in the near future?
STEPHEN SMITH: Our Foreign investment legislative and regulatory regime is non-discriminatory. We don't identify capital on the basis of which country it comes from. It applies across the board. I made that clear in my speech.
[ENDS]
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