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MR SMITH: Minister, thank you very much for the very warm welcome. I am very pleased to see you again and I am very honoured to be the first Australian Foreign Minister to visit Slovakia.

Australia and Slovakia have very strong people-to-people contacts and there is a strong Slovakian community in Australia.

Slovakia has a very special place in Australia's history. In 1949, the first person to become a naturalized Australian citizen was a resident from Slovakia. So, a very special part of Australian history.

And Minister, you were quite correct that whilst we are far apart in terms of geography, we are very close in terms of our people-to-people contact, very close in terms of the bilateral exchanges that I hope my visit will enhance - the Social Security Agreement
consultations, and the mutual assistance cooperation agreements so far as legal matters are concerned.

From afar, of course, we admire Slovakia's great progress in recent times.

Since 1993, you have become a robust and vibrant democracy, a member of the European Union, a member of NATO, and in that respect, we have come to work closely together through our Australian-European Union Partnership Framework, but also through the work that we do in Afghanistan, both through NATO and through the International Security Assistance Force.

Of course, we are partners in Oruzgan Province and we are working very hard to stare down international terrorism in Afghanistan.

Australia has been very grateful for Slovakia's support for our Australia-European Union Partnership, for our membership of ASEM — the Asia-Europe meeting — and also for Slovakia's strong support of Australia becoming an Asian Partner for Cooperation to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. And Australia and Slovakia working together in these regional institutions is very important to Australia, and we welcome very much Slovakia's strong support for our participation.

So Minister, I hope that my visit will bring our two nations even closer together. It's a great personal honour, and with great personal pride, that I am the first Australian Foreign Minister to visit Bratislava, and to visit Slovakia, and I look forward to a very productive conversation. Thank you.

JOURNALIST:  Will Australia open an Embassy in Bratislava?

MR SMITH: Australia would wish to have representation in Slovakia. We currently have representation through our Ambassador to Vienna. We are going through, as many countries are as a result of the global financial crisis, through resources constraints so that eventually we are not able to make any commitments.

But as in any relationship, it is important to do things step-by-step, and my first visit we regard as important and significant. I hope my colleague can return the compliment at some stage.

But we don't need physical structure to bind us together. The Minister and I have gone through a range of factors, a range of important attributes which bring us closer together and we are very confident that will continue to be the case in the future.

JOURNALIST: (inaudible)

MR SMITH: We encourage very much Slovakian students to come to Australia and it is one of the things the Minister and I will speak about.

Another area where we think there is potential for progress is what we call our Work and Holiday proposal where young Slovakians can come to Australia to combine both tourism and work. So we will discuss both of these potentials in the course of this evening.

But the great beauty, of course, of the Slovakian student coming to Australia is that they get the benefit of an education and when they return home they become Ambassadors for Australia, which is why we strongly support and encourage Slovakian students coming to Australia.

[END]

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