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JOURNALIST: [inaudible]

STEPHEN SMITH: [inaudible]… one of the charges, the bribery charge where he acknowledged and admitted guilt. Unfortunately Australian officials were not present for the second charge, the commercial secrets charge, so we are not in a position to make a judgement or a comment on that. As I have said publicly before, I think that was a lost opportunity that would have helped clarify matters not just for the lawyers in the case, but also for the international business community.

JOURNALIST: [inaudible] …what's your impression of the Australia pavilion?

STEPHEN SMITH: Firstly, it is the largest Expo pavilion Australia has ever presented. This is, of course, the largest Expo itself. That's a great credit to China. It brings China to the world and the world to China. And of course from Australia's perspective, having it in Shanghai is very important because this is the single most concentrated city so far as Australian and Chinese trade and investment is concerned.

But we are very proud of our pavilion, we think it shows the modern Australia. We think it shows a vibrant multicultural prominent Australia making its way in the world. We are very pleased that our pavilion has been engaged in a number of firsts. We were the first foreign pavilion to start, we were the first foreign pavilion to finish and most importantly, we were the first foreign pavilion that President Hu Jintao visited.

We believe it's been very popular and will continue to be popular with Chinese people and international visitors and since Expo opened on the first of May we've had over a half a million visitors.

So we're very pleased with its popularity, we think it showcases Australia, and we think it will help investment trade and business links between Australia and China. We also believe it will help China and the world understand the modern tolerant sophisticated Australia.

JOURNALIST: Mr Smith, there have been many high level military visits to Australia and China and some experts on China [inaudible]…

STEPHEN SMITH: Well last week the Vice Chair of the Military Commission General Guo was in Canberra. He met with the Defence Minister for formal Australia-China defence talks.

He also met with the Prime Minister and met with me, and we regard that as very important.

Australia, of course — we commenced our modern relationship with China in 1972 when we established diplomatic relations, when we commenced our “one China” policy to which we have adhered ever since. Since that time, most people have focused on our economic, trade and commercial relationship which of course is very important, not just in minerals and petroleum resources but also more generally, agriculture, legal and financial services, a range of education services.

So our economic relationship is all-encompassing and very important. There is I think an underappreciation of the other aspects of the relationship. Shortly after I became Foreign Minister, Foreign Minister Yang and I conducted the First Strategic Dialogue between Australia and China in Canberra in 2008. I was in Beijing last year to conduct the second of our Strategic Dialogues. So the defence talks reflect the growth of the relationship and we regard defence consultation and defence cooperation as a very important part of our relationship.

JOURNALIST: The Rio Tinto case the final appeal was upheld yesterday by the Shanghai Higher People's Court, so what's your comment on the single Australia relationship after all this trial?

STEPHEN SMITH: Well the relationship is in very good shape. Yes, in recent times we've had differences over the Stern Hu matter. But the strength of the relationship continues and we have learnt in recent times to manage such issues in a way which doesn't impact adversely on our relationship.

Yesterday of course, you're quite right, his three fellow employees, Chinese nationals who are not Australian citizens had their appeal dealt with. Their appeal was unsuccessful. Stern Hu himself did not appeal. But as a consequence of the completion of the appeal process yesterday, what will now occur is that Stern Hu will in due course be transferred from the detention centre and transferred to a Shanghai jail for overseas male convicted prisoners.

We will continue to provide him with consular support and assistance, as we have been doing from day one, as we are also providing support and assistance to his family.

Thank you very much.

[ENDS]

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