Opening Remarks - ASEAN-Australia post ministerial conference with Mr K Shanmugam, Foreign Minister of Singapore

Bali

Subjects: ASEAN Foreign Ministers' meeting

Transcript, E&OE, proof only

21 July 2011

KASIVISWANATHAN SHANMUGAM: Welcome to this post-ministerial conference which I have the privilege of co-chairing with Mr Rudd. I think that you will find next to you a set of documents, the provisional agenda - [indistinct] the order of proceedings, and the next documents for the other agenda items.

If then we agree we will proceed according to the provisional agenda. Unless I see anyone objecting to it I think we will start with the opening remarks by the co-chairs, myself and Mr Rudd, then we'll invite views from the Excellencies present, and we will reveal the ASEAN-Australian cooperation and future direction which his Excellency Mr Rudd will lead on.

And we will then deal with other matters then closing remarks.

With your consent I will now deliver my opening remarks. First I think everyone will join me in warmly welcoming Mr Rudd to this ASEAN-Australian Post Ministerial Conference. I think this is the first time both of us are co-chairing the MC. But I, it… I think we should stress nevertheless that we are both committed to and looking forward to working closely, to really further deepen and strengthen the ASEAN Australian relationship.

Australia become - became ASEAN's first dialogue partner in 1974. And it has been a very good friend and partner since then. We had a good and successful summit last year and we are looking forward to the future. Australia has made valuable contributions to ASEAN over the years through multi development cooperation projects.

We are pleased to note the good progress that has been made in the implementation of the projects under the plan of action to implement the joint declaration on the ASEAN Australian Comprehensive Partnership 2008-2013 which spans cooperation across all three of ASEAN's community pillars.

We are also deeply appreciative of Australia's assistance and contributions to community building efforts, particularly through the second phase of the ASEAN Australia Development Cooperation Program, or AADCP2, for 2008-2013.

The point emphasises you know that often our many statements of intention, expressions of goodwill or cooperation - but I think in the case of Australia all of us will say it's been followed up with real substantive tangible contribution on the part of Australia. And we appreciate that extremely. We've put on record our appreciation and we hope that the partnership will continue for mutual benefit into the future.

As a region that faces the constant threat of natural disasters, ASEAN also welcomes Australia's support for initiatives that enhance both regional preparedness and the individual countries capacities in the field of disaster relief and management.

Another key initiative is the ASEAN Australian New Zealand FTA, which entered into force in January 2010.

And I think we are all looking forward to its full implementation soon.

The AANZ FTA is a key building block towards the creation of an integrated regional economy, and will form part of the foundation for the eventual realisation of the comprehensive economic partnership for East Asia.

Australia has been active in the ANZ FTA economic cooperation support program which seeks to realise the full benefits of this FTA for all parties and which we equally support.

Cooperation in the economic [indistinct] steadily making progress. And we have also worked hard to ensure that the good initiatives under the other two ASEAN community pillars - ASEAN and Australian senior officials have agreed to establish a new mechanism - the ASEAN Australia joint cooperation committee, or JCC, to focus on overall development areas and strategic directions in ASEAN Australia's Development Cooperation.

This is an extremely important development which will give concrete form to try and take things forward.

The JCC will be a separate but complimentary platform to the existing joint planning and review committee, which will continue to focus on activities under the AADCP2. And we look forward to the early convening of its inaugural meeting.

Allow me now to move on to an issue which cuts across all three pillars. As you are aware, ASEAN connectivity is an integral part of our community building efforts.

We are very appreciative of Australia's announcement at last year's summit that Australia would be contributing $130 million Australian worth of new initiatives to promote regional connectivity. The master plan on ASEAN connectivity is now in the implementation phase, and is an ambitious project that will bring benefits not only to ASEAN but also to the wider Asia-Pacific region.

An ASEAN that is more interconnected will contribute to economic stability and prosperity in the region by making ASEAN economies more competitive and resilient.

In turn this will present a bigger market for Australia's goods and services and improve the production and distribution network - thereby reducing business costs and facilitating trade.

The successful implementation of ASEAN connectivity initiative will also provide the necessary physical connectivity to realise the trading relationship catered for under the AANZ FTA.

Moving forward ASEAN seeks to work with dialogue partners such as Australia as well as other stakeholders to fully implement the master plan in a self-sustaining way.

We believe that there is a need to involve the private sector, through tangible and bankable public private partnerships in many areas, including infrastructure, energy, IT, which present real business opportunities for companies with all priority projects under the master plan.

There are also opportunities in developing institutional and maritime connectivity in the region. We hope that Australia and ASEAN will find ways to deepen cooperation in promoting the ASEAN connectivity initiative, for instance it could be useful for Australia to work with ASEAN member states to jointly organise seminars and workshops focusing on PPP projects, to publicise ASEAN connectivity to the ASEAN and Australian business communities.

Such a grant would also serve as a useful networking tool for business communities. Another option is for Australia to consider forming a taskforce to work with ASEAN Connectivity Coordinating Committee to develop proposals that would tap on mutual complementarities.

After all, the strong and substantial ASEAN Australia relationship will and can only be to our mutual benefit in the long run.

On that note I would like to now invite his Excellency Mr Rudd to give his opening remarks.

KEVIN RUDD: Thank you very much. And thank you very much for the warm welcome here in Bali this morning.

Australia regards ASEAN as a huge success story. And we are mindful after the history of south-east Asia to know how big a success story it has been.

ASEAN's extraordinary success in building a region of Southeast Asia built on strategic and economic cooperation. Given the history which preceded it is a remarkable achievement. And I think it's one which the world at large needs to recognise.

Given the history of intra-regional conflict which existed here in decades past, the fact that we are all around this table - with our friends in ASEAN have put their minds to developing an ASEAN community by 2015 - is I think one of the great success stories in the history of international relations.

This is a region of vast differences, of vastly different cultural assumptions, vastly different political assumptions. And when people stand around the world and criticise ASEAN for one thing or another, they actually don't grasp what has been achieved here.

So I'd like to state, very firmly and clearly at the outset, how we in Australia see this as a remarkable achievement on the part of all the governments which form a part of the Association of South East Asian nations.

Secondly we in Australia have sought, over the history of ASEAN, to play our part as a cooperation partner. As my friend and colleague the Foreign Minister of Singapore has just said we were the first dialogue partner of ASEAN and we're proud of that fact.

We've sought to work with the association South East Asian nations not just in bold declarations but in concrete action on the ground over the last 37 years. And this has been very much an intergenerational achievement of many many of my predecessors and many many of your predecessors around this table, and one of which we believe we should be proud of.

I think if we were to pause briefly over the history of the last 30, 40 years in our engagement with ASEAN I might try and characterise it in these terms. Back in the '70s we saw the emphasis as being primarily on developing cooperation, and that of course has continued in one form or another, but that was a large part of what we did in the first decade plus of our engagement with this region.

Then into the '80s we saw ourselves increasingly engaged in a rapidly expanding trade and investment relationship with all the economies represented around this table. And that too has been an extraordinary success story with our emphasis through ASEAN and more widey through APEC on market access, market openness to the benefit of us all.

Then if we move on to the '90s we see the emergence of course of efforts to begin to institution build across our region more broadly. Moving towards what ASEAN now seeks to do in terms of creating this ASEAN community by 2015, with us in Australia - and I thank all the governments around the table for this - the successful conclusion of the ASEAN Australia New Zealand Free Trade Agreement and also our work together in shaping brand new regional institutions such as the East Asian Summit. Of course the core of which lies here in ASEAN itself.

And that brings us to the challenges we face today. If we were to look back across that course of time and try and mark a report card on how we have gone, on the development assistance relationship so many of the economies around this table in the last 30 or 40 years have seen their per capita incomes rise and rise extraordinarily, and we have been pleased to play a part in that.

And today we are now a billion dollar plus annually development partners with various countries and economies around this table, our friends in Indonesia. I've just been recently to Burma and elsewhere.

And it's good to see changes occurring on the ground where we have been able to be effective, practical partners in development of these economies and societies.

If we were to look at the trade relationship, the volume of trade and investment between us is now quite huge. Between the economies of Southeast Asia and Australia we're now running something like a $62 billion plus annual trade relationship between your economies and Australia, a $100 billion plus investment relationship, and when the ASEAN Australia New Zealand Free Trade Agreement comes into force this will simply go from strength to strength. And this has been a great achievement.

Of course when you look also at the other things we have sought to build in Southeast Asia our links between Australia and ASEAN in education, in science and technology and what the minister just referred to, which I think is the great ASEAN agenda of connectivity. And we've also seen real progress on our part, effective cooperation as well.

Decades ago we in Australia ran something called the Colombo Plan, that is a scholarships program which extended across most of the countries represented around this table. Tens of thousands of scholars over the decades have studied in Australia and returned to their countries to make their contribution.

Now we run the Australia Awards, the Colombo Plan's successor, and I think in just the last year 1500 of those Australia Awards go out to students of Southeast Asia to come and study subjects and courses of their choice and their Government's choice in Australia. And this is a good thing as well.

In the other arm of our work together, which is institution building, we have also made real progress when it comes to the evolution of the East Asian Summit. And I thank our colleagues from around the table again for ensuring that Australia was included at the outset from the point of the Kuala Lumpur declaration back in 2005 through to where we have now sought to take this institution in the deliberations among us, and for the first time this year the United States and Russia to participate in the East Asian Summit at head of government level.

And that is a tribute to the combined statesmanship of those represented around this table.

As we seek to take the vision of ASEAN, this region of peaceful cooperation, strategic cooperation, economic cooperation, out to the wider East Asian region at large.

And that is where I think wider East Asia has much to learn from the institutional knowledge - and success - of the Association of South East Asian Nations.

One of the things that we'll discuss as we moved into East Asian Summit form later in the week is how we build confidence and security building measures across the region as well.

We in Australia again stand ready to assist in that.

And what we have advocated for a long time, since the 2009 EAS summit, is the worthwhile nature of all of us within ASEAN and beyond ASEAN and wider East Asia in cooperating more decisively - and effectively - in how we counter the great wave of natural disasters which have afflicted our wider region over recent decades.

Colleagues, if you look at the United Nations data about the reported incidents of natural disasters here in East Asia over the last 20 or 30 years, there has been a doubling in the measurement numbers of those natural disasters of scale here in our part of the world.

I think the people of our region, therefore, are calling upon us to work increasingly seamlessly in dealing with a disaster when it hits on day one, so that we can preserve a maximum number of lives.

I know a huge amount of work that's been done within ASEAN itself on this and we in Australia have partnered with various national governments including our friends in Indonesia post-tsunami on the Jakarta centre for counter disaster management.

Well I think now the challenge for us is to take that vision more broadly across the wider East Asian region, and I look forward to our deliberations together on that at the latter part of the week.

Finally Mr Chairman if I could say this. For us in Australia this is a strategic relationship of long-term significance - Australia and the Association of South East Asian Nations. We have come a long way in 37 years, and we believe that there is a long way still to go.

But the report card so far is one of extraordinary internal success for ASEAN itself - and I believe in terms of the Australia ASEAN engagement, one of marked - and definable - and measurable external success as well.

So for us in Australia I simply say on behalf of our government that we look forward to deepening at every level possible our political, strategic, security, economic, investment, trade, education, science, and technology, and cultural engagement with the countries of this great association.

Thank you very much.

KASIVISWANATHAN SHANMUGAM: Thank you your Excellency for those very warm and positive remarks. I think we all appreciate the contributions of Australia and you've already put it in context, the nature of the relationship.

And if I may put a tangible point that I could extract one illustration, your reference to Colombo Plan. As a high school student I used to hear of Colombo Plan scholars, but wondered why if they all were from Australia, [indistinct] Australia studying, and it's called Colombo Plan.

Slowly I worked it out - that is I worked it out. And you will be glad to know that a number of our Cabinet ministers on [indistinct], a number of other [indistinct] are all Colombo Plan scholars.

That's the kind of impact I think in a real, tangible way that these initiatives have across various sectors.

And you know, they're [indistinct] friends of Australia. Thank you again for your contributions, and remarks and if we could ask the media now to leave the room so that we move to the next session.

END.

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