E&OE..........................................................................................
Well thank you very much Gary Ringwood, to my ministerial colleagues
John Anderson and Mark Vaile, to all of the representatives of Telstra
who are here today, the other members of the Supermarket Council,
ladies and gentlemen.
This is certainly a very important and a day of great pride and
achievement for the Supermarket to Asia Council and I would like
to record my personal gratitude to Gary Ringwood for all the energy
that he has brought to bringing this project to fruition. There
is a lot of good news around about the Australian economy at present
and there's justifiable pride in the fact that the Australian
economy has been able to weather the worst of the Asian economic
downturn with less damage than many people believed as little as
six or twelve months ago. And one of the good pieces of news that
I heard this morning at the meeting of the Supermarket to Asia Council
was that despite the downturn that occurred in the Asian-Pacific
region, exports of Australian food over the last 12 months to all
destinations have risen by something in the order of 10 per cent.
And that is a remarkable achievement, given the difficulties in
our part of the world.
The food industry in 1997/98 was valued at $72.6 billion and it
employs more than 500,000 Australians across all regions. And in
1997/98 total food exports were over $18 billion and nearly 60%
of that was earned in Asia. And to continue to expand our markets,
to make certain that the relative success that Australia has thus
far had in escaping the impact of the Asian economic difficulties,
to consolidate that success into greater achievements in the future
we must continue to innovate and aggressively promote ourselves.
And FoodConnect is a clear and practical manifestation of this.
It is a demonstration of how the information economy is becoming
increasingly relevant and crucial to our export industries such
as agriculture. It will allow Australian producers to interact electronically
with customers and businesses in their supply chain. Electronic
commerce offers the potential to new and expanded markets and many
new jobs in our agricultural industries as our efficient competitive
producers take their products to the world. And it will make it
much easier for small and medium sized businesses to get into export
markets giving them larger markets and the capacity to invest and
employ more people.
It is a very exciting development in our drive to become the supermarket
to Asia. It would not have been possible without the assistance
of Telstra and I do want to record the Government's gratitude
to the company for the tremendous assistance and
co-operation and great enthusiasm of which Gary has spoken that
the Telstra organisation brought to this project. It is an exciting
development. I thank all of those associated with it. It represents
one of the great practical outcomes thus far of the Supermarket
to Asia Council's work which I remain very enthusiastic about
and have had the opportunity at the Council meeting this morning,
the first since the recent federal election, to reaffirm my personal
commitment to, and involvement in, and also the very strong commitment
of the Government.
I'm therefore delighted to be here. I'm delighted to
be part of the launch and to formally launch it. Thank you.
[Ends]