PM: I wanted to take the opportunity to update people on the outcomes of yesterday's discussions and work and also to outline what I will be doing in Vietnam today.
First can I say the East Asia Summit concluded successfully yesterday.
I was very pleased to see that the Summit formally agreed to US and Russia becoming members of the East Asia Summit and participating fully from next year.
There was an important focus at the Summit on economic integration and connectivity, including through a region wide, comprehensive, economic partnership and through further discussions between Finance Ministers. There was also an agreement in the role regional organisations play in promoting regional stability through dialogue and co-operation.
I do note that members stress the importance of stability on the Korean Peninsula and this is referred to on one paragraph of the Chairman's statement and I mentioned the matter in my intervention. I'm pleased to see that in the Chairman's statement.
In addition there was a discussion, mention of the forthcoming elections in Burma. This matter is also dealt with in the Chairman's statement, stressing the importance of free and transparent elections in Burma.
There was an agreement to convene an Education Minister's meeting. Of course very important links are built through people to people links. There is no better way of doing that than through shared education co-operation.
There was also a recognition that globalisation brings a range of transnational challenges. I raised Australia's determination to tackle people smuggling through a regional framework and the question of people smuggling and the need for co-operation through the Bali Process is referred to in the Chair's statement and I'm pleased to see that.
At the EAS, the East Asia Summit I took the opportunity to make a range of announcements about how Australia would continue to work with our partners in East Asia. We committed to an expenditure of $32 million to combat infectious diseases and pandemics, a $10 million commitment for disaster response initiatives, the creation of 7,500 Australia ward scholarships for students from EAS countries to study in Australia over the next four years.
We are also pleased to support a Chair of Ecology and Environment Studies at Nalanda University in India, and Nalada University was frequently mentioned by leaders in the course of discussions at the East Asia Summit.
I also had the opportunity yesterday to chair and be involved in the ASEAN Australian Summit. This is the first time such a summit has been conducted since 1977, so it's been a long time in between. It was a good opportunity to meet with the leaders of the ten ASEAN countries. It was a good opportunity to highlight the importance of the Australia-New Zealand ASEAN Free Trade Agreement. It was a good place to be able to touch on the importance of regional discussions and finance, climate change, development assistance, education and disaster management and to also touch on the need for better co-operation and further co-operation on transnational crime issues, including people smuggling. I was able during the summit, the ASEAN Australian Summit, to announce that we would provide $132 million for infrastructure in the greater Mekong subregion and $10 million to support the International Labour Organisation to reduce the exploitation of labour migrants. We also indicated at that Summit that we would provide training support for the new ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights, that training support will be provided through our own Human Rights Commission.
I had the opportunity yesterday to also meet with the Prime Minister of India, very much welcomed the opportunity for discussions with Dr Singh. I had met him once before when I travelled to India as Deputy Prime Minister. Our discussions included economic co-operation and trade, international students and he acknowledged and appreciated the efforts the government had taken to address the issues of student safety. We also discussed Afghanistan and India's interest in making sure the mission was successful.
I had the opportunity too to meet briefly with the Leaders of the Philippines and with the Leader of Laos. I had the opportunity to have a brief discussion with Secretary of State Clinton, who is looking forward to her visit to Australia next weekend to participate in the AUSMIN talks, which comprehend our security arrangements and of course will focus on matters like Afghanistan.
Today I will be meeting with the President, Prime Minister and General Secretary of Vietnam. Vietnam is one of Australia's most important and valuable partners in the Asia Pacific, so I'm looking forward to those meetings with the Vietnamese leadership today.
Our trade relations are significant and they're growing, our defence and security links are improving and our educational partnership continues to strengthen. At the meeting today I will be in a position to advise them of a significant new Australian contribution to infrastructure in Vietnam.
I'm also look forward today, to formally opening the new Hanoi campus of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, which is the first foreign owned university in Vietnam, so it's a very special opportunity to be able to do that. I will, when I attend that opening, be making some announcements about further support for Vietnamese students to study in Australia and to study at the Hanoi campus itself.
I will take the opportunity today to also visit the Temple of Literature, here in very historic Hanoi. Hanoi is celebrating its 1000th year anniversary, a very old city, I'll be going to Vietnamese students routinely visit to touch the stone statues for good luck before exams, you always need luck when you're doing exams, so I might as well try that as well.
So I'm looking forward to those events today and I am happy to take questions.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, do you feel like you won any support for your asylum seeker plan?
PM: Well I would refer you to the paragraph which deals with the matter in the Chairman's statement, which says and I quote: "We", this is obviously speaking on behalf of the whole summit, "reaffirmed our commitment to combat people smuggling and trafficking in persons." "We", that is the Summit, "stress the importance of continued bilateral and regional co-operation efforts including through the Bali Process on people smuggling, trafficking in persons and related transnational crime, to address the impact of these and other transnational crimes". So that statement is in the Chairman's words, I think that statement is a continued recognition that people smuggling, like other transnational crime is a regional problem, it's a problem beyond the borders of one country, and therefore addressing the problem requires regional efforts.
JOURNALIST: But it's not specific support for your proposal though, is it?
PM: Look, I came to this summit obviously to indicate, well I came for a wide variety of reasons, to formally agree to the participation of the US and Russia, to talk about the economic liberalisation and trade agenda, the work of Finance Ministers, to push for Education Ministers to meet, I think that's so important, to strengthening relationships.
So obviously I came for a variety of purposes, including putting forward in my bilateral discussions and mentioning in my intervention Australia's regional protection framework and regional processing centre. To put that these issues, which are transnational, do need a regional approach and in the Chairman's words, of course there is agreement that these transnational issues do need regional efforts and a regional approach.
JOURNALIST: Did any of the countries that are member of the Bali Process raise this with you at the summit?
PM: I raised it in my intervention and there were, in other interventions, references to transnational crime, to human trafficking, so these matters were raised and reflected in the words that you see in the statement.
JOURNALIST: Would it be fair to characterise the response to your proposals, as you said about the UN Secretary-General, basically it's been noted, people accept that it will be taken forward through the Bali Process?
PM: I think that's a good question and I think we've got to be clear about levels and engagement here. I'm here, the East Asia Summit, obviously a leaders meeting, talking across a wide variety of issues, as you would expect and those discussions from my intervention included the question of people smuggling and Australia's approach.
In terms of the in-detail discussions, they will happen Bail Process, through the work of the Minister for Immigration, who is already travelling the region. Once again with the UN Secretary-General, I raised it with him for information, obviously the in-detail work is done by the specialist agency within the UN, which is the UN High Commission for Refugees.
JOURNALIST: To what extent will that dominate your meetings in Malaysia and Indonesia?
PM: It will be a matter that I raise amongst a series of other matters. I am obviously having leader to leader discussions with important countries in our region, canvassing all aspects of the relationship: economic, political and strategic, defence and in the course of those broad discussions transnational crime questions include people smuggling.
JOURNALIST: Sorry Prime Minister, would it be fair to say, would it, that you feel you've progressed the issue in your debate?
PM: I'm pleased that there is a specific paragraph on this question in the Chairman's statement. I think that's an indication through the work of officials that have led to the words in the statement, as well as the discussions that occurred directly at the summit, that this is an issue that the region acknowledges needs further work. We have the Bali Process and we will have direct dialogue with countries in our region. As people are aware Minister Bowen has already started that direct dialogue.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, what's your response to reports about the personal behaviour of one of your Cabinet Ministers. Have any Labor MPs raised their concerns with you or your office?
PM: Look, I'm not going to comment on idle gossip.
JOURNALIST: Hillary Clinton yesterday had strong comments to Vietnam about its human rights record and her concerns. Will you be raising human rights concerns in Australia's (inaudible)?
PM: I will be having some comprehensive discussions today with the leaders of Vietnam, I would prefer to comment on what's said after the discussions, rather than before, but we will obviously be talking across the full range of the relationship, which is growing in economic terms, growing in education terms.
There are very strong people to people links, a very big Vietnamese community in Australia and obviously I'll have a specific announcement to make about a further major assistance in an infrastructure project.
JOURNALIST: Do you share Dr Singh's view about the situation in Vietnam?
PM: I'll have the discussions and then we'll talk about matters raised in the discussions, but I anticipate we'll have a comprehensive engagement across all things in the relationship.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, can I ask about the division of labour in setting foreign policy in your government? You have a very experienced Foreign Minister and you yourself have said you are new to the field. He's talked a lot about China, very firm policy on China and it's very similar to what it was. Is that basically his arena, for the moment, while you find your feet?
PM: Foreign policy is set by Cabinet, where it's my intention as Prime Minister and my practise that we run a very traditional model of cabinet government, so foreign policy questions, just like education policy question and finance policy question, health policy questions, come to Cabinet through proper processes.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, just following up on Louise's question, will Australia be accused of being not very brave on the issue of human rights? I mean at a summit like this you have the opportunity to meet with leaders of countries that are notorious for human rights abuses, you met with the Chinese Premier. It seemingly didn't come up in that meeting, why can't we be stronger on a subject that really is the elephant in the room?
PM: I think that's an ahistoric analysis. If you look at Australia's engagement in the region, we obviously have been an advocate of human rights and we continue to be an advocate of human rights. Our position on a series of questions is well known, argued over time.
The fact that one of the pressing matters that I raised at this summit is the forthcoming elections in Burma. It's quintessentially a human rights matter, it's about people having the opportunity to vote in free and fair elections, about the release of political prisoners, including Aung San Suu Kyi, so these matters are in our dialogue constantly in the region. I think it would be not a correct characterisation of Australia's approach to take one discussion and say somehow that comprehends everything we do on these questions.
JOURNALIST: Is it economically imperative though, I mean in Vietnam in the last few days dissidents have been put in jail for making political comments that aren't liked by the administration, yet you and other leaders come here and talk about economics and strategic partnerships when people are being put in jail for simply speaking their minds and that's something we don't accept in our culture.
PM: Leaders have come here for discussions across a broad range of topics, including obviously commenting on two questions in our region that are very pressing: stability on the Korean Peninsula and the forthcoming elections in Burma.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, just back the boat people issue, I understand what you've done here to get that, but as you know back in Australia boats still arrive from time to time, your opponents say you're doing nothing to stop the boats. So can I just ask why you approach the issue at the level you are here, what is your government actually doing in source countries about trying to stop boats?
PM: Well the government works in strong partnership with our regional neighbours to crack down on people smuggling and we've enjoyed some success at that, disrupting people smuggling activities, preventing people getting on boats, which is obviously both feeding into transnational crime, people smuggling, but from the point of view of the individuals involved, are dreadfully fraught and dangerous thing to do.
I refer anybody to the increased investments and efforts we've made, working particularly with the Indonesian authorities, maritime authorities, Indonesian authorities, to address problems of people smuggling. We've worked comprehensively across the region in strengthening, policing and enforcement matters on people smuggling, so that happens, continuously and has been stepped up in terms of the level of resources by the government since 2007, so the amount of money and effort invested in that has very dramatically increased. So that is about addressing people smuggling before people get on boats.
Then of course in Australia we have charged a large number with people smuggling activities, we have increased the strength of our domestic laws, which deal with people smuggling, that happened as recently as May this year. So across the range of areas, working with our neighbours, resourcing law enforcement activities in the countries of our region, our own border protection, which has never been higher than it is now, as well as increasing penalties in our own domestic laws, we've worked across all of those fronts.
JOURNALIST: Is your advice that that's working, because people see boats arriving and then they hear Tony Abbott saying they won't stop the boats and you're acting as you said on multi-levels, but is your advice that the levels you just went through are meaning we are seeing less boats than we otherwise might have?
PM: Certainly there have been activities that have been disrupted, which would have caused boats to come to Australia, there have been effective disruption activities.
In relation to Mr Abbott's slogans, well anyone can wander round mechanically saying three words, that doesn't tell you anything about the policies that would make a difference. I'm being very frank with the Australian people and I have been all along as Prime Minister. This is a complex problem, that will take a range of policies and work over time and we are engaged in that work.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, you referred to the story in today's newspapers as idle gossip. But isn't it destabilising that people within your government are backgrounding against some others and trying to undermine each other, isn't that destabilising to the government.
PM: Idle gossip is just that, idle gossip.
JOURNALIST: You had some discussions on Friday night with the Singaporean Prime Minister about the appropriateness of a foreign government running the ASX, what was the discussion about?
PM: The discussions I had with the Singaporean Prime Minister were that there is a proper process and a Foreign Investment Review Board process and that will work its way through. I did not, in that meeting, and won't in any other circumstance, make comments other than about the process. That process needs to happen through the Foreign Investment Review Board and it's not proper for me as Prime Minister to comment on it whilst it's working its way through that process
JOURNALIST: Are you satisfied that all your Ministers are behaving to a proper standard?
PM: Idle gossip. Idle gossip.
JOURNALIST: Do you have a Melbourne Cup pick? Everybody's waiting for it.
PM: I'm working on it, I'm studying the form and I'll let you know.