I have been here in Brazil over the last few days attending the Rio+20 event and it's a great credit to Brazil that an international meeting of that magnitude has been held in this wonderful city.
During the course of being here over the last few days I've had the opportunity to meet again with the President of Brazil, President Rousseff.
We have come to know each other in the context of the G20 where we attend a meeting each year for economies to come together and talk about circumstances in the global economy.
But we met yesterday and entered a strategic partnership between our two countries which is a recognition that Australia and Brazil can have a more interlinked future.
I actually think that there are a lot of similarities between our two nations.
We both have a very sizable land mass, we are both great agricultural producers, we are both producers of minerals, of commodity that are in great demand in the world, we are both seeing the changes in our economy that that kind of demand for resources can lend.
Both here in Brazil and in Australia we can see a patchwork effect in our economy where the strength of your resources sector can mean some troubled times for other parts of your economy, for example manufacturing.
These are issues, policy issues, structural adjustment issues in our economy which we share and about which we can share perspectives.
We're also nations very focused on clean energy as part of what is going to power our future.
In Australia, we are focused on that through putting a price on carbon which will start on the first of July and focused on it through two new agencies we have developed as part of our carbon pricing package and Clean Energy Future.
The Clean Energy Finance Corporation, a $10 billion fund to partner with the private sector on clean energy developments and a body we're calling Arena which is really about supporting an catalysing the innovation we will need as a planet to see us move in an era of ever growing energy demands to cleaner and cleaner energy sources.
So I'm very much looking forward to the business roundtable discussion.
I think it is a nice symmetry that yesterday the President and I agreement on a strategic partnership between our two countries and here we are today, talking about making that very practical and real by building business to business links.
It's also terrific to be able to start that process off with a celebration.
So we shouldn't give the impression that we are starting this discussion on a clean sheet of paper as if there's been no work together in the past.
There's been good work together in the past but there is more to do to build on that work.
But here today we are seeing the products of the fruit of that good work together with the agreement between Pacific Hydro and Vale.
Pacific Hydro being involved in the development of wind energy here in Brazil and of course your company, Vale being such a global giant.
So this is a good partnership to be able to witness the signing of the memorandum and I think it starts as an example of what we can achieve together through this business dialogue and through the linkages between our two great nations.