Beijing, People's Republic of China
PM: I am joined by Ministers Carr, Emerson and Shorten.
We have just come from a very good meeting with Premier Li, where we had a broad ranging and very positive discussion about the relationship between Australian and China.
I have been delighted across my meetings this week with the President and with the Premier about their evident commitment to the Australia-China relationship and in the words of the President to taking that relationship to a new level.
I came here with the highest level political delegation ever fielded from Australia to China.
We came at the time when the new leadership in China had just emerged and was settling in, and we have had through discussions and work, a breakthrough in the relationship between our two countries.
We have had a very good week for Australia here in China.
The breakthrough in particular is the relationship between our two countries at leader-level and it's institutionalisation into annual leader level meetings.
We've agreed to an enhanced ministerial dialogue, which means each year there would be structured annual leaders meetings to give strategic direction to this incredibly important relationship for our two countries.
We've also agreed to enhance ministerial dialogue to support the work of leaders and that will include an annual foreign and strategic dialogue lead by the Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs with the Chinese Minister for Foreign Affairs.
And there will also be an annual strategic economic dialogue lead by the Treasurer and the Minister of Trade, and on China's side by the Chair of the National Development and Reform Commission.
We have agreed to designate our relationship as a strategic partnership.
That is a recognition that this is a relationship of incredible importance to Australia, it's broad, it's deep, it's complex and it's a relationship that we intend to keep focusing on very strongly into the future, including through these new dialogue arrangements.
In terms of a strategic partnership from China's side, this is a relationship between us and China in terms of the annual dialogue.
This is a relationship that they have with very few countries around the world.
This is a significant breakthrough and I'm very pleased to be able to announce it today.
We have achieved other important outcomes this week.
We've strengthened the future of trade relationship through direct trade of our two currencies on the Chinese mainland.
We've bolstered business-to-business links and I've been pleased this week to see so many senior Australian business people here in China - great Australian companies pursuing work here in China - and I've been very pleased too to meet their Chinese counterparts who are also making a strong contribution to our economic relationship.
We focussed as well the all-important people-to-people links by launching an Australia Week in China to promote tourism and to promote the images of Australia in this country.
We've committed ourselves to work together on the shared challenge of carbon pollution and climate change through a carbon-trading experts group.
We've agreed to work together to deliver aid in the Asia Pacific, to respond to challenges to drug-resistant malaria.
And we will also strengthen defence cooperation through a strategic policy and military capability planning exchange.
These outcomes will well and truly build the truly comprehensive relationship with China we envisaged in the white paper, the Australia in the Asian century White Paper, our national plan for the future which we announced last year.
There are few countries more important to us than China. The outcomes we have achieved this week are a real investment in our future for all Australians.
I'm very glad that we've had such a successful visit.
I'm very happy to have shared this day with my ministerial colleagues, and I'm happy to take your questions now.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, the whole world is focussing on China and wants to strike up relationship with the new Chinese leadership.
You've beaten the rest of Asia to the punch by getting the strategic dialogue that only a couple of other countries of the world have.
How does it feel to have scored that sort of coup and put Australia right in the forefront of this relationship?
PM: Well I'm obviously pleased for our country. This is an important step for Australia, which is why I say this has been a good week for Australia.
A good week for Australia because this relationship is so important to us, and now with this agreement we know that we will command attention here in China, that we will have an annual level leaders' exchange which galvanises our system, their system, to prepare for it, to work through issues and to work together.
That's why it's good news for us and good news for our future.
JOURNALIST: Obviously, at government and diplomatic levels this sort of thing is seen as very important but all people in the street, people back in Australia looking at it, looking for a practical angle to it.
Can you give us some examples of what it might mean for Australians?
PM: I think people in Australia understand how important China is to our economic future. I think they understand that very deeply.
And I think people too have an intuitive sense that as China continues to rise that there are strategic changes in our region with implications for Australia and we need to be able to understand them and work through them.
I think people would understand too, that right around the world countries are competing for China's attention.
They want to come to China and be heard. They want their issues to be right there at the forefront of thinking in China.
That is understandable as this great power continues to rise.
What we have secured, through an annual leaders' level dialogue and the supporting ministerial dialogues, is a structure that says we'll be there at the table.
We won't have to compete every time to get to the table. We'll be there at the table working on the issues that deeply matter to both of us.
And of course that goes to peace and stability in our region, it goes to our economic relationship, it goes to the shared big-picture challenges of climate change that the world necessarily has to focus on, and that our two countries have to focus on.
JOURNALIST: These things can drive reform, because leaders can drive bureaucracies et cetera.
Do you have any priorities in terms of what you want to achieve now that you can get to the table with the Chinese Premier?
PM: Well we've of course had discussions at Premier level. I've met regularly with the Premier, with the President, so we've got a good relationship now.
But this is about getting to a new stage and that's why it's a real breakthrough.
The things that are on our agenda are the things that we've been working on this week; deepening our economic ties and broadening them.
We want to see diverse economic links, trade and investment links.
Strengthening our people-to-people links because nothing's more important to our understandings for the future.
Continuing to work on our defence links because that helps build trust and cooperation.
Working on shared challenges like climate change for the future.
Working on the shared challenges of development in our region where too many people die of preventable causes, and we've seen things like drug-resistant malaria.
But it's a relationship of course where we will work on the two issues that matter to Australia and China, our bilateral relationship.
But as we aspire to make this a more and more comprehensive relationship, it's also about what we can do together, working within our region and within the world, structures like the East Asia Summit and the G20 and APEC where we work together.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, can you give us some background as to how this came about. When did you first start working on it?
And given that the leadership change was so relatively recently, what does it mean and what does it say about how China values Australia, that this is effectively one of the first things that the Chinese leadership team has done?
PM: Well, I wrote last April, so in April 2012, to the then President, to President Hu.
But Senator Bob Carr, as Minister for Foreign Affairs, travelled to China in May 2012 and pursued some discussions. So I wrote the letter and Senator Carr was here pursuing discussions.
I then asked Dennis Richardson, who is of course a very senior and experienced public servant, to act as my special envoy on this question, and he travelled to China in September last year.
Then we knew that we would see the leadership change in China and that there were certain formal processes that needed to go through as the leadership changed.
And in the very short window, between the formal change of leadership and this visit, I spoke to the Premier by telephone.
JOURNALIST: Just a sense of the significance in terms of the history of the relationship, is it the most important development since Whitlam came here in the 70s?
PM: Look, I think when people write the history of this relationship they will, of course, always start it with Gough Whitlam and that tremendously courageous decision that he made to have diplomatic relations with China.
And sitting here today, I don't think we feel the weight of that decision perhaps the way we should. It was a truly courageous decision in its time.
And there have been steps forward in the relationship since. When the history of the relationship is written, this will be remembered-
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PM: When the history of this relationship is written, I think this will be remembered as a day that a big step forward was taken.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, what do you think Gough would think or what you hope he thinks of your work today?
PM: I think, for those of us that care about this relationship, and work on this relationship - obviously Gough's role is the stuff of legend and the stuff of history, understandably - I'm not really reflecting on it through his eyes.
But certainly Gough has a lot to be proud of in creating modern Australia through what he did to create this relationship.JOURNALIST: A fairly important legacy of your prime ministership (inaudible)?
PM: This is an important breakthrough for us and I'm obviously very pleased, but I'm pleased for Australia, it's been a good week here.
It's a step forward for us as a nation, that's important for us.
It's important to the people of Australia, it's important to peace, stability, the ability to talk about those things, the ability to talk about our economic relationship in a structured dialogue every year.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister you said, I believe you were quoted as saying at some stage that foreign policy and foreign affairs issues had not been the top priority for you in your political life.
Are you getting into it now?
PM: I've taken this question quite a few times, as it happens.
And I think what you will find I said I talked about how I would always feel very comfortable, indeed feel most comfortable in classrooms in Australia talking to kids about their future.
As I think you've seen from the nature of the foreign policy engagements that I have, I have now conspired to make sure that I now go to classrooms around the world.
And I very much enjoyed the exchange with the young people in the classroom today.
And those exchanges, obviously these important leader-level discussions are the stuff of foreign policy, but I'd have to say it's often the exchanges that I have with young people, like the one I had today, which gives me the most heartwarming sense about the future for our two countries.
JOURNALIST: Notwithstanding my earlier technical slip up, could you tell us about how you found Premier Li Keqiang and do you think also that perhaps he's a Premier that, given his fluency in English, his affinity with the west, that he is maybe a leader with which Australia can build, sort of a deeper and warmer relationship, that people had previously tried to build but had be less successful with the likes of say Hu Jintao?
PM: Human beings are different, and everybody‘s got a different style and different personality.
I enjoyed my engagements with President Hu and with Premier Wen. I had the opportunity to meet Premier Li before.
We in fact reflected on our earlier meetings in 2009 in Australia and then in 2011 when I travelled here as Prime Minister.
He's an outgoing person to talk to, a real sense of humour, quick to smile and to share a joke. I think in an Australian style we enjoy that.
We like a sense of friendly warmth in a conversation rather than all the formality that can go with these occasions, so I did get a sense of warmth and engagement from him.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, you had quite length talks with the Premier today. What other dimensions of the relationship did you get into?
And as you foreshadowed in recent days, did you speak about the Australians detained in China? If so, what did you say, and what did the Premier say?
PM: I did raise a range of consular issues.
I'm not intending to go into them by the names of individuals. People that are the subject to consular cases are entitled to their privacy too.
But I raised a range of consular issues, because in terms of raising that kind of matter it's appropriate to do it with the Premier and so I did that today.
Our discussions on consular cases will continue.
We talked broadly about our relationship, we obviously talked intensively about the annual dialogue that we're announcing today.
We talked about our economic relationship, about the steps forward we've taken on that during this visit, about our aspirations for a free trade agreement, about our aspirations for strengthening economic ties because that's good for both our countries, it's good for Australian jobs.
We talked about regional peace and security. We referred to tensions on the Korean Peninsula, we talked about the work we do in bodies like the East Asia Summit.
We talked about the defence links between our countries, our focus on things like carbon pollution and climate change, issues of cyber security, and I did canvass human rights questions including Tibet.
JOURNALIST: In your speech yesterday, you added, that you would like to see personal freedoms as something that is also pursued as China goes along the reform road.
Is that something, and does this level of talks give you more freedom or more ability to raise those more pointed questions, like human rights and like the need for people to have a greater sense of personal freedom?
PM: We have a continuing Human Rights Dialogue with China.
When I've met leaders in the past, I've raised human rights. I did it on both occasions, the meeting with the President and the meeting with the Premier today.
That Human Rights Dialogue will continue. And I do believe that we have a relationship where issues are not off the table, they are on the table for discussions.
JOURNALIST: A lot of countries would potentially want to have this deal. Why us?
What do we bring to the table? Is it a whole lot of iron ore? Or what is it that they've said we'll do it with you, I think there are only three other countries that China has such a relationship with.
And a second question: on defence is there anything specific? Are we going to have joint exercises or anything like that?
PM: On the defence question, the step forward we've taken today in this dialogue in our defence arrangements.
So we have a standing dialogue that I've spoken to you about during the course of this trip, a military-to-military dialogue.
There will also be a policy-level dialogue which will happen between our militaries. So this is all about building trust and confidence and transparency for the future.
On “why us,” I think it says something about how China views its relationship with Australia.
Yes, we have got a strong economic relationship, but that has been continuing for some years now, so I think that the aim here is to be broadening and deepening the relationship, so it is truly a comprehensive one.
And that is why it requires annual leaders-level exchanges, and I think that is what China sees in it, a kind of deeper relationship with Australia.
JOURNALIST: How was the meeting with the chairwoman of Huawei today?
PM: I've met a number of Chinese business leaders whilst I have been here in a series of business of events.
Huawei is a major employer in Australia. It has created a number of Australian jobs. It's a substantial seller of telecommunications technology in Australia.
So, just like I have met other Chinese business leaders, I met with the chairwoman of Huawei today.
I did note that at the business leaders' dialogue I was at that she was the only woman representative from China amongst the business leaders gathered there.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, did you discuss the NBN decision?
PM: No, we did not.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, how concerned are you that a boat packed with asylum seekers sailed into Geraldton harbour today, and is it proof that the Government has lost control of our borders?
PM: I'm going to leave that matter for the responsible-
JOURNALIST: (Inaudible)
PM: I'm obviously here for a different purpose here today so that will be dealt with back home.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, I have a question about your remarks in your speech today about defence. You mentioned the live-fire exercises that Australia and China do together.
You also mentioned that you would like to bring the US into some sort of three-way exercise.
Have you approached the US on this? Is this something that is an ongoing project with the US, and has there been any reaction from the Americans?
PM: We've certainly discussed with the US and it has been the subject of discussion with other countries in our region.
Having exercises that bring together military forces, our own US forces, forces from other countries in the region, to do things like disaster preparedness exercises in the region in which we live, where we have seen so many horrible disasters that have taken so many lives.
Things like the Japanese tsunami come to mind very, very quickly, as well as what happened in Indonesia with the tsunami.
We've on more than one occasion exchanged military personnel for the purpose of going to do humanitarian assistance.
If you exercise jointly about those things, then it builds your capability for that kind of urgent response. It also builds some trust and confidence and that's a good thing.
JOURNALIST: China's traditionally not been that excited about third parties hosting or being involved in US-China defence drills.
Has there been a change of heart? What are they saying to your idea of bringing the US and China together?
And can I ask a second question. What are we going to do about the debacle of Asian languages education at schools and high schools in Australia?
PM: The answer to the first is our focus today was on this policy dialogue that I spoke of in answer to another question over here so we didn't talk about trilateral exercising during the course of the discussions today.
On Asian languages in schools, we've certainly set a big aspiration in the White Paper for children having access to a priority Asian language during school.
There's been a lot of endeavours to lift Asian language study, indeed languages study, in Australian schools. It's proved to be quite difficult to do.
I think there's two things we can do, which would make a difference.
One, we would want to embed this in our national plan for school improvement associated with our funding reforms.
So it's not an add-on to the whole schooling system and the whole school funding arrangements are over here and then you have a boutique program over here.
We want to embed it in the whole school funding arrangements. That's a new approach.
We've never tried that before, and so I think that that gives us a difference for the future.
And number two, one of the problems here is you get in a spiral down where not many people have been studying languages so that there's not many qualified language teachers.
So not every school can have a language teacher in any language or all languages and obviously it's not a sustainable vision to say in every primary and secondary school we'd have someone who can speak every language and teach in it.
But through the power of the National Broadband Network, we can in real time with high quality and definition, bringing language teaching to schools that don't have a language speaker available to them.
So I think they're things we've got to do. We've also got to be very clear with young people - and this is one of the things we wanted to spark out of the White Paper - very clear with our young people about why that real effort is worth it.
It's not easy to become fluent in another language; you are actually sitting next to very high level very skilled translator, he could be explained to you how it's not easy.
So it's not easy to become fluent in another language, so we have to be inspiring our young people to understand why all that effort is worthwhile.
And indeed, careers like yours, your own and Peter's, are things that we can point to that make that effort worthwhile.
JOURNALIST: One of the big gaps in the relationship is the FTA. Did you get a sense that that can be progressed in the next couple of years, and maybe Dr Emerson has a comment.
And I was wondering what the ministers feel was the biggest point of this exercise for them?
PM: Well, great minds think alike.
That was exactly the terminology I used in the meeting with the Premier, that it is a gap in our relationship, and we are going back into talks on the FTA in May and I'll get Dr Emerson to address those talks.
MINISTER EMERSON: We seek high ambition for the FTA.
An FTA is worth having, but if it is high ambition and that means that we need to deal with the sensitivities on both sides.
We could have a low ambition FTA, like a trophy to sit on the national mantelpiece to say we've got one, but we want it to do some work we want it to make a difference.
And the Premier today looked around and I said I'm the FTA guy so I guess I've got a special responsibility because he was looking for the FTA guy.
The reason he was looking for the FTA guy is because the Premier was very keen and spent some considerable time talking about the challenge that the great benefits that an FTA would bring.
MINISTER CARR: I don't want to add to what the Prime Minister said.
JOURNALIST: Would the National Broadband Network be at risk under a Tony Abbott Government?
PM: A very creative try but I'm leaving that to the folks back home too.
Thank you very much.
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