Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea
PRIME MINISTER O'NEILL: Prime Minister Julia Gillard, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.
Firstly thank you very much for you joining us today on this occasion of the signing of the new partnership between the Papua New Guinea and Australian governments.
We today discussed a wide range of issues covering many aspects of our bilateral relationship.
It has shown a new level of maturity, and a goodwill on both sides in those discussions.
As we all know Australia is our closest neighbour and our best friend. And today's signing signifies that even more.
The Joint Declaration lays out the basic principles which will underpin the growth and diversity of our mutual beneficial relationship.
This document represents a significant advance in the Papua New Guinea - Australia relationship. And our Government will work closely with the Australian Government to ensure that the principles contained in the Joint Declaration can be translated into a substantial outcome of mutual benefits to both countries.
Australia continues to be the largest development assistance donor to Papua New Guinea. It remains the largest investor in our nation's private sector.
That is a fact that we are greatly appreciate by our Government and the people of Papua New Guinea for the support and the confidence that both Australian Government and the private sector in Australia display to us.
Our exchanges today were frank but very constructive and very positive. And I especially welcome the initiative by the Prime Minister to make her time available in joining us here and again agreeing to some of the issues that we have raised with her.
We have talked about many issues including the entry issues for visa into Australia by many of our citizens. We have made some important steps towards addressing those concerns so that we can make it easier for our citizens to visit the country of Australia.
We also made very constructive arrangements to work together in developing many of our infrastructure issues in the country, which includes rehabilitation of some of our key infrastructures that we have suggested to the Australian Government through their aid program.
That includes some of the issues that we have put forward in various sectors like the health sector for Enga Hospital, the road infrastructure for Madang - Ramu Road and of course the law and order sector of trying to establish a ministerial [inaudible] here in Port Moresby.
I am also pleased that we have also made very positives commitments to constructing a permanent regional detention centre in Manus.
And I am pleased that the Prime Minister is working for us to commence that construction this year, later part of this year. And we warmly welcome that, and especially welcome by the people of Manus Province.
Again as I said it earlier the development assistance program discussions have been very constructive.
Our objective in Papua New Guinea is to see that the taxpayers' money of Australia brings out the best outcome that we both want. And again we appreciate the frank discussions that we have had together with the Australian Prime Minister.
We continue to also today sign the Defence Cooperation Agreement which will announce our defence cooperation between the two countries and at the same time build capacities within our own defence force in Papua New Guinea.
On policing, the Australian Government's assistance, continued assistance, in that program is very much appreciated.
We welcome further assistance through line positions within our police structure, including building capacities around training, prosecution and investigations so that our police men and women can do their job.
So again I thank the Australian Prime Minister for these discussions and thank you again for visiting our country at this moment. Thank you.
PRIME MINISTER GILLARD: Thank you very much and can I think Prime Minister O'Neill for the discussions I have been able to have today with him and with senior members of his Government.
I thank him for the warmth of the welcome that we have enjoyed here and the warmth of the welcome we have also received from the wider community.
I think the very warmth of that welcome highlights the very deep ties that exist between our two countries. And those ties are the foundation of our unique bilateral relationship.
We also share important economic, development and security interests. And we have talked about those interests today as partners who understand each other and want to offer each other assistance.
The way we do business with each other is modernising and changing.
The discussions I have had with Prime Minister O'Neill and his Cabinet have focused on the future and on the new chapter in our relations.
Our signing a short time ago at this table of the Joint Declaration between our two countries reflects this evolution and highlights both the maturity of our relationship and our commitment to supporting each other.
I was also very pleased to sign here today a Defence Cooperation Arrangement.
Building on what is our biggest defence cooperation program, that Arrangement will guide our important and expanding defence ties, including through annual talks between our defence ministers.
In our meetings earlier today we spoke about Papua New Guinea's impressive economic growth over the past decade, and the long term benefits offered by the historic PNG LNG project which I will have the opportunity to see later today.
We agreed to work towards signing an economic cooperation treaty. The text of which was initialled by our Foreign Ministers late last year.
The treaty will reinforce the commitments made in the Joint Declaration for a long term equal partnership across the full range of our relationship.
And Australia remains committed to helping PNG manage the gains from the LNG Project and from other minerals windfalls through assisting the development of an international best practice Sovereign Wealth Fund.
Australian companies are participating in the LNG project and working with PNG partners in other areas. Indeed Australian investment in PNG today is approaching our investment in China.
I have also discussed with Prime Minister O'Neill, and with members of his Government, the development challenges that face Papua New Guinea. I confirmed Australia's commitment to assisting and welcomed his Government's focus on national infrastructure.
Australia has committed $180 million a year - that is 37 precent of all aid - to infrastructure development here in PNG.
And I am delighted that today we were able to agree that we would assist with the development of an infrastructure body that would be able to look at projects and do cost-benefit analysis and project scoping, and that we have agreed today that in addition to assisting with the establishment of an Infrastructure Development Authority here by 2015 we would also work on scoping the three development projects, infrastructure projects, that Prime Minister O'Neill has spoken of.
In working on the scoping of those projects they can then be got ready for looking for possible sources of funds for those projects.
We also agreed to delegate health procurement to AusAID as a precursor to establishing an Independent Health Procurement Authority. And I thank the Prime Minister for that.
We discussed law and order and assistance to police in PNG. This is a very important issue.
We will provide assistance which will include support for the recruitment of high calibre retired senior police officers into inline positions, including an Assistant Commissioner for Reform and a Head of the Training College.
We want to make sure we are capacity building in the PNG Police. We will be doing that through advisors, senior level mentoring and training.
I want at this press conference to say that I very much welcome Prime Minister O'Neill's leadership on improving the situation of women here in his own nation and the leadership he has also provided in discussions we have had at forums like the Pacific Islands Forum when we have talked about women's empowerment.
I am very pleased to see the election of three impressive women to PNG's ninth Parliament and the subsequent appointment of one as Minister for Community Development and another as Vice Minister for Treasury.
I look forward to the day when there are many more women in the Parliament here.
Prime Minister O' Neill and I also talked about the support he has provided, and his nation has provided, to the regional approach to the challenge of people smuggling, and I thanked him personally for his efforts in working with the Australian Government to establish a regional processing centre on Manus Island.
We are both pleased that work is proceeding towards the establishment of a permanent facility.
Our partnership goes beyond what we do bilaterally and extends to our cooperation in the region. The Prime Minister and I had an opportunity to talk about regional issues including our joint desire that we do see Fiji return to democracy.
Prime Minister, it is a great pleasure to be here, it is a privilege to be here in Papua New Guinea among friends, families and wantoks. Thank you very much.
JOURNALIST: Prime Ministers, has there been any progress on selecting a permanent site for Manus Island Regional Processing Centre? And Prime Minister Gillard do you think that the permanent site should also process asylum seekers who are from places other than from Australia, across the region?
GILLARD: I might say something first and then hand over to Prime Minister O'Neill.
A permanent site has been selected. We will move to construction later this year. We need to go through a tender process and then construction can start.
On the approach about other countries using the facility, in the short to medium term obviously we see this as a facility that Australia will be using and that is how it has been constructed.
Over the longer term we want to keep working with PNG on regional approaches to combatting people smuggling.
One of the reasons we have been able to reach agreement on the processing centre is I think we understand that this is a regional challenge. Not a challenge for just one nation.
O'NEILL: As the Prime Minister has alluded to we have found a site where the construction will take place.
On the regional issue, I think we will be using the forums like the Pacific Island Forum to discuss that approach and try to process other illegal immigrants within the region in this facility.
JOURNALIST: Ms Gillard and Mr O'Neill, how will the police program be structured and when will it start. And will it be similar to the ECP?
GILLARD: The Police Program we are announcing today is more than $50 million of investment. We will certainly want to get that work started as soon as possible.
It is a model where police would be made available to participate in advisory roles and capacity building roles. To give examples of those kind of roles: the Assistant Commissioner in charge of reform, and the Head of your police training facility, these would be the sorts of roles that police and people with skills from Australia could fill.
We will also look broader than that to recruit former police to work and assist in PNG. And we are certainly prepared to work closely with PNG on the international recruitment of the next Police Commissioner.
When that person is selected we will then be working with PNG and with the newly selected Police Commissioner on what else can be done to assist.
O'NEILL: The agreements do not reflect the ECP style of policing agreement to take place in the country because we have got some legislative issues and constitutional issues that we in Papua New Guinea need to sort out.
But the immediate engagement, as the Prime Minister has stated, will basically be in-line positions within our existing police structure and the capacity to improve training so that we can build up our numbers.
As many of you know we have not trained any single policeman over the last ten years. So the process of rebuilding the training facility has begun.
We have trained and released our first 200 last year and furthermore this year. So with the help of the assistance of the AusAID program, that is now starting.
We are hoping to build that capacity up to a 1,000 policemen within our own police force and I believe that the assistance that the Australian Government is providing will further enhance that.
We are also asking the Australian Government and agreeing to expand on prosecution training because of our shortfall in that area and investigating the policing within our police structure.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, I know you have already spoken about Australia's efforts to streamline the visa process for Papua New Guinea.
Can I ask you specifically about how you felt about the way Prime Minister O'Neill approached the subject last night, your first night in here PNG, you were the guest of honour.
Were you a little bit taken aback or even embarrassed and do you think this could or may have had the potential to set the trip off perhaps on the wrong foot?
GILLARD: No, certainly not. I know that issues about visa processing have been the subject of much discussion here, and I know that as a result Prime Minister O'Neill has been reflecting concerns that he hears as he moves around the community.
We want to make sure, one, that there is accurate information available about what is happening now. So at the moment we are seeing more than 20 per cent increases each year in the number of visas issued, so people are having visas issued and that is on its way up.
Notwithstanding that, there continues to be concerns and as a result I am very pleased to say that I have agreed with Prime Minister O'Neill that there will be the ability to apply online for visas.
And, that for people who have multiple entry needs into Australia, for example the business people who travel quickly and frequently back and forth between our two countries to facilitate trade and investment, that it would be less paperwork burdensome for them to get a multi-year, multi-access visa.
JOURNALIST: Ms Gillard, what is the Australian Government doing to help Papua New Guinea authorities to bring back business man, Erimas Wartoto, to face criminal charges in PNG?
GILLARD: Thank you for your question. Unfortunately, I am not in a position to discuss specifics about an individual case that are the subject of legal proceedings. I am not in a position to do that.
I can certainly say more broadly from any individual case, that we do work strongly with Papua New Guinea, and we will continue to do so, on addressing any matters about criminal conduct associated with the movement of money or any such matters.
[ENDS]