Well thank you very much John, Ambassador, Attorney General, Peter McGauran, John Brogden the Leader of the New South Wales Opposition, can I thank you for those very generous remarks, my other parliamentary colleagues and particularly two very good friends of mine, Benjamin Chow and Hudson Chen, both of whom are wonderful Australians and great ornaments to the Chinese Australian Community.
Hudson ,it was very gracious of you to offer to put on this lunch. I'm very honoured that such an impressive gathering of your community should've come here today. I'd like to particularly acknowledge the presence of the Ambassador and the Consul-General. The People's Republic has sent a succession of fine representatives to Canberra but may I say none more impressive then the current Ambassador, Madam you do your country very great service and you come to Australia at a time when the relationship between Australia and China is growing in a remarkable fashion.
We are countries that have different backgrounds, we're of a different population size, we have different political systems but we have a lot of things in-common. There are great people to people links, as I've said to successive Chinese Presidents the largest or the most widely spoken language in Australia other than English of course is a dialect of Chinese and that the various Mandarin and Cantonese and the other dialects have in recent years passed other languages to be the most widely spoken apart from English. Sydney boasts of course the largest Chinese community in Australia. My own electorate of Bennelong has an ethic Chinese enrolment of between 13 and 15 percent, which is very high by standards. But the most important thing is the way in which the relationship is growing across the board, it's a very strong business relationship. Over the past few years our exports to China have close to doubled. We are now negotiating whether we can sign a free trade agreement, whether that happens or not will not alter the fact that we have a close economic relationship. We have common interests in ensuring that peace and stability and tranquillity prevails across the Taiwan Straights and it remains of course the policy of my Government to follow a one China policy, which has been the policy of my Government for a number of years and we welcome the peaceful and calm resolution of all of those issues.
We seek friendship with the Chinese people but very particularly I want to take the opportunity today of expressing my admiration to the Chinese Australian Community for the contribution it has made to our nation over a very long period of time. You've brought to Australia the values of which John Brogden spoke. First and foremost your strong sense of family unity, your hard work, your thirst after education, your business acumen, your willingness whist preserving your own cultural identify to become part of the broader Australian community.
We are all of us Australian's before anything else but we respect as an Australian community the right of people to preserve their own particular cultural practices and identity and I can't think of a community in Australia that has more successfully combined loyalty to the goals of Australia, with the preservation of their own cultural identity. Everybody has a special place in their heart for the country in which they were born and that is certainly true of Chinese Australians as it is true of Australians of other ethnicities. This is a very cohesive country, we draw people from all around the world, we seem to do it more successfully then most because we respect people's differences but we also work together for the common benefit of our country, and I therefore say to all of you thank you for the contribution that you have made. I heard what John Brogden said about taxes. It won't surprise you if I say that this isn't the first lunch I've addressed where people have supported the idea of no tax and I think that you'll also understand that it is not a peculiarly Chinese Australian characteristic. I have in fact found people of non-Chinese background who actually don't like paying tax either. But we have to meet you half way, we do our best but the country is in good shape, our economy is strong, we have very low unemployment, we have very low interest rates but the most important thing we have is we have great self confidence as a community. We believe in ourselves, we all of us think that the Australian way of doing things is about the best way of doing things in the world and the Australian way of doing things is an amalgam of the contributions that different communities have made to the building of the modern Australia.
Hudson ,you and many of your friends were very generous to me during the recent election campaign and I want to thank you for that. I want to say how much I welcome the participation of all communities in the political processes of Australia. Naturally I like them to participate on my side of politics but I respect people's right in a democracy to choose and to support the political party of their choice. The most important thing, the most important thing is that you participate and that you play a part to make this country an even more wonderful country in which to live. We are approaching Christmas, it's an occasion whatever your religious background may be, mine is Christian and it's a very important time of the year and it is a season in which all Australians come together to see their familles, to reflect upon the spiritual dimensions of our country and also to give thanks in whatever way we choose for the fact that we live in such a wonderful country. And I certainly want to say Merry Christmas to all of you, I know Chinese people have a special way of celebrating the New Year and your lucky, you see you have two New Years. You have ours and yours, it's pretty clever the way you do it, it's a bit like some of the Greeks I know, they have a couple of Easters. But to all of you, thank you very much for coming, and thank you for your wonderful support but most importantly of all, thank you for what you have done to build the modern Australia. The face of Sydney in particular would not be what it is without the contribution of the Chinese community, the vibrancy of Sydney would be less than what it is without the contribution of the Chinese community, the commerce and industry of the city would be less and I place great hope in the further development of the relationship between Australian and China. It teaches not only Australians but others something and that is that two countries with very different political systems, very different histories, very different cultures can build a strong future together if they focus on the things that they have in common rather then the things that they don't have in common. We have a lot to offer the People's Republic and the People's Republic has a lot to offer us. So I'm looking forward to going to China again next year, to go to the Baoa Economic Forum and then to go to Beijing to see President Hu Jintao who I saw recently in Santiago at the APEC meeting and also the Premier Wen Jiabao who I saw in Vientiane in Laos.
So the relationship continues to build and what is interesting about the relationship between Australia and China is that we have built that relationship despite the fact that we have remained a very close ally and friend of the United States, because what in reality it means is that everybody wants a world in which nations cooperate. I want to see a close relationship between Australia and the United States. Not only is it in the interests of Australia but it's also in the interests of those two great nations. The future of the world lies very much in co-operation and the future of the world will be shaped in part by what China does because of her sheer size and the remarkable economic growth which is now taking place in that country. But you are here today as Australians of Chinese descent. Like all other Australians you share the bounty of this country, you contribute to it, you are entitled to its protection and you are of course like all of us obligated to promote its best interests. And the Chinese Australian community has always done that and I'm honoured to be your guest today, to you Hudson again my warm personal thanks, to Mr and Mrs Wong our wonderful hosts you are inaudible). Thank you all of you and I won't emulate John Brogden, I couldn't do it any better, can I just simply say thank you for what you have done for our country, our country, a Merry Christmas and very happy New Year to all of you.
Thank you so much.
[ends]