Well thank you very, very much I think that rendition would go very well at a World Cup, absolutely. Michael Crouch, Peter Charlton, Mark Johnson, ladies and gentlemen. It's a tremendous pleasure to be here tonight to be part of this APEC Business Forum. As we throw our minds forward, not only to the hosting of APEC in Australia in 2007, but more immediately to the APEC meeting to be held in Korea in November of this year.
I will be attending, when I go to that meeting on behalf of Australia, I will be attending my 10th APEC leaders' meeting. And as I look back over that decade I'm reminded of a number of realities that are important, not only about APEC, but are also important about the economic and geopolitical environment in which we all live.
There was, as many of you will know, a spasm of thought at the end of the Cold War which basically said that now global politics was all about economics. The notion that the big security dilemmas were behind us, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the implosion of Soviet communism, was a very alluring and seductive concept. The reality, banal as it may be, is that global politics is still mostly about politics.
We have been reminded in the last decade that open markets rest very much on political order. We have been reminded of the importance of governance - broadly defined - whether it be dealing with a regional financial crisis - as overcame the region in 1997, combating the threat of global terrorism, or generally making sure that our institutions - domestic and international - are equipped for the challenges of the 21st Century.
The global economic challenge Australia faces can never be divorced from the political challenges. That's just one of the reasons why APEC is such an important forum for Australia and for the Asia-Pacific region as a whole.
The great value of a gathering such as APEC, particularly for Australia, is that it joins like no other forum those countries and those parts of the world that are so important to our security, and so important to our economic future. And like all gatherings of that kind, dreary and formulaic as some of the procedures may be, it gives unrivalled opportunities for bilateral discussions. And I've not forgotten that the Manila APEC meeting of 1996 - the very first I attended on behalf of Australia, was the occasion for one of the most important bilateral meetings I've had in the entire time that I have been Prime Minister. And that was a bilateral meeting with the then President of China Jiang Zemin. It came after a period of several months in which there had been some - how shall I put it, challenges, to the relationship between Australia and China - arising out of some misunderstandings during the earlier months of that year. And that meeting provided me and the then President, with an opportunity to put on a realistic footing a relationship which is arguably moved further, and of greater benefit than any other bilateral relationship Australia has with the member countries of APEC. I don't say it's the most important. I don't seek to apportion priorities of importance, I simply make the point that the movement towards a beneficial relationship has been greater in the case of that relationship.
And that discussion was able to lay what remains the foundation of the relationship between Australia and China - a relationship that is built on seeking out areas of agreement, rather than dwelling on areas of disagreement and irritation. A basis which acknowledges the profound differences between Australia and China, our different political traditions, our different styles of government, our different attitude to many of the world's great issues, but nonetheless a relationship that recognised that if we did build on those things that bound us together, we could create a relationship of growing value to both countries. And now some nine years on from that meeting, taking place within the forum of APEC, I'm able to say to you that that relationship has come along way.
Indeed the whole APEC area has come along way. It's fashionable of course to say well APEC hasn't realised all of the goals that were set when it was established - and that is true, but it would wrong and unfair to discount the progress that has been made. Since 1989 average applied tariffs across APEC members have fallen from about 16 per cent to just over 6 per cent; almost half of all tariff lines are now less than 5 per cent.
In dollar terms, trade in goods and services between APEC economies has more than tripled since APEC was established. The results in terms of economic well-being are very clear. Real GDP across the APEC region grew by 46 per cent between 1989 and 2003, while per capita GDP grew by 26 per cent.
As well as setting and affirming the Bogor goals for regional trade and investment liberalisation, APEC leaders in past meetings, as undoubtedly they will do at the coming meeting in Korea, focus their attention on the multilateral trade system, and well that meeting may because a very important moment of truth is approaching for the multilateral trade system.
We are now only 53 days away from the beginning of the Hong Kong WTO Ministerial Conference. This week the Deputy Prime Minister and the Trade Minister, Mark Vaile, has been back in Geneva as Australia plays its traditional role of trying to get the world's rich economies in particular to more closely match their rhetoric on trade and economic development.
I have to say that I am profoundly disappointed about the most recent developments in Geneva, especially in the talks on agriculture. I know that Australian Prime Ministers begin to sound like a scratchy record on the issue of agricultural trade. And I, of course, for the benefit of any guest from other countries tonight declare Australia's obvious interest in a more open trading system for agriculture. But there is a high issue at stake. In a year when there has been a focus like none for some years, indeed a celebrity focus on the issue of poverty, it is worth making again the point that trade liberalisation will do more, much more to lift the poor of the world out of their current condition, than will levels of direct overseas aid. And the greatest contribution that the wealthy countries of the world can still make to the developing countries, particularly the most impoverished of them, would be to remove their trade barriers.
I was very pleased that last week the United States made a major contribution to the negotiations by offering to cut its most trade distorting farm subsidies by 60 per cent and outlining its ambitious vision of eliminating all agricultural barriers within 15 years. That represents the furthest that the United States has gone on this issue ever. It was foreshadowed by President Bush in his address to the United Nations General Assembly in September, and has been reaffirmed with that specificity in the past few days.
Thus far the European Union has failed to take a similarly courageous step. And without a breakthrough on agriculture, the success of the Round remains in serious doubt. We do need more decisive action on that front. And I have to say on behalf of Australia's farmers, that I can well respect and sympathise with their sense of frustration when the level of subsidy as a percentage of annual production to Australian farmers is about 4 or 5 per cent measured against levels of the 20s and 30s and even higher amongst the major agricultural countries, such as the United States and the European Union and Japan, which of course are the countries where significant movement on this issue is needed.
As I mentioned earlier Australia will host APEC in 2007. And it will be another opportunity for this country to put on display to the rest of the world the extraordinary strength and growth of its economy over the last decade. But that is a growth that we have sought to achieve in partnership with so many of the other members of APEC. And without the partnerships that we've had with countries such as Japan, and Korea, and China, and of course the United States, and also the ongoing and valuable trade linkages with our friends in New Zealand, and not to forget the Free Trade Agreement with Singapore, the very beneficial Free Trade Agreement with Thailand, the negotiations now going on with Malaysia for a Free Trade Agreement with that country. All of the countries I've mentioned of course belong to APEC. And it reinforces the huge importance of that grouping.
It will also be a grouping where I believe there will be a valuable focus again at the coming meeting, a valuable opportunity to reaffirm our joint commitment to continuing the fight against the scourge of terrorism, which has scarred and touched APEC countries and claimed the lives of many citizens of APEC countries, including of course many Australians.
It will also on this occasion be an opportunity to focus very heavily on the capacity of APEC countries to work together to effectively deal with any threat from bird flu and any possibility of the development of any pandemic. And I believe that the meeting will focus very significantly on this issue, and it will provide an opportunity for a number of countries - including Australia and the United States, to promote the greatest possible level of cooperation between the member countries of the region, in order to work together in partnership to deal with any potential threat of this public health kind.
The last year of course has seen enormous personal tragedy strike many countries within the APEC region. And it's not possible to look back over the last year, since the last APEC meeting in Santiago, without feeling a particular level of compassion towards our friends in Indonesia and in Malaysia and in Thailand who were so badly affected, particularly in the case of Indonesia with the tsunami.
But of course as so often happens in tragedies of that kind, it brought forth a level of generosity from the people of Australia and the people of many other countries in the region, it was perhaps unmatched in the experience of just about any of us in this room. And it served in that great tragedy to bring even closer together the people of Australia and the people of Indonesia. And that relationship is a so important and enduring relationship, and so critical to the longer term future of both of our countries.
So whilst it is fair to say that the overwhelming motivation for the formation of APEC was to bring forth the best combination of economic growth, and economic activity from the member countries. And to achieve that through striving towards free and open trade goals, defined as the Bogor goals, it is also fair to say that APEC has brought the member countries of that grouping closer together in so many ways. It is undeniably the most important international meeting with which Australia is associated. And the fashion in which it has brought together men and women in business in all of the member countries serves to underline that point.
This country as you know is now enjoying its 15th year of unbroken economic growth. And we are living through a period of economic strength and prosperity, the like of which I don't think we have seen on such a sound basis at any time since World War II. It is not without challenge, high world fuel prices being the principal amongst those challenges. But the growth and the expansion of the Australian economy has been based essentially on two things. It's been based on some 15 to 20 years of fairly continuous economic reform. The latest example of which are the proposals of the Government to reform our industrial relations systems, proposals which in their legislative form will go before the Australian Parliament when it next convenes in just over a week's time. But that growth and that expansion has also been based very much upon the internationalisation, and the growth in trade, of the Australian economy. And nowhere has that been more dramatic, and nowhere has it been more important to Australia than within the APEC area and amongst the APEC countries. And that's the measure of the importance that I place on APEC. It's a measure of the importance that I place on the support that members of the APEC Business Forum give to APEC and the contribution that all of you make.
Can I conclude my remarks by thanking the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, its Secretary Michael L'Estrange, its Deputy Secretary Doug Chester for hosting this forum and hosting tonight's dinner. And could I also especially thank my APEC Business representatives Mark Johnson, Peter Charlton and Michael Crouch for the wonderful contribution each of them has made to representing Australia's interests in that forum over many years. You have done a wonderful job for our country and I thank you most warmly.
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