Thank you very much Mr Munnan, Mr Charles Goode the leader of the Australian delegation, the High Commissioners from Australia and from India, and can I also acknowledge the presence of Warwick Smith from Macquarie Bank and Macquarie Bank is the very generous sponsor of this luncheon.
This is the concluding public opportunity I have, apart from the very important visit to the Pace Academy after lunch to say a few things about the relationship between Australia and India. Let me start by saying that I am very conscious in this, my first visit to Chennai, to South India, that this was the part of your country that took the full brunt of the impact of the tragic tsunami a little over a year ago and the loss of some eight to nine thousand souls in this part of the country would have brought tremendous grief to many people in South India.
Can I also say that in a symbolic sense, and this will lead to very practical things, Australia has recognised in another gesture, the importance of this part of the world and this part of India by my announcement a little while ago that we will establish an Australian Consulate General here in Chennai and the person appointed to this post will fulfil the roles, not only of Consul General, but also looking after the interests of Austrade.
The presence at this luncheon and indeed over the past few days of such a representative and high level group of Australian businessmen, is a very powerful earnest of their belief, as well as my own, that we are on the cusp of something really big in the relationship between the two countries. There are plenty of manifestations that India is increasingly seen around the world as a country, not only with a wonderful and magical and alluring past, but in so many ways a country with an enormous future.
And in addressing the relationship between our two countries I think it is important that we don't give it a status that it doesn't have and equally we don't sell it short. And I believe it is very important when we are talking about relations between two societies that we recognise both the similarities and the differences. I have seen in my political career in Australia, unreal expectations, built up about relationships between two countries, that we're going to have a special relationship with this country, that we're going to have a special relationship with another country and before very long, we sort of have about ten countries with whom we have so-called special relationships and of course, that only has to be stated to be seen for the absurdity that it is.
When you look at India and Australia there are overwhelming illustrations of the similarities that we have. We have a lot of common historical associations through the Commonwealth and our associations with the institutions that both of our countries inherited from the United Kingdom. We have, in the use of the English language, great similarities. We have similar institutions, we have a similar approach in broad terms to corporate governance which is so important in commerce and business and I think we have an increasingly similar approach to the challenges of the 21st Century.
It wasn't always the case. There was a time some decades ago when India's view of the world where it sought the path, and I offer of course no criticism, I simply record it as a fact, followed the path of profound non-alignment, whereas Australia was equally profoundly part of the Western political system and neither country makes, nor should make, an apology for having adopted that policy in the past. That is changing. We know longer have a divide, the old divide between East and West, between groups of countries that align themselves with the United States and those that align themselves with the now dissolved and disintegrated Soviet Union. That world is different. We now find common cause in different political contexts. We find common cause against terrorism and I am particularly conscious of that today as I've had the opportunity of extending on behalf of the Australian people and the Australian Government to the Indian Prime Minister our condolences on the tragic bombings that took part in Benaras late yesterday afternoon.
So we do live in a very different world to the one we had 30 or 40 years ago and I think that has led to Australia and India following rather more similar political paths than might have been the case in those times. But overwhelmingly of course, the big change that's occurred in the last 20 years is the huge economic renaissance of India, pioneered in many ways when he was Finance Minister by the current Prime Minister Mr Singh in the early 90s: the opening up of the Indian economy, the welcoming of foreign investment, the reduction of many of the levels of tariff protection and the more beckoning reach out towards the globalised world in which we now live.
And if I can bring that to the early years of the 21st Century, what I believe we have best going for us as two countries now is that both of us understand that we live in a globalised economy. And a globalised economy from which nobody should either seek to escape or should want to escape. Because the history of the last 20 or 30 years has shown us that those countries, and this is particularly the case in the Asia Pacific region, that those countries that embrace globalisation are the countries that prosper. Those countries that seek solace and continuity in the old ways of protection and isolation and insularity are the countries whose economies continue to stagnate. And there are many spectacular examples of that that can be found in this part of the world. So what India and Australia now have very much in common is a fairly similar view of the world in which we live.
It's a world in which trade barriers ought to be a thing of the past although they are not and both of us have experienced frustrations in relation to the latest series of World Trade Organisation negotiations and although we do still have a slightly different emphasis as to what might be achieved out of those negotiations, there is nonetheless a common view that the particularly high protective barriers still imposed in many areas by the European Union, by the United States and in some areas by Japan are representing very, very significant barriers to the sort of trade liberalisation that we should enjoy and would be of enormous benefit to both of our communities as well as to the communities of the least developed countries in the world.
I have found in the time that I have been in India on this visit, which is my second as Prime Minister, a sense of excitement about the opportunities that are in front of this country. The capacity over the last several years of India to attract investments from around the world, the expanding investment interest of many Australian companies in India and reciprocally the determination of many Indian companies to invest in Australia encourages me enormously. But as always, as many people have pointed out, it's the people-to-people links that matter the most in relations between our societies and in this area there is enormous scope for optimism and encouragement. Australia is now the third most preferred destination for Indian students wishing to study abroad. And what is important about that is not only that to be number three behind the United States and Great Britain is no mean achievement in itself but it's the pace of growth in the interest that really matters. And it is also the case that there are more postgraduate students coming to Australia from India than from any country in the world.
It is also the case that we have seen a spectacular increase in the number of tourists coming to Australia from India, still in aggregate numbers much smaller than visitors from say New Zealand or China, or Japan, but once again it is the rate of growth to change that is coming over that pattern, which is so important and which is so significant for the future.
To come to South India and to understand the importance of this part of India in the commercial life of your country has been for me a great experience. To be reminded of the diversity of this country, the cultural and racial diversity, the religious diversity, all of those things are an experience. And they are the reminders of some of the things where Australia and India are different. The most obvious difference of course, was alluded to by an earlier speaker, of course, is the size and also the demography of the two countries. And India is a very young country. Australia, by comparison, although not a very old country, is a country that has an ageing population. Not ageing as rapidly as Japan or Italy or Spain, but rather more rapidly that the United States and certainly a great deal more rapidly than India. Now this has enormous implications for a lot of things.
It has enormous implications, I have to acknowledge, for future competition on certain playing fields, but let me also say it has enormous implications for the contribution that your country will continue to make to the service industries of the world. And I have been very careful to make sure that there's been included in the delegation that came from Australia not only representatives of the mining and manufacturing industries but also representatives of the tertiary sector and including in particular the university sector.
And this morning I witnessed the signing of memoranda of understanding involving the Madras Institute of Technology which has worldwide acclaim as a source of instruction in so many areas of technology and the University of Queensland. (* Queensland University of Technology). And this is once again an earnest of our determination to have links that are not just in areas of straight commerce, but are also in areas of education.
Can I finally say Mr Chairman, to all of you ladies and gentlemen, that it is important also to understand what Government's can do and also what Government's should not try to do when it comes to relations between countries. Governments, and I speak from an Australian perspective, and I doubt very much if it would be any different in India. Governments in Australia have been notoriously bad at running businesses. They have been notoriously delinquent when it comes to involvement in commercial enterprises and they've always been better when they have understood that their true role is to set an economic framework and to leave it to the men and women in business and commerce to make commercial decisions and make investment decisions.
Now I appreciate that different countries have different cultures, but I suspect that the fundamental view that I've just articulated is probably shared by most of the Indian ladies and gentlemen in the room. I think that is another area where perhaps the similarities between our two societies certainly over time will become even greater.
I see Australia's projection, economically and trade wise to the rest of the world as being very much a partnership between the Government and the business community of Australia but a partnership that recognises what our role is as a Government and a partnership that recognises what the role of the business community is. And in the end, governments always do best when they worry about the domestic economic framework and leave the business decisions to those whose dollars are at stake and those whose accountability to their boards and their shareholders are very direct, unlike the responsibility of governments.
I want to say to all of my Indian hosts who are here today that Australia has great goodwill towards your country. We admire what it has achieved. We are enthusiastic about what it will achieve in the future. There is little doubt, and this is a theme that I've emphasised a lot in the past few days, there is little doubt that the most significant socio-economic development of the 21st Century is that the centre of gravity of the world's middle class has shifted from Europe and North America to Asia. For the first time in the history of mankind we have a global middle class and that global middle class will predominantly, as the years go by, be made up of people from India and China and Japan. It used to be made up almost entirely of people from Europe, North America with a smattering from Australasia and parts of Asia and Africa. And that is neither a good thing nor a bad thing. It's just a reality. And what that means is that the opportunities for us, the opportunities for you are enormous.
Middle classes of 400-800 million people are, to say the least, potentially voracious consumers of both goods and services and the opportunity that that represents to a country like Australia is self evident. And of course, most importantly, the opportunities it represents to your countries, to the lifting of the living standards of your people and the capacity of a middle class of 200 or 300 million people to reach out and to meet the aspirations of the remaining 700 or 800 millions of your people are also enormous.
So it's a very exciting time to be involved in trying to further and deepen the relations between our two countries. I wish the business communities of the two societies well. I thank my Australian colleagues who have made the journey to India. I am sure it has been worthwhile and I warmly thank the Chamber for its great hospitality.
Thank you.
[ends]