E&OE………………………………………………………………………………………
Thank you very much, Mr Ram and General Sethna, High Commissioners, other distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.
I do value a great deal the opportunity of addressing this lunch, sharing some thoughts of mine about the relationship between our two societies and also directing some remarks to future political and economic opportunities.
Our relationship has, on occasions, been one which I believe both of us have taken a little too much for granted. And the time has certainly arrived to inject some new vigour and some new energy into the relationship between our two nations and our two communities. We are very different but we also have many things in common. We share much history. We share some common passions to which Mr Ram has referred. We share in our capacity to interact in the English language a very special bond. We have a shared love of democracy and we have engaged in shared sacrifices in defence of freedom.
As one who was still at school when India received her independence in 1947, I have for all of the time that I have been actively interested in and followed and later involved in politics, admired the commitment of the Indian people to democracy and the rule of law. For a nation of such size, such complexity and such daily challenges to remain faithful to the democratic tradition and the rule of law over those years is a remarkable tribute to the strength of its society and a remarkable tribute to its people.
It is true, as Mr Ram said, that the people to people links between societies are always important. Some of you may not know that recently Australia passed the United Kingdom to be second only to the United States as a country in which Indian students of all kinds chose to undertake their instruction. There are between 100,000 and 150,000 Australians of Indian heritage. Several thousand of them live in my own constituency of Bennelong in Sydney. And over the years, the personalities of Indian and Australian sport, particularly, but not only, cricket, have become well known in all, in both of our societies. And Mr Ram, let me assure you that as the Australian Prime Minister, I am ever mindful of the reality that wheels turn when it comes to sporting competition and the technological capacity of Indian participants in cricket and other sports is well respected in Australia.
I come to your country at a time when both of our economies are doing well. They are different in size, they are different in emphasis. And the social challenges vary greatly. The Australian economy now for the last five years has enjoyed economic growth of four per cent or more. We have in fact enjoyed our longest uninterrupted period of economic growth since the late 1960s. And in many ways the Australian economy now is stronger and more soundly based than it was in the 1960s. Because it is less protected and it showed during the time of the Asian economic collapse, which was particularly damaging to countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia and Korea, it showed then a great capacity and a great flexibility and it was able to divert exports from disappearing markets in those parts of the world to both North America and Europe.
We have undertaken a very significant number of reforms. The most recent and the biggest of those was taxation reform. Commencing the weekend before last, we have revamped the entirety of the Australian taxation system through the introduction of a broad based goods and services tax applying at a uniform rate, accompanied by significant reductions in personal income tax, major cuts in company tax and a virtual halving of the capital gains tax. All of these reforms and the other elements of taxation change are designed to make the Australian economy more competitive. Designed to recognise, as I know India does, that we are now all part of a globalised world economy. And the steps that have been taken by Indian governments during the last decade to open up the Indian economy, to attract more foreign investment, to participate, particularly, but not only through the burgeoning information technology industry in the growth of the world economy is an earnest of your government and your business community’s understanding of the need that in the modern world none of us have the option of marking time or standing still. We must either - through ongoing reforms and ongoing liberalisation - take advantage of what the globalised economy offers or alternatively we slide backwards. That is a decision, that is something we have recognised in Australia and I know that it is something that you also have recognised in India.
It is true, as Mr Ram said, that given the size of our economies the trade between our two communities at present is modest. And that is one of the reasons why I attach such great importance to giving new vigour and energy to the relationship. Of course decisions are made to invest by entrepreneurs and by those who control private capital. And it is not the philosophy of my government to direct those areas where investments might be made by Australian companies. But it is certainly the philosophy of my government to facilitate as much as it possibly can and most particularly through pursuing policies that encourage investment both from Australia and into Australia to do all we can to promote the right climate for expanding trade and other opportunities.
As a nation we have progressively reduced our tariff levels. Sometimes, as happens in all societies, there is domestic political criticism of that. But in the long run we recognise that if we are to get the greatest benefits of globalisation we must all work together whether we are in India or in Australia to reduce to the maximum extent possible the trade barriers between different countries. India and Australia have a number of things in common on the world trade front; we both have an interest in breaking down some of the protective barriers that still exist through the European Union and the protective barriers which are supported by some of the trading activities of the United States. We can make common cause in relation to a number of those issues. We both have an interest in there being a new world trade organisation round. Once again it is a question of not being able to stand still and mark time, we either make further progress on these fronts or we find that we are going to go backwards.
In the talks that I have had with your Prime Minister, with your Foreign Minister, and I know these issues will be further canvassed when I see your Finance Minister and your Commerce Minister this afternoon, I have had the opportunity of conveying the interest that I have as Leader of the Australian Government in adding as many dimensions as I can to the relationship between our two communities. We should never make the mistake of just seeing a relationship in terms of shared history and shared experiences in pursuit of common objectives. But they are very important. We should never make the mistake of simply seeing a relationship in terms of the economic of trade. That can be a mistake even if the trade relationship is very strong. And nor of course should we lose sight of the fact that we all have an interest in the, strategically, in the stability of the regions in which we live and interact. I know the concern which is felt by the Indian Government concerning events in Fiji where unfortunately Fijians of Indian heritage are in danger of being denied their democratic right to participate along with Fijians of other heritage in the governing of that country. And the Prime Minister and I have discussed that matter at some length and have agreed to have further discussions in the weeks ahead.
We of course, that is India and Australia, are members of the Commonwealth. And your Prime Minister and I are members of a high level Commonwealth group charged at the Durban meeting of Heads of the Government with a responsibility of seeing if more purpose and direction can be given to the activities of the Commonwealth in between meetings of Heads of Government. And that is an issue that he and I and other members of that group to be chaired by the South African President will have an opportunity of discussing when we meet in New York at the Millennium Summit being organised by the Secretary General in the early weeks of September.
India and Australia have not always looked at foreign policy issues from the same perspective. We have had our differences in the past and it is pointless to pretend otherwise. However, even at a time of difficulty and stress in the relationship, there has been a common thread of respect and understanding. And that is born out of the fact that we have similar institutions and we have a similar respect for the vigorous political exchange which is part and parcel of your domestic political life and also for the democratic way and for the strength and integrity of our judicial systems.
I know that in recent times, India has attracted the attention of some very significant Australian businessmen and investors. It is a measure of the growing respect for the economic achievements of your country. It is also of course a recognition of the global character of the economic environment in which all of us live. And I would expect that those activities and those responses will be built upon and duplicated as time goes by.
But as an Australian Prime Minister leading a country which is endowed with a very high living standard as well as a very strong growth rate, I am conscious that your country continues to grapple with major social challenges. And we do endeavour to do as best we can to participate in international efforts to help you address them. And in that regard I’ve been very pleased to note in my discussions with your government that we are coming close to finalising an aid programme in relation to HIV Aids which will provide Australian assistance of some $18.5 million over a five year period. And I have also indicated to your Foreign Minister further Australian assistance in relation to the natural calamities that have hit India in relation to drought and typhoon. And my wife this morning had the opportunity at one of the medical centres here in New Delhi of observing the marvellous work that is being done to assist people who are desperately in need of basic medical attention.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is a visit which I have looked forward to. It is a visit that does come after an absence as the General said, of eleven years since Bob Hawke came here as Prime Minister in 1989. It is a visit that I know will be reciprocated when your Prime Minister visits Australia for the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting to be held in Brisbane at the end of next year. I hope it will be seen by our Indian friends here today as a measure of the determination of the government to put new vigour into the relationship. I was asked at a news briefing last night by one of those present of what evidence did I now have after being here a day and a half of the new vigour that had been put into the relationship. I felt like facetiously replying that I thought I was making progress as a Prime Minister, but I didn’t think I could achieve all of that in a day and a half. But the point I sought to make to him and I would make to you is that in the end it is up to the businessmen and women, it is up to the investors, it is up to the companies, it is up to the people of two societies as to whether or not ultimately the relationship acquires new vigour and new momentum. But governments do have a responsibility. They do have a responsibility to lead, they have a responsibility to symbolise a determination to change and improve a relationship. And I hope my visit is seen in that light. We are very much a government and a country which is conscious of our interaction, not only with the Asia Pacific region, but of course with North Asia and the Indian Ocean area. I am frequently asked at news conferences in Australia, in Europe, in America and in Asia, I am frequently asked about the balance of Australia’s relationships with different parts of the world as if it were not possible to have a close and intimate relationship with a series of nations in the Asia Pacific region and at the same time preserve close and intimate relations with the nations of North America and many of the nations of Europe.
International relations is not something that is constantly involving competition between levels of involvement. It is possible to add value to a relationship with one part of the world because you have a relationship with another part of the world. Who in this audience could deny that the relationship between India and Australia is immensely strengthened by our capacity to freely discourse in a common language. And who would deny that our location in the Asia Pacific region does not add value to our association with the countries of North America, and who could seriously deny that our relationships with the nations of the immediate north to us don’t add some value to our relationship with countries in Europe whose understanding of those societies is less than ours. Foreign affairs is very much a process of adding, constantly adding value to your relationship on the basis of other experiences as well as on the basis of a shared history. And it is very much in that spirit that I have come here to India, a country I have long respected and admired. A country whose democratic traditions are both profound and admirable and also a country whose burgeoning economic strength is to be respected, is to be understood and I know will be the source of continued social and economic nourishment to the people of India in the years ahead.
I thank you very warmly for your welcome.
QUESTION:
Mr Prime Minister, after our nuclear tests in 1998, there was an expression of very strong disappointment of India in Australia. In fact the sentiment was strong enough to have impacted on business also. With this visit of yours [inaudible].
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, sir, there was a strong reaction. You ask are we over it; we have moved on. We had a view, we don’t withdraw that view, but we move on from it and we recognise that our relationship means more than just dwelling on one particular issue. But equally we do not lightly express views about nuclear testing. And we did not express them carelessly or without deliberation. But we have moved on and I am assuredly here as a mark of the government’s desire to strengthen the relationship and although the issue of the comprehensive test ban treaty has certainly been mentioned in all of the discussions I have had with all of your leaders, including the Leader of the Opposition, it is not something that has dominated the discussions but it has been properly dealt with. So we have certainly moved on from there.
QUESTION:
Thank you. Mr Prime Minister, Australia has been at the forefront of the talks for the liberalisation in agricultural trade. There are many in India who also believe that it is in our long term interest to be with Australia in this effort at liberalising agricultural trade. But there is also sensitivity and apprehension on the food security front. That there is this feeling that for a large country such as India we need a certain degree of self sufficiency of controls to feel secure in our food needs. Is there any way that [inaudible] there can be [inaudible] such that we can actually get onto the board realising our untapped potential in agriculture while attending to some of these concerns?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, I don’t think there is a permanent tension, and I don’t even know there is necessarily a short term tension between food security and a greater liberalisation of world trade in agriculture. The common complaint of countries like India and Australia is that the world trade system is loaded against us. You can be penalised if you do certain things in manufacturing if you are European or an American but if the same thing happens in agriculture, you can get away with what we describe in Australia as blue murder. And we don’t think that is very fair and we are working very hard to change it, as head of the Cairns group. I had some discussions with your Ministers about food issues, and it is true, the point you make is true, it is also true, according to those discussions, that distribution and transport and storage remain very significant elements separately from the question of sufficiency. I don’t myself see any incompatibility between our goals and the concerns you have about security. I mean, we do understand self evidently because of the size of your population and the challenges that you have. But I don’t think there is any ultimate tension between the two goals.
QUESTION:
Mr Prime Minister, you have spoken briefly about economic reforms that Australia has been doing perhaps in the last fifteen years or so. You didn’t mention among those reforms the issue of privatisation. I am aware that you have had good experience in privatisation in Australia. In fact you are probably one of the few countries which has privatised all your main airports apart from Sydney. Would you tell us something about what kind of political problems you faced in privatisation programmes and how you solved them with particular comments on airports.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, sir, I have to say to you we have had, we have done very well on privatisation up to a point. We have certainly privatised all of our major airports except Sydney and Sydney will be privatised once we resolve some matters relating to a further airport, whether it be in the West of Sydney in a place called Badgery’s Creek or whatever, but once that issue is resolved, I can assure you that we will be seeking to secure the privatisation of Sydney airport. The major telecommunications company in Australia, Telstra, is owned 50.1% by the government and the rest by the private sector, by many hundreds of thousands of individual Australians. Australia now has the largest individual share ownership of any country in the world. It has gone past the United State proportionately. And this is very largely due to the part privatisation of Telstra. Now we have run into a road block at the moment because of the obstinacy, I have to be careful seeing as I’m outside of Australia, the language that I use, because of the resistance of the Australian Labor Party and the Australian Democrats in the Senate. And in other words, they are being stupid and they won’t let it go through. And we think if they did then many more Australians could own shares in Telstra. We see no value at all in a telecommunications company being half owned by the government. It’s about a $50 billion Australian asset being invested, public sector investment being tied up in a telecommunications company. And we can retire a lot more debt, although our debt levels are at very manageable proportions now. The former government, with our assistance in Opposition I might hastily add, did privatise the former government owned Commonwealth Bank and the level of privatisation, at a state government level, of electricity supply has been quite extensive in some states, not so extensive in others.
We are not fanatical privatisers. We are sensible privatisers. We don’t, for example, intend to privatise the post office. We think there is a role there. We think the government should have a limited but strategic role in the provision and operation of basic services. We think we have the balance right and it will be in complete and marvellous equilibrium when we sell the remaining part of Telstra.
QUESTION:
Mr Prime Minister, it is a privilege to be able to address you. I have visited Australia on quite a few occasions as a tourist and hope to be going there in the latter half of September and be over there. But in each of these visits the first word that I was taught was g’day. So, g’day to you. And I really hope that many more Indians will learn more about Australia and see what a fantastic country it is to visit. Mr Prime Minister, I have a sixteen year old daughter and so she asked me [inaudible] so that I can ask you a riddle, she says, what’s the difference between an American bison and Australian bison. So I was told that yes, one is a large animal with horns and the other is something that you wash your hands in. So I hope we can all share that form of language and there is much to do to communicate and understand each other better so that some day we should maybe be thinking of now going to university and certainly choose Australia.
So [inaudible] my question is, as you mentioned earlier, that students from India are choosing Australia to study for all the really good institutions they have there. Would you see how to encourage educational institutions in Australia, see how they could set up programmes here in India and in that way with Indian institutions as well, and we would then see a much greater communication that [inaudible] this could lead to very good relationships as well.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you very much. Our universities of course have a very large degree of autonomy and we don’t seek to tell them what they should do with the resources they receive from the government and the resources they are increasingly receiving from the private sector. And like all countries we are seeking to maximise the opportunities for the private sector to contribute. I do believe that the, in the last year the focus that there has been in Australia on opportunities in India has inevitably meant two things. It has not only meant an increase in private sector focus on it, can I underline how important clarity and consistency and corporate governance and the predictability and the independence of the legal system and the speed of bureaucratic responses, how important they are in decisions made by entrepreneurs on whether they are going to invest in this country or that. I mean one of the things that we found in the Asian economic collapse was that approaches that were seen as getting very quick results, but perhaps lacked a bit of transparency ended up comparing very unfavourably with the consistent rules of governance and clarity that we think exists in Australia and I think it is very important that that always be maintained.
Now, in relation to the universities, I think there will be a natural inclination. And when you are coming off the base of shared language and many shared traditions I think the renewed interest in and appreciation of the opportunities that exist in India are going to lead to a natural momentum for change and improvement and extension of interest by Australian education interests in your country. I mean it is no accident, of course, that there are so many Indian students. I think it is something like 9,000 studying in Australia now. That ought to grow exponentially and it’s grown as a result of the activity largely supported and encouraged by the government but largely is the initiative.
And as I say it is not just universities but it is tourism training courses, TAFE course, a whole raft of activities where our capacity to take more students is unlimited almost and they are very welcome. They are made to feel welcome and they are welcome.
Thank you.