Just before leaving for North Asia, I went to Pearce airbase near Perth to thank the international team that’s been searching almost three weeks for missing Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370.
This is one of the great mysteries of our time. It is probably the most difficult search in human history. Amidst tragedy, though, there is hope: the main countries of North Asia – Japan, China and Korea – have joined Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, the United States and the United Kingdom in scouring the remote ocean looking for clues that might help solve this riddle.
I thank the people and the government of Japan for the help that they are giving to Australia as we lead this search and recovery effort. I thank all the countries involved but especially the countries of North Asia for working together in the cause of our common humanity.
We owe it to the families of the 239 people on board; we owe it to an anxious world wondering how a modern aircraft can simply vanish; not to rest until we have done all that technology, human ingenuity and hard work can achieve.
The knowledge that aviators from Japan, China and Korea are planning missions together and flying daily search grids together – along with pilots from Australia and the US – should be an antidote to the strategic pessimism that sometimes clouds consideration of our region’s future.
As the search for Flight MH370 abundantly demonstrates, we can achieve so much more together than apart. Our futures are inextricably linked. The countries of the Asia-Pacific will advance together or we won’t advance at all.
Over the past few decades, the countries of North Asia have achieved an economic transformation unparalleled in history. Japan has arisen from the ashes of war to become one of the world’s most prosperous societies. Korea has moved from the third world to the first in less than half a century. And China has emerged from war and foreign intervention to shift hundreds of millions of people into the middle class and once more to become the world’s largest economy.
History has many lessons but there are few more instructive or uplifting than Japan’s emergence from war to become a liberal democracy and a model international citizen; Korea’s emergence from dictatorship to become a beacon of democratic prosperity to its oppressed brothers and sisters in the north; China’s emergence from a century of turmoil again to take its place as one of the world’s leading nations; and also the United States’ generosity to former adversaries and preparedness, for the good of the wider world, to engage with countries that have quite different systems.
History is important. It shapes how we think and feel. The past should guide and inform our actions, provided we learn the best lessons of history, not the worst. Lord Palmerston was only partly right when he said that England had no permanent friends or enemies; just permanent interests. It is, in fact, the permanent interest of every country to have more friends and fewer foes.
So, there are many challenges ahead for all the countries of the Asia-Pacific region. Strength and success brings responsibilities as well as opportunities but the rest of the world expects us to grow together, not apart, and it’s our collective duty not to let them down.
The world is looking to our region to drive global prosperity. World-wide, the middle class is projected to grow from 1.8 billion to over 3 billion in the next decade – with most of that growth occurring in Asia. Asia, mostly North Asia, is expected to generate about half the growth in global output between now and 2030.
History, we know, has too many examples of countries that put pride before long-term interest; but, luckily for a world which has benefitted enormously from its rise, the countries of North Asia have grown accustomed to choose cooperation over confrontation.
When I was young, there were ex-soldiers’ clubs in Australia that wouldn’t let Toyotas into their car parks because of bitter memories. Even then, statesmen in both our countries were looking forward, not backwards. The 1957 Japan-Australia trade treaty which Prime Minister Menzies and Trade Minister McEwen negotiated with Prime Minister Abe’s grandfather was the foundation of the coal, iron ore and, later on, gas exports that have helped to make both our countries rich.
I am confident that the long awaited free trade or economic partnership agreement between Japan and Australia will shortly be finalised. I am confident that this will be seen as a milestone in our relationship and a testament to far-sighted governments the way we now see the 1957 agreement.
It will allow both of us to develop further the industries that are our nations’ strengths. More affordable Japanese consumer products will be good for Australian families. More affordable Australian food will be good for Japanese families. More trade will make both countries richer and our relationship even stronger.
Australia is hoping to import more sophisticated manufactures from Japan. We are hoping to export more high quality food and services to Japan. We are looking to collaborate more with Japan on major projects, in third countries too, and we’re confident that Japan, also, wants to build and deepen an already very strong and stable friendship.
Inevitably, freer trade brings domestic adjustment issues and uncertainties as some industries grow faster than others. Still, the availability of the best possible product at the best possible price ultimately makes all countries richer; and the richer a country is, the better it can cope with change.
Even in the short term, more trade means more jobs. In the long term, more trade means better jobs for everyone because more people work in world-class industries. And it doesn’t stop there. More trade means more friends.
We trade with people whose products we respect and whose word we can rely on. No one buys inadequate products for long, regardless of price; and no one does repeated deals with people who promise but who don’t deliver.
Each of the businesses represented on the senior trade delegation that’s with me on this trip appreciates that it’s impossible to make a profit without providing a worthwhile product or service. Their focus is on what they can do for their customer because that’s the foundation of whatever they might make for themselves.
In this way, trade doesn’t just build wealth; trade builds trust. A long-standing commercial relationship depends upon the respect that the buyer has for the seller and vice versa. People might initially be brought together by self-interest but they stay together through the friendship that these shared endeavours bring.
Through shared endeavours and through shared experiences comes the realisation that there are shared values too. It’s hardly surprising that Australia’s friendship with Japan has grown as our trade has increased; and that this friendship has broadened from trade into increasingly close partnership in a whole range of areas from science to defence.
I welcome Prime Minister Abe’s determination to remove entrenched impediments to economic growth. Like Australia’s new government, the Japanese government is determined to be “open for business”. Part of this restructuring, here in Japan as in Australia, is maximising workforce participation, especially female participation.
My government, in Australia, is determined to make it easier to do business: by eliminating the carbon tax and the mining tax; by cutting red tape; by establishing a one-stop shop for environmental approvals; by restoring the rule of law on major construction sites; by saying what we mean and doing what we say; and by getting the budget back under control because fixing the budget is a big step towards fixing the economy.
Under the new government, environmental approvals have already been given to projects worth $400 billion and every major foreign investment application, bar one, has been approved.
I also welcome Japan’s growing contribution to regional and global security and acknowledge Australia and Japan’s joint efforts to help bring peace to Cambodia, East Timor and Iraq.
As the countries of North Asia grow economically stronger, quite properly, they will be militarily stronger too. As countries grow stronger, it’s more important than ever that disputes be resolved peacefully and in accordance with international law because the alternative should be unthinkable.
Today, the countries of North Asia are not only Australia’s largest trading partners – with 55 per cent of our total two way trade – but are also among each other’s largest trading partners. Trade between Japan, China and Korea has certainly helped mutual prosperity and it should ultimately help mutual understanding as hundreds of thousands of businesses and tens of millions of people appreciate how much they need each other in order to succeed.
With a combined population of 1.5 billion and a GDP of $15 trillion, Japan, China and Korea have decisively shifted the world’s centre of economic gravity. For North Asia, the challenges of weakness and war have given way to the challenges of strength and success. Self-evidently, these are better challenges to have!
For Australia, the tyranny of distance has given way to the advantage of proximity.
My predecessor John Howard famously said of an Australia supposedly torn between Europe and Asia that “we do not need to choose between our history and our geography”. My own response to those urging Australia to choose between our economic and our security interests, is that you don’t make new friends by losing old ones; and you don’t make one friendship stronger by weakening another.
The best response to those who fear that North Asia is doomed to a cold peace or worse is that more trade means more understanding and more understanding means less tension.
Trade, however, is not enough.
I am here in North Asia early in the term of a new government to boost trade, certainly; but, above all, to build friendships. Friends, after all, don’t visit each other because they need to but because they want to.
Of course, Australia is interested in the economic benefits of closer relationships with the countries of North Asia but these relationships now involve so much more than trade. That’s why, as well as business leaders, my delegation includes cultural and educational leaders too.
A few years before Prime Ministers Menzies and Kishi concluded the first Japan-Australia trade treaty, another Australian statesman had launched the Colombo Plan to bring to Australian universities the brightest students of our region.
Sir Percy Spender said at that time: “Our future depends, to an ever increasing degree, upon the political stability of our Asian neighbours; upon the economic wellbeing of Asian people; and upon the development of understanding and friendly relations between Australia and Asia.”
Australia has much to offer the world; but much to learn as well, especially from Asia. Six decades later, the new Australian government is completing the circle by sending Australia’s best and brightest to study at universities in our region.
Here in Japan, I will launch the first pilot phase of the new two-way Colombo Plan which complements Prime Minister Abe’s ambition to double the number of Japanese students studying abroad.
Of course, for millions of Australians, the countries of Asia are family, through the ties of ancestry, marriage and migration. These bonds, too, are to be nurtured just as much as the bonds of trade, commerce, culture and strategic cooperation.
No less than the peoples of North Asia, Australians are conscious of our country’s history and steeped in the values and traditions that have shaped us. Still, my presence here, so early in my prime ministership and prior to any travel beyond our region, is a deliberate statement of my government’s priorities.
Australia has well and truly put behind us any yearning to count for more in Europe that might once have seemed the centre of world affairs. We are not in the wrong region but in the right one.
I am determined that the Asian Century will be Australia’s moment too. We are in the right place, at the right time, with the right spirit and will strive to make the most of all the advantages we have.
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