Stephen, thank you so much for those magnificent and moving words. These are the ties that bind.
It says something remarkable about three separate countries that their citizens can operate as closely together as those Canadians, Australians and Britons in that particular Lancaster Bomber and yet here are countless examples like that from World War One, from World War Two and subsequently.
We are separate countries but we are family and that story magnificently illustrates the strength of those family ties that bind.
To Prime Minister and Mrs Harper, to the Speaker of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Commons, to Ministers Baird, Moore, Fast and Oliver, to my colleague Minister Andrew Robb of Australia, to the members of the Australian business delegation and members of the Australian Business Roundtable I want to say what a thrill and honour it is to be here so relatively early in my time as the Australian Prime Minster.
Prime Minister Harper and I have just marked the 70th anniversary of D-Day when some 3,000 Australian airmen and sailors helped to support the 30,000 Canadian troops at Juno Beach to liberate Europe.
From there, I went to the battlefields of northern France where Australians and Canadians had become the shock troops of the British army, and Generals Sir John Monash and Sir Arthur Currie were widely regarded as the best allied commanders of the Great War.
On Anzac Day 2018, the centenary of the Battle of Villers-Bretonneux I hope to open a Western Front interpretive centre to highlight our countries part in the battles that shaped our world. It will help to remind future generations of the high price of freedom.
More recently, Canada swiftly joined the Australian-led force that brought peace to East Timor and in Afghanistan, Canadians and Australians have fought together so that people can choose their own government, girls can go to school and fanatics don’t dictate how God should be worshipped.
In Flanders and northern France as part of the old imperial family Australian units relieved Canadian ones and vice versa.
We’re still family – “kindred countries” John Howard called us – because of shared history, shared heritage and shared values.
As the world’s 11th and 12th largest economies and with comparable militaries, Canada and Australia are big enough to be useful friends around the world’s negotiating tables rather than complicated ones.
As pluralist democracies with strong human rights records, we tend to attract admirers rather than critics.
As multi-cultural societies, resource-based economies and evolving federations, Canada and Australia also face much the same challenges: ensuring that our first peoples are not second class citizens in their own country, preserving sophisticated manufacturing in economies dominated by resources and agriculture, deciding how much stress to place on diversity and how much on unity, avoiding duplication and buck-passing between different levels of government, and managing vast wilderness areas consistent with creating jobs and prosperity.
Very recently, in both countries, the agenda of centre-right governments has been lower taxes, less regulation, and reduced government spending to drive higher productivity and higher economic growth. Happily for Canada, thanks to Stephen Harper’s leadership, it is further down the path to a sustainable surplus than Australia. Since 2006 Canada has been a role model for centre right governments and political parties right around the world.
For all that is yet to do Australia and Canada are amongst the happiest and the most tranquil societies on earth. Our comparative success at managing comparable problems means that we do have much to learn from each other, including through the Canada-Australia Public Policy Partnership which Prime Ministers Harper and Howard set up in 2007.
As I said in Melbourne and repeat here tonight, we should be more conscious of all that we have in common and of all the good that we might do together. So my intention is to broaden and deepen the relationship between countries that are as like-minded as any two nations can be.
I want to make more of this friendship, for our own good and for the good of the wider world.
With the United States, Britain and New Zealand, Australia and Canada are part of the Five Eyes intelligence sharing arrangements. With continuing terrorist threats, exacerbated by militarised radicals returning from Syria, with Russia’s interference in Ukraine, tensions in the South China Sea, and the potential for nuclear brinkmanship in Iran, good intelligence is ultimately in the world’s interests, not just our nations’.
Australia should always do what we can to protect our citizens, to help our friends and to advance our values.
This Australian government will never be embarrassed or apologetic about doing what is necessary to keep our country strong and our friends safe.
Of course, it is, in the end, a stronger global economy that is more likely to produce a world that is freer and fairer.
In the G20, Australia and Canada are working together to persuade other governments to increase private sector-led growth, balance budgets, boost infrastructure, strengthen banking systems and promote trade and investment.
Of course, the best way to lead is by example.
By the time of the G20 leaders’ summit in November, Australia’s carbon tax and mining tax will be gone, company tax will be down, a one-stop-shop for approving major projects will be in place and major new infrastructure will be underway. Already in Australia more than $500 billion worth of big new projects have received environmental approval since last year’s election and free trade negotiations have successfully been concluded with Japan and Korea, with China yet to come. I pay tribute to the work of Andrew Robb for making this happen.
Australia’s recent budget deregulates higher education, puts a price on doctor visits, makes it harder for young people to go on welfare and reduces the growth of hospital, school and social security spending to put us on track to a sustainable surplus.
On every overseas trip, my message is that Australia is under new management and is once more open for business. This means more opportunities for Canada to invest in Australia.
Already, the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board has a $4.9 billion Australian portfolio including the M7 motorway and office towers in Sydney. Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec owns 27 per cent of the Port of Brisbane and part of the Melbourne Convention Centre. The Ontario Teacher Pension Plan part-owns Sydney’s desalination plant. Viterra and Saputo have growing stakes in Australian agriculture. Our mining and resource businesses are increasingly working together.
Australians have invested some $54 billion in Canada and Canadians have invested some $27 billion in Australia so there’s a bit of evening up that needs to happen in the next few years, but we have done this because we trust each other as good places to do business.
More trade and more investment means more prosperity, and more prosperity means more jobs on both sides of the Pacific. My business delegation includes our mining, resources, manufacturing, infrastructure, finance, medical research and arts sectors because there is so much that Australians and Canadians have to offer each other.
Canadians and Australians are so naturally like-minded that we hardly have to make an effort in each other’s company. Our challenge is to make the most of being at ease with one another and not just to take each other for granted.
A bit like Canada, Australia is a country that instinctively prefers to make a friend than to pick a fight. We’d rather solve a problem than create one and are normally happy to give in order to receive.
The world needs more pragmatism, pragmatism based on values and I’m looking forward to working with Canada to do whatever good we reasonably can.
Again let me pay tribute to Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper. He has taken me under his wing when he was an experienced Prime Minister and I was a mere neophyte Opposition Leader. He has kept me under his wing and I look forward to a strong partnership in all of the forums of the world in the months and years to come.
Stephen thank you for the inspiration you have given to centre-right governments and Parties right around the world.
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