PRIME MINISTER ABBOTT:
It’s an honour for me to welcome my friend Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine to Australia. This is the first visit by a Ukrainian leader to our country and I certainly look forward to more visits in the years and decades to come.
Ukraine is certainly a distant country but the MH17 atrocity has brought our countries together in a remarkable way. I never imagined, notwithstanding the warm meeting that Petro and I had in Normandy on 6 June that I would be working closely with President Poroshenko on a matter of vital national interest to Australia. But, you never know what's around the corner. Australia is a country with global interests and some global reach, as was demonstrated during the MH17 crisis and its aftermath.
I want to say thank you to you, Petro, for the help and assistance that Ukraine and your government gave to Australia and our citizens in the aftermath of that terrible atrocity. Coming from this tragedy, I believe will be a strong and lasting friendship between the Australian people and the Ukrainian people.
Already there are some tangible manifestations of that friendship. We have an interim embassy in Kiev. We expect to open our ongoing embassy in February. We are contributing about $100 million to the IMF support for Ukraine. We have recently delivered or are in the process of delivering about $2 million worth of non-lethal assistance to the Ukrainian military and we are beginning a capacity building programme where Australia will assist elements of the Ukrainian government in the Ukraine's economic and institutional transformation.
I think Ukraine has enormous potential. About 40 million highly educated people in a continent which is still the most economically important region of our earth. If you look at what's happened in Poland over the last couple of decades, there has been remarkable economic, social and political transformation and I believe that the Ukraine has the same potential for social, political and economic transformation in the decades ahead. Australia wants to be helpful and supportive to the Ukraine in this process.
Finally, I should say that I believe that there are few, if any, democratically elected leaders who face as many challenges as Petro Poroshenko. The challenge of institutional transformation, of economic transformation, in the face of a grave external threat is extraordinary. I deeply admire and respect the way he is facing up to these challenges. I would like to offer him as much personal support as I can and I want to assure him that as a free country, Australia feels deep solidarity with the free country of Ukraine and wishes to do whatever we reasonably can to support Ukraine. I do hope that in the not too distant future, an Australian leader may be able to visit the Eastern Ukraine to help unveil a monument to the dead of MH17 and I do hope that when that time occurs, that we will be able to do so in a Ukraine which is free, prosperous, peaceful and united.
PRESIDENT POROSHENKO:
Thank you, Honourable Prime Minister, ladies and gentlemen.
First of all I would like to thank the Prime Minister for the invitation to visit your country. I think that was very important for us to meet, even before I became President, I was a president-elect at the day of Normandy, but we discussed about the very wide range of our sphere of our cooperation but most important thing was peace.
Ukraine undertakes enormous efforts to bring peace to the east of my country. We proposed a peace plan which was agreed and then signed by all the participants and believe me, when I receive the information about the MH17 tragedy in Ukrainian sky we considered it, all these 298 innocent victims was massive and I immediately made a phone call to Tony and all the Ukrainian people, together with all the nations suffered from this terrorist attack, but Australia was a nation who suffered one of the most. And it really demonstrates a very effective way of cooperation together with the Australian Government, Dutch government, Malaysian and other nations to provide a transparent investigation for this terrorist attack and we may be interested the most together with our Australian friends as partners, that the terrorists should be punished and this never happen in the sky.
I hope that very soon the investigation will be finished and now we have a preliminary result who is responsible for that. This is a tragedy. But this tragedy brings our nations closer and I want to stress that my visit, the first visit of the Ukrainian President to Australia, is a demonstration of our strategic character of our partnership and Ukraine recognise and thank Australia and a very close my friend, the Prime Minister and friend of all Ukrainian for the constructive support Australia demonstrated during the United Nations meeting, during the G20 meeting, and for the very effective cooperation with the Ukrainians living here because almost 40,000 Ukrainians are living here in Australia and demonstrating the very effective way how they be Australian citizen, of how they keep, stay Ukrainians. This is very important for us.
We have absolutely practical results to be discussed today in different spheres. In the coordination of our efforts in the international organisations including the United Nations, G20. In the coordination, the unity and solidarity of the world together with Ukraine in this very difficult situation and Australia demonstrates exactly this approach. And I want to thank Tony for that. We have a very important position for our bilateral cooperation including energy sphere. We discussed today the possibility for the cooperation in the sphere of nuclear energy. Ukraine realises there is the possibility to buy Australian uranium for our nuclear power station. We discussed about the possibility for supply of Australian coal for the Ukrainian energy system. We discussed about the Australian participation in the donor conference at the beginning of next year in Brussels.
We thank Australia for supporting us in the military technical cooperation, including non-lethal, including supply of the warm clothes for the Ukrainian Army. We have a potential sphere of our cooperation for agriculture, which is a leading industry both for Australia and for Ukraine and exchange of experience, exchange of the prognosis, coordination of our analytic services which is mutually beneficial. And we appreciate very much that the Australian Government decision to open the embassy in Kiev, I think this is also good, not only practical but very symbolic meaning to have your ambassador in Kiev and we are also absolutely sure that that will help us to increase the cooperation between us.
I want to use this opportunity to invite the Prime Minister of Australia to visit Kiev at the beginning of next year and we are waiting for you and I told him that he's one of the most popular foreign politicians in Ukraine.
PRIME MINISTER ABBOTT:
And I said to President Petro Poroshenko that it's nice to be popular , even if only in Kiev. Thank you so much, Petro, before we take questions I should just say that, yes, we did talk about the potential for Australian uranium and coal exports to Ukraine. Australia is an energy superpower and energy security is very important to Ukraine, particularly given its current vulnerability to supply shocks. So, this would be good should we be able to bring it about for jobs and prosperity in Australia as well as for jobs and prosperity in the Ukraine.
QUESTION:
Thank you, Prime Minister. In your decision to invite President Petro Poroshenko to Australia, what message were you sending to Russian President Vladimir Putin and is Australia taking sides in a European war?
PRIME MINISTER ABBOTT:
I should point out for the record, Ellen, that President Putin was recently a visitor here to Australia for the G20 and some fairly robust discussions were had in Brisbane between President Putin and various other participants in the G20, just as there've been some fairly robust discussions between President Putin and myself earlier in Beijing. The side we take is the side of freedom, democracy and self-determination. That's the side we take. Plainly, freedom, democracy and self-determination are currently at risk in parts of Eastern Europe. That's our abiding principle. We support freedom, we support democracy, we support self-determination, and we ask that Russia adhere to the commitments that it's given, the commitments that it gave at Minsk recently, the commitments that it gave in the United Nations Security Council in supporting Resolution 2166. That's what we ask of Russia that it keep the commitments that it has made to the international community at the UN and at Minsk.
I say to President Putin who obviously I've got to know reasonably well over the last few months, that this is an opportunity for him to be a statesman as well as a patriot. I appeal to everyone to heed the better angels of their nature here because as I've said in numerous contexts in recent times, we will all advance together or none of us will advance at all and I think that's a very good principle to follow in international affairs.
QUESTION:
Thank you, Mr Prime Minister. The Russian aggression is not only in tanks, it's in the informational sphere around the world and Yale Professor, Timothy Snyder, recently observed that the Kremlin-funded media around the world crafts propaganda with the aims of destabilising Western values, not only to destabilise Ukrainians’ identity and culture, but it comes at the heart of the Western values of free speech. Mr President, how important is it that you fight this war – the information war – as well as the one with tanks? And maybe the Prime Minister has a view about whether our media checks and balances are sufficient to deal with Russian TV, which is the propaganda on SBS and ‘Russia Beyond the Headlines’ which is a supplement that comes with the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age? And there's good evidence that those are means crafted really for political ends. Is this an issue for you, Mr Prime Minister, and is this an issue for you, Mr President?
PRESIDENT POROSHENKO:
Thank you very much for your question. I just want to make it clear, Ukraine makes a war not only for our own independence, not only for the sovereignty, or territorial integrity; we're making war for the freedom, for the democracy, for the peace. And you're absolutely right, for the values – the European values – and when you're fighting for values, the whole world is together with you.
I want to thank Tony for the demonstration of the unity of the whole civilised world – the European Union, Australia, Canada, United States, Japan – the whole world is together with Ukraine and Russia stays in isolation. That means that the hundreds of millions of dollars they spend on the information war is not effective because truth is with us. But that doesn't mean that we should coordinate our efforts also in the information wars. We undertake certain steps inside of Ukraine. We plan to launch the Ukrainian English language satellite channel to deliver our version of the information from the East and truth about Ukraine. This is absolutely necessary. But I think that all these coordinated efforts is not against Russia; this is just [inaudible] fulfil their obligation they take by signing the Minsk protocol. This is also the Russian signature, where there is an absolutely clear message: please stop the fire. Please, release the hostages. Please, withdraw your troops from my territory. Please, close the border and I promise if you close the border, within one, two, three weeks, we will have peace and stability in Ukraine. It’s very simple.
PRIME MINISTER ABBOTT:
Simon, just very briefly, look, I'm not aware of the machinations of what might be described as state-sponsored propaganda, but I would prefer to think that what President Poroshenko and myself are talking about here is not so much Western values as universal values. I think every country and every person yearns to live in freedom and dignity and that's what we seek. We seek freedom and dignity for every person in every country and that's not taking sides; that's standing up for the universal decencies of mankind.
QUESTION:
I might ask you when expect the investigation into the MH17 tragedy to be complete and what confidence do you believe that the families of victims should have that perpetrators will be brought to justice? And on a wider note, you mentioned Australia's popularity in the Ukraine. Will you be getting tips on how you might replicate that at home?
PRIME MINISTER ABBOTT:
They're very cheeky, Australian journalists, and Michael Gordon is amongst the cheekiest of them all, Petro. I will tell you about he and my surfing encounter later and I reckon I out-surfed him. Anyway, so that’s another story. Look, can I just say on Australia's behalf that we thank you, Petro, for the leadership you've shown. We also thank Prime Minister Rutte and the Dutch for the leadership they've shown. We thank Prime Minister Najib and the Malaysians for the cooperation and the commitment that they've shown.
We want this investigation to be concluded as quickly as possible, but it's difficult to say precisely when that will be. When I was in the Netherlands a few months ago, the hope was that it might be concluded within a year or so. I'm not sure whether that's still their position, but, certainly, as soon as it is possible to conclude it, it should be concluded and appropriate action should be taken against those who are found to have been responsible. Yes, the point I made to President Putin was that if it turns out that people under Russian authority had a hand in this, well we absolutely expect – we absolutely expect – them to be surrendered to investigators and to prosecutors because this is an atrocity, an absolute atrocity. It was mass murder on a vast scale. There were 38 victims and common decency, common humanity demands that all decent and civilised people cooperate in this investigation and in the desire to bring the perpetrators to justice.
On a perhaps more satisfactory note, I can report that all of the 38 Australians have now been positively identified and arrangements are in place for the final repatriations to be made and, again, I want to thank all the Australian personnel who've been involved in this and I particularly want to thank the people of the Netherlands and the Dutch authorities for the extraordinary respect and the dignity that they have accorded to Australia's dead.
PRESIDENT POROSHENKO:
Michael, thank you very much for your question. Look, there does not exist among the world people who would more interested in the free, fair and transparent investigation than indeed the nations who suffered including Tony and me. From the very first hours of the tragedy, you cannot imagine what we, the Ukrainian people, felt. Watching the way the terrorists were treating bodies of victims is still in front of me. They arranged for these black boxes, they knew that they’d keep them, and within several weeks they did not give it to the investigation team. The same way we make a decision that the leader of the investigation would be the nation who suffered the most – the Dutch – and we invited them. In very few hours, the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Australian Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Australia team of the investigation were in my Cabinet, in my office. You cannot imagine how heroic that was, perhaps under fire to try to enter to the place of the crash and they opened fire and didn’t allow them to be there. What they were doing for several days with the victims, with the black boxes, parts of the plane, everybody understands. They were trying to destroy their evidence.
Our coordinated pressure brings the results that took all the bodies of the victims – as far as I understand, not all the victims are still identified – and when we delivered the black boxes, when most of the victims were identified, when we delivered most of the parts of the plane, except those that were stolen, including the private belongings of the victims. We expected a quick, transparent, reliable investigation. We, from the Ukrainian side, were from the very first moment very open for the cooperation and we delivered that. That was Russian weapons, very complicated. It's impossible just to [inaudible]. No way in the world. Nobody can make [inaudible]. I hate the idea now to disclose any information from the investigation team, we don't have, but preliminary results are absolutely clear about who is responsible, who is the terrorist. The terrorist is those who kill Ukrainian people in Donetsk and Luhansk and I’m absolutely sure that after we are finished this investigation, it would be absolutely necessary that this organisation who takes the responsibility of this terrorist attack, should be recognised and treated in the whole world like a terrorist organisation. Any form of cooperation or support of this organisation would be qualified as a support of the terrorism.
QUESTION:
Thank you. Mr Abbott, my first question is to you. In the absence of significant diplomacy and trade diplomacy between Russia and Australia as opposed to European countries in the European Union and the United States, Australia has been in a privileged position to [inaudible]. Are you considering sending [inaudible] and President Poroshenko, are you welcome to further support those Ukrainian troops in Donetsk and from Australia?
PRIME MINISTER ABBOTT:
The kind of support that we would offer to the Ukraine is in line with the kind of support which our friends and partners have offered. When you look at the support that Canada, America and the United Kingdom have offered to the Ukraine, it's not lethal support, it's non-lethal support, it's capacity-building support and that's the kind of thing that we would look to continue. We certainly do want to be of assistance to the Ukraine in every way, but for understandable reasons, we want to see less fighting, not more fighting, and, sure, we want to see a just outcome – we absolutely want to see a just outcome – but a just outcome is one which has as little bloodshed as possible. All of us want to see an end to the fighting. All of us want to see a restoration of the Ukraine's integrity but with as little bloodshed as possible.
PRESIDENT POROSHENKO:
You’re absolutely right. I think that the discussion about the lethal or not-lethal does not exactly the demonstrate the character of our negotiation. Ukraine is a modern, industrialised country and in a position to produce our own weapons to defend our country. All the negotiations we’ve had is about how to defend the country, not to make an attack or offensive approach and if we talk about it, this is not only with Australia but with the whole world, talking about how to defend the country. We’re talking about the communication, [inaudible] some methods of the reconnaissance – this is just for defending. And if you’re talking about the programme for training our troops, because we don’t have an army, can you imagine? Seven or eight months ago we didn’t have an army and now, we’ve stopped one of the most strong armies in the world, because we are defending our own territory, we defended our own motherland. The way that the whole world has supported us is absolutely satisfactory. We defend peace. We’re not planning to attack anybody. If anybody supplied us medicine, that is to help stop bleeding Ukraine. This is also very important and I’m absolutely sure that we’ll stop the war, we’ll bring the peace and the combination of factors – sanctions, low oil prices – it’s working. But, if you compare if Australia is a big or small trading partner with Russia, some European countries are bigger. We should understand that this is not a question of money, this is a question of values and this is completely different. Sometimes we need to pay money for values – that’s for sure.
[ends]