PRIME MINISTER KEY:
Good morning. Well, just allow me to make a few remarks. Tony, can I just welcome you back to New Zealand. This, of course, is Prime Minister Abbott’s second visit to New Zealand. We had the opportunity to catch up last night and have a quick drink to talk about issues of interest to both countries; of course, and an opportunity for Tony to update me on the terror threat that was unveiled over the weekend, also to talk our mutual interests around economic issues and, of course, a little bit about today’s ceremony.
Today, obviously we’re going back to Pukeahu, the National War Memorial. We’ll have an opportunity to officially unveil the Australian memorial and I think it’s only fitting, Tony, that Australia is the first country to establish its memorial down at the National War Memorial as we will have a first hand opportunity to acknowledge and experience when we go to Gallipoli together in a few days’ time. That was the place where the Anzac bonds were forged on the shores of Anzac Cove; that’s where the great match up that the two countries enjoy today was first established.
We know with Australia we have a great friend, someone that always has our back and someone for whom we share a wide range of interests from the sporting field, ultimately to the battle field.
So, with that, Tony, it’s great to welcome you here. Thank you for taking time to come over even though it’s a busy schedule.
PRIME MINISTER ABBOTT:
Well, John, thank you so much. It is a thrill to be back in New Zealand and it is a real honour to be able to open officially the Australian War Memorial here in New Zealand.
As we are so conscious right now, our history goes back a long way. It obviously is a remarkable thing to look back one hundred years to that terrible baptism of fire that our two countries had on the Gallipoli Peninsula on 25 April 1915.
But it’s been a very strong partnership over the century – a really, really strong partnership – and I think it is quite fitting that a hundred years on, Australians and New Zealanders are again working for our values and our interests together in Iraq and the Building Partner Capacity mission that we are jointly engaged upon will shortly be operational in the Middle East.
Our interests are not just security interests; they’re obviously economic interests. Our two economies are very, very strongly linked. Obviously, we are working together in a whole range of subjects right around the world. We talked about the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank this morning, we talked about the Trans Pacific Partnership, free trade negotiations. We talked about the ever-increasing people-to-people links across the Tasman.
But, whichever way you look at it, while Australia and New Zealand are juridically separate entities, while we are independent countries, we are the very best of friends and I like to think that we are more than friends; we’re family.
Certainly, when I think about the kinds of meetings that I have – I had an interesting meeting with my brother heads of government in Canberra on Friday and now I’ve had a very interesting meeting with my brother head of government across the Tasman – and, I’ve got to say, it is always a pleasure to be dealing with Prime Minister John Key of New Zealand.
QUESTION:
Prime Minister Abbott, how concerned should New Zealanders and Australians be to attend Anzac commemorations across the globe? Should they be concerned about their security?
PRIME MINISTER ABBOTT:
Wherever you go in the world today, there is a security issue and countries such as ours are living with heightened threats. We've had a heightened threat level in Australia now for quite a few months and what it means is that at public events, regardless of the nature of those events, there is a stronger security presence now than there would have been a year or two years ago. So, this is just par for the course these days.
Certainly, at Anzac events in Australia over the next few days there will be a visible security presence and on the Gallipoli Peninsula there will be a strong security presence organised by the Turkish Government and, certainly, Australia and I'm sure New Zealand have been working very closely with the Turkish Government in recent weeks and months to ensure that things go off as far as they humanly can without a hitch.
Yes, we had some arrests in Melbourne over the weekend of people who were planning a terrorist event to coincide with Anzac, but the fact that this particular plot was interdicted as it was shows that our security agencies are working very effectively. We have the best police and security agencies in the world. You need them at times like this.
The final point I make is that the best thing Australians and New Zealanders can do is to turn up in very large numbers at Anzac events, wherever they are, to support our values, our interests, and our armed forces. That's the best thing that people can do. If they want to show support for our way of life, support for our values, they should turn up at Anzac events and, by their presence, show support for our countries, our values and our armed forces.
QUESTION:
Prime Minister Key, your pre-Budget speech listed a number of factors. One of them was the Chinese economy, one of them was the Australian economy. And your treasury secretary on the weekend said he was more concerned about the Australian economy. Do you share his level of concern and what will you be looking at in the lead up to budget [inaudible]?
PRIME MINISTER KEY:
Well, the reason we express those concerns is simply to reflect the size of the Australian economy and its significance to New Zealand. So, Australia, depending on how you measure things, is New Zealand's largest market. It's been our largest source of tourists, our largest source of foreign investment. So, any slowdown in the Australian economy has an impact on New Zealand and we always say a strong Australia is good for a strong New Zealand. So, that's why we express concerns if there are any.
We applaud the Government in Australia. We think that they are taking the steps necessary to try and ensure that Australia is a stronger, robust economy, getting on top of its debt, driving economic growth, but some of the factors that are slowing down the Australian economy, from what we can see, iron ore prices and the likes are beyond the Government's control. All they can do is the measures they are taking, which is to be careful of their expenditure, to drive productivity in their economy and to demand better value for money for the services that they pay for.
So, it's really just a reflection of the fact that they are a very significant part – if you look at between Australia and China, that makes up a huge proportion of New Zealand's export markets and we need those consumers to be buying our products.
QUESTION:
[Inaudible]
PRIME MINISTER ABBOTT:
Well, I'm just really thrilled that our two countries are working together as we are – I really am – because as we know, this is not just a deployment for the security of Iraq, this is a deployment for the security of Australia and New Zealand.
The two terrorist incidents that we've had in Australia were both inspired by the Islamist death cult that is so rampant in parts of Iraq and Syria. I know that as peaceful and Pacific peoples, we are naturally reluctant to reach out to foreign conflicts, but this particular conflict is reaching out to us and that's why this deployment to the Middle East is not just about helping people over there, it's about helping our own people, too.
So, I am very, very proud to be standing here with Prime Minister John Key. I am very proud of our armed forces. I know John Key is very proud of New Zealand's armed forces and they will give a fine account of themselves in Iraq – they really will. It's a training mission, of course, not a combat mission, but they will give a fine account of themselves and they will be splendid, I suppose, sons of Anzacs. That's what they will be over there in Iraq.
PRIME MINISTER KEY:
Yeah, look, I think I would push back pretty strongly on the notion that somehow there's either not close collaboration or cooperation. The reality is that while we're a joint operation in Iraq and at Taji Air Base, there is still a separate element of that. So, for instance, the New Zealand forces are ultimately under command of the New Zealand military as indeed the Australians are.
So, we've been training together in Australia as you're aware. The timing of when the Australians actually go to Iraq; that's a matter for the Australians. It's roughly around the same time as us, but they're not necessarily travelling together. So, we wouldn't know exactly when the Australian forces are leaving and the Australian military supplied some pictures of when they were actually going. The advice we've had from our military is just to be one notch more conservative and not to say the exact days but as the CDF said yesterday on Q&A, we've been very open about what we’ve been doing – the number of people we’re sending, the makeup of those particular forces, how long they will be there, what sort of mandate that they've got – but the view of the New Zealand military is we should just be slightly cautious about showing people their boarding passes, about when they leave and when they arrive.
But, I think in terms of coordination, there's been a high-level of coordination. We think the operation will go very well. We have 100 per cent confidence in the Australians we'll be working alongside and we know that they have 100 per cent confidence in us. So, you know, minor issues about one military says they're leaving on a particular day or not shouldn't be interpreted as anything else other than they just have a slightly different perspective on that one point but that’s the way things go.
In terms of length of the operation, again, because they're under individual control, each country can determine how long they're there for. I’ve made the point to New Zealanders, which I intend to stick to, that we will be there for two years and in the end it will be for Australia to determine how long they're in Iraq. It may be two years, it may be a different timeframe, that's for Prime Minister Abbott to determine, but, you know, for the two years we will be there working alongside Australia, I think it will be a very successful operation.
QUESTION:
My question is for both leaders. While you’re in Turkey in the coming days, what more would you ask the Turkish Government to do to step up the fight against ISIL, in particular, what more could they be doing to stop Turkey being used as a staging post for foreign fighters going into Syria?
PRIME MINISTER ABBOTT:
Thanks, Steven. Obviously, Australians who have gone to fight with the death cult have mostly gone through Turkey. So, I will be talking to the Turkish leadership about what can be done to better police that border and to better ensure that people who have no reason to be going there are prevented from being there. It is absolutely critical that as far as humanly possible, we stop gullible, impressionable young Australians from going to places where they could very easily be killed or they could get caught up in something which is in no one’s interests.
This is the point I keep making: this is a death cult. It is not about God, it is not about religion, it is ultimately a death cult and that’s the very strong message that I give to anyone in Australia who is thinking of pretending to go to Turkey while really heading off to Syria and Iraq: don’t do it. Don’t do it. You will do yourself no good; you will do no one any good. Don’t go and Australia will be doing everything we can at every level to prevent people from making that horrible, horrible trip.
PRIME MINISTER KEY:
We’d reiterate the same points in New Zealand and the only other point I think we will be making is simply that what is so different about ISIL from other terrorist groups that we’ve seen around the world is their absolute desire to bring the war to our countries and domestically have a focus on that and what you’ve seen over the weekend in Australia is a very clear and tangible example of that where ISIL, through its outreach campaign, is actually physically targeting people to undertake domestic terror actions in Australia and we think that threat presents itself in New Zealand.
So, our major point will be we’re sending people as part of the Building Partner Capacity mission to build up Iraq’s forces, we do that to give them support but we do that in the belief that if they are successful in degrading ISIL, there are both regional domestic and international benefits for a country as remote as New Zealand is. So, we’ll be thanking them for what they do; we’ll be asking them to do everything they possibly can and we’ll be reiterating the seriousness with which we take the ISIL threat.
[ends]