PRIME MINISTER:
Your Majesty, Excellencies, students and alumni, welcome to Sydney and the ASEAN-Australia Special Summit.
It is very fitting that the first event of our Leaders’ Summit is to celebrate Australia’s long-standing cooperation with ASEAN on education.
Because, when it comes to the ambition of the ASEAN-Australia Special Summit, promoting greater regional security and prosperity, nothing can be more important than education and the deep personal connections that we create when we study and learn in each others countries.
Education is an investment in human capital, it’s an investment in the future and mostly in young people, not exclusively, and they are the greatest asset of any of our countries.
The benefits of our education exchange go beyond economic growth figures. Through personal experience, we forge the bonds of friendship and sow the seeds for future contact and collaboration between our countries.
We’re here in Sydney, the largest city in Australia. The most successful multicultural society in the world. In this city Your Majesty, Excellencies, a third of people in this city were not born in Australia. So you walk around the streets of Australia, you see the extraordinary diversity of our nation. Living together in harmony, harmony that is built on mutual respect.
You know my first engagement for this Summit, I met with emerging leaders from Australia and all the ASEAN countries. These young people paint an optimistic picture for our region’s future. Just as the young Australians we met, and Indonesians that President Jokowi and I met earlier today. They all share what I would call ‘cultural curiosity’; a belief that sharing and understanding the ideas, the beliefs, the cultures of the region benefits everyone.
From the time Australia became ASEAN’s first dialogue partner in 1974, education has been the hallmark of our cooperation.
Our relationship was greatly enriched by the thousands of students from Southeast Asia who studied in Australia under the Colombo Plan over four decades, and more than 16,000 students from ASEAN countries have studied in Australia under the Australia Awards since 2007.
And today by the almost one hundred thousand ASEAN students who are studying in Australian institutions, right now.
The New Colombo Plan builds on this powerful legacy of student exchange by sending our best and brightest young Australians to study, live and gain professional experience throughout the region. And as they are doing that, they build the trust that exists between all our nations.
The logic of the New Colombo Plan reflects simple truths that each one of us in this room understand: that to work together, we must understand each other first. That to contribute to a more peaceful and prosperous region, we must understand cultures other than our own. And that the experience we have early in our lives are the most formative and meaningful.
So by supporting the most outstanding Australian undergraduates to study and undertake internships in our region, Australia is investing in the long-term future of the ASEAN-Australia partnership
So to the Australian students and young people here today, my message is very simple.
Whatever career you pursue, whatever your course of study, and wherever you live – there are opportunities for you to support closer ties between Australia and ASEAN, between Australia and the countries of our region.
The ASEAN-Australia Special Summit has shown just how many opportunities there are for us to work together, for our businesses, our government agencies, our academic institutions and beyond.
Now I’m delighted that our education cooperation will be strengthened further by the important initiatives that our Foreign Minister is about to announce.
So, I now invite the Honourable Julie Bishop MP, Minister for Foreign Affairs and the architect of the New Colombo Plan to address us, Foreign Minister.