PRIME MINISTER
CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY EMBARGOED UNTIL DELIVERY
ADDRESS BY THE PRIME MINISTER
TO THE FOURTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE
ASIA PACIFIC TELECOMMUNITY
SYDNEY, 25 NOVEMBER 1987
Gareth Evans
Mr George Maltby, President of the A. P. T.
Delegates It's a pleasure to welcome to Sydney and to Australia the
delegates to the fourth General Assembly of the Asia-Pacific
Telecommunity. I congratulate you on your choice of
Australia as venue for your meeting it's good to know that
Australia is increasingly being recognised not only as an
exciting tourist destination but also as an efficient and
friendly host for conferences such as yours.
Indeed Australia is increasingly in the spotlight of
attention from the world's telecommunications industry.
Next year, in our bicentennial year, Melbourne will host the
world Administrative Telegraph and Telephone Conference,
convened by the International Telecommunications Union.
The significance of this event can be gauged not only from
the rarity with which the ITU calls such world conferences
the last was in Geneva in 1973.
The Melbourne conference will be significant as well because
of the issue it will address. Policy makers from nearly
every nation will assemble to discuss the watershed issue of
the future regulatory framework for international
telecommunications. Establishing the right level and degree of regulation fo an
industry is a difficult and sensitive task in any case.
It hardly needs stating in this audience that the question
of regulation of an industry as subject to rapid
technological change as yours, presents real difficulties.
Let me give you a stark measure of the technological change
in the communication industry.
I mentioned that next year is the bicentenary of the
European settlement of Australia. The little colony of
convicts and soldiers and administrators which arrived in
1788 on the shores near where we now meet was as isolated
from the rest of the world as it was possible to be.
Robert Hughes, in his recent book The Fatal Shore, recounts
that by June 1790, the colonists ha gone nearly three years
without news of the outside world.
When the ship The Lady Juliana arrived in Sydney in that
month, it had at sea for 11 months.
Even so, its newspapers and letters bore stunning news: the
illness of the King, the first inauguration of George
Washington and the outbreak of the French Revolution.
By today's standards it was all old news. But then again we
lost our capacity for being surprised by new communications
technology when Neil Armstrong's foot was placed in the dust
on the surface of the moon and we all saw it happen on TV
1.3 seconds later.
Today we are seeing a continuing surge in the development of
new communications technologies.
Technological developments and the convergence of the
telecommunications and information industries have placed
you at the centre of some of the most exciting challenges
facing both industry and governments as we move towards the
twenty-first century.
Telecommunication is well past the stage of being regarded
as essentially a social service. it is now, and will be
increasingly in the future, a potent source of competitive
advantage for commercial enterprises and for nations that
are prepared to respond flexibly to emerging commercial
opportunities. Satellites, optical fibre cables, and the digitalisation of
voice, data and image transmission these are the
technologies which are at the heart of modern
telecommunications. To use an anatomical analogy, if trade is the life blood of
modern societies, then telecommunications is the nervous
system linking together the disparate parts of the world
economy. The benefits are sometimes not undiluted. VStock trading,
thanks to the new technology, can now take place twenty four
hours a day by shifting the market with the sun from Europe
to North America to the western Pacific rim and back to
Europe. This has created a world market, operating in real
time, which is susceptible to the instantaneous responses
which we saw all too dramatically in action last month.
In short, your industry's growth prospects are seemingly
boundless. New needs and new markets are continually being
discovered and new communications products developed.
Indeed we are perhaps reaching the stage where the
capacities of engineers and scientists to produce new
communications technologies will exceed the capacities of
consumers to use them.
It is not hard to imagine business uses for the proposed new
Integrated Services Digital Network the next stage of
development which will make it possible to connect facsimile
machines, personal computers, phones and telexes to the
digital network.
But are we sure that homes need this new facility? You will
probably know that the initials of the new network ISDN
have been appropriated by some cynics to form the less than
flattering tag: Innovations Subscribers Don't Need.
Presumably we will see the answer to that eventually in the
sales figures.
This rapid pace of technological change presents the Asia
Pacific Telecommunity with its own challenges.
The regulatory norms which prevailed when the Asia Pacific
Telecommunity was formed are in danger of becoming outmoded,
or even rendered obsolete, by the changing communications
systems.
And as a representative body of the Asia Pacific region, you
must also grapple with the great disparities in
technological sophistication that still exist within our
global village.
It was reported recently that metropolitan New York has more
telephones than black Africa; that in India more than one
million people are on the waiting list for a telephone; that
the developing countries have a smaller share of the world's
telephones than they do of the world's incomes.
Most developing countries at present have a high degree of
technical dependence on foreign sources of communications
equipment, as well as for systems definition and planning.
Developing countries cannot afford to remain in isolation
and lose out on the benefits that sophisticated integrated
communications networks will bring. But equally they face
the challenge of developing the capacity to control-.
adequately the flow and application of new technology.
Within this framework of change, let me review two specific
areas in which Australia has a particular concern. IVt ,
4.1
First, we are alarmed at the threat posed by the rising tide
of protectionism to the rules and practices of free trade on
which the world's post-war prosperity has been built. This
certainly affects us as an efficient agricultural producer.
But the trade in services including telecommunications
services are not immune from the threat.
It is clear that without the development of global markets
for services such as telecommunications and data services,
without the rapid growth of international financial and
insurance services, without rapid and flexible global
transport, the total world market for goods would be very
much smaller, and we would all be the poorer.
Over the last decade, world trade in services has grown at
an average annual rate of nearly 16 per cent.
An area of trade in services that is growing particularly
rapidly is satellite services. International satellite
telecommunication traffic in the ASEAN group has been
projected by INTELSAT to grow to over 11,000 voice circuits
by 1995, equivalent to the current use by the United States
of the INTELSAT system.
However the services sector is bound, world-wide, in a web
of regulations and restrictions which closely control the
entry into, and investment in, the services sector. This
web even controls in some cases the physical delivery of
services.
Moreover, major exporters have demonstrated willingness to
protect their service markets by bilateral agreements which
by their nature are discriminatory. Clearly, it is in the
interests of all nations, developed and developing alike, to
ensure that the most efficient and cheapest services are
available to all.
Australia welcomes the historic declaration at Punta del
Este that services were to be brought within the
multilateral framework for the first time. In a speech I
made to GATT last month at its headquarters in Geneva I put
forward a set of objectives which should guide the current
round of negotiations.
The OECD is also examining trade in services, and Australia
has been an active participant. We have a strong interest
in these developments because of the opportunities they
afford us to diversify further our economy and, in
particular, our export sector. V
This leads me to the second point which I want briefly to
address: Australia's response to the challenge of the new
telecommunications.
Australia has had, of course, its own unique problems to
solve in the telecommunications area.
Being a large country with a small population, with remote
communities as well as highly developed and sophisticated
industrial and commercial sectors to be served, we have
confronted big and complex challenges.
In solving those problems we have in some cases incorporated
Australian developed technology. For example, Telecom's
Digital Radio Concentrator System, through relay towers,
provides automatic telephone services to the more isolated
areas at reasonable cost.
We have manufacturing facilities provided by the major
corporations of Japan, North America and Europe and, I am
pleased to say, increasingly from Australian firms.
we have recognised the-advantages of moving to a digital
telecommunications system and of establishing optical fibre
cable systems as one of the most economical, reliable and
flexible means of enhancing our network.
Optical fibre cables are planned to cross the Australian
continent from east to west and from north to south.
with the recent launch of the AIJSSAT 3 satellite Australia
has substantially increased its domestic satellite capacity.
This will help meet the solid growth in demand for satellite
services in Australia.
Such developments will make the Australian
telecommunications network one of the most advanced in the
world. And we are taking the next step. Local telecommunications
manufacturing experience has encouraged Australian firms to
tender in the competitive international market. Already
Australian tenders have been offered for major optical fibre
contracts in India and Thailand.
This process is crucial to Australia's long term
development. Australia is undergoing a vital process of structural
change. The rest of the world has severely marked down our
natural resource-based export products. Sustaining our
standard of living means developing and expanding our
manufactured and services exports.
The task is to guide our manufacturing and servicesv
industries to be internationally competitive and export
oriented. Australian telecommunications manufacturers
maintain substantial interests in the region and we are
looking to establish greater links with South East Asian
economies. UU1-2 2U
In recognition of this export potential, my Government has
announced an information industry strategy that aims to link
companies in Australia to world markets, encourage new
product development and ensure the supply of skilled
workers. We will review the regulatory environment and
establish an Industries Information Board to implement the
strategy.
We are confident that this communications export strategy
will increase exports from their present level of
million a year to $ 600 million a year by the middle of the
next decade.
Along with many other countries we are also reviewing the
regulatory framework in which our telecommunications
industry operates., with the objectives of bringing it up to
date and of promoting efficiency.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Over the past eight years the Asia Pacific Telecommunity has
been actively involved in bringing together, and making
available, telecommunications specialists from within the
Asia Pacific region.
The organisation by the Asia-Pacific Telecommunity of
seminars and workshops, visits and advice by experts and
fellowships for training of personnel, provide practical
co-operative assistance to the region. I am pleased that
the telecommunications organisations within Australia have
played their part in this process, including through
traineeships, and management studies.
Let me close then by wishing you every success in your
discussions and in your work in your own countries at the
conclusion of this meeting.