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SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTER
LUNCHEON IN HONOUR OF MEXICAN PRESIDENT SALINAS
CANBERRA 22 JUNE 1990
It is my great pleasure to welcome you to Canberra today,
Mr President, on this the first visit to Australia by a
President of Mexico.
That fact alone makes this a most significant occasion for
us. We hope that you will take home with you a warm and
positive impression of Australia from your first hand
experience here, and that your visit will open a new chapter
in the friendly relations between us.
You and your distinguished party are very welcome guests to
Canberra and to Australia.
Mr President, it is now nearly a quarter of a century since
diplomatic relations were established between Australia and
Mexico in 1966.
It is true to say, Mr President, and appropriate to
acknowledge, that relations between our two countries since
then have not lived up to their potential whether that be
measured by the exchange of goods and services between us,
visits by tourists and business leaders, or contacts in the
fields of culture, scholarship, or entertainment.
Yet there is much that we have in common that should form
the basis not just of a friendly relationship but of a more
profitable and productive one than in the past.
Not least of those things that we have in common,
Mr President, is a long Pacific coastline. And we are
increasingly recognising that this fact of our geography
must become a central element in our economic life.
Mexico of course has had a Pacific orientation for several
centuries, even in that long-gone era when your country,
Mr President, went by the Eurocentric name of New Spain and
my country was a little known continent called New Holland.
2.
But in our own time the Asia-Pacific region is seeing a
surge in economic activity that is dramatic in its intensity
and unprecedented in its scope. That has brought with it
new prosperity and also the new challenges of managing and
fostering that activity, including through closer policy
co-ordination and greater policy flexibility in our domestic
and international arrangements.
This visit of yours then, Mr President, comes at a very
important time. The many positive moves you have taken to
bring about stable economic growth in Mexico are beginning
to pay dividends, and Mexico is showing a heightened
interest in the Pacific.
Let me say, Mr President, that your program of liberalising,
modernising and restructuring the Mexican economy is one we
applaud and support. Mexico is already the largest and
strongest of the Latin American economies bordering the
Pacific and, from Australia's vantage point on this side of
the ocean, your reform program presents exciting and
encouraging opportunities.
So as this reform process continues, we may look forward to
the day when new and strong economic ties span the Pacific
and link Mexico more closely to this region opening the
way for a more active involvement by Mexico in the political
and economic affairs of this region.
Mr President, you have rightly insisted that developing
countries must accept responsibility for stimulating their
own economic growth.
At the same time, Mexico has shown a readiness to engage in
the hard but constructive work of multilateral dialogue
and indeed not simply a readiness but a positive and
energetic capacity. This is apparent in a number of fields;
let me refer to three of them.
I refer first to Mexico's supportive contribution to the
painstaking work of regional and international arms control
and disarmament particularly relating to chemical weapons.
Your work in the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, and at
the Government and Industry Conference Against Chemical
Weapons that we hosted here in Canberra last year, was both
welcome and valuable.
I refer too to Mexico's involvement in the European Bank for
Reconstruction and Development, in the establishment of
which Australia too has played a part. Following the
breathtaking revolutions in Eastern Europe last year, it is
encouraging that we are demonstrating in a tangible way,
through this new Bank, our shared commitment to assisting
the East Europeans in the restoration of democratic
processes and the rehabilitation and expansion of economic
activity.
And perhaps even more importantly, Mr President, I consider
Mexico's decision back in 1986 to become a contracting party
to the GATT the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
and the steps taken since then to open the Mexican economy
to foreign imports and foreign investment to have been
highly significant and welcome developments.
Like Mexico, Australia is a firm believer in the GATT. We
have made numerous representations in recent years to
encourage the lowering of subsidies for farm production and
exports by the world's leading trading nations, both through
the Uruguay Round and particularly through our chairmanship
of the Cairns Group of fair trading nations.
We have welcomed Mexico's positive approach to these
negotiations. Your speech to the GATT last February,
Mr President, was a significant political contribution to
the success of the Round. You described the Uruguay Round
as, and let me quote, " the best opportunity this century to
promote and defend a system of trade that offers benefits
that can be shared by the entire international trading
community." I cannot overstate the extent to which those words find
support here in Australia. Your emphasis on our global
interdependence gives a totally accurate perspective on an
issue that too often is considered by the major trading
nations in a blinkered, sectoral and shortsighted fashion.
Mr President, we hope, as we know you do, that one of the
major results of your visit will be a boost to the trading
opportunities between our two countries. Although modest by
world standards, our two-way trade has increased
substantially in the past five years.
Efforts to restructure both our economies should create
further opportunities for trade and investment in the years
ahead. Australia has the expertise to assist you to develop
and modernise Mexico's priority sectors such as agriculture,
mining, power generation, transport and communications.
Your visit, Mr President, together with the contacts made by
the senior business people who have accompanied you on this
occasion, will play an important part in this process.
We have also today seen the signing of an Extradition
Treaty, the first Australia has had with any Latin American
country, and testimony, I believe, to our cooperative
working relationship.
4.
Mr President, I have mentioned many of our shared interests
and values but I have failed so far to mention our shared
achievements in the sporting world. Both Australia and
Mexico have proud sporting traditions and we have both been
successful hosts of modern Olympic Games in Melbourne in
1956 and in Mexico City in 1968. Australia is, as you know,
currently pursuing our bid for Melbourne once again to host
the Games in 1996, because we believe we can provide world
class facilities, a secure environment and a warm welcome
from a community totally committed to this bid and fully
dedicated to furthering the Olympic ideal.
Mr President,
Both our countries are blessed with rich resources, not
least with two great peoples. And, ultimately, it is the
people-to-people links between Australia and Mexico which
will replenish and renew our relationship providing us with
the best possible foundation for an even better and brighter
future. I wish you, Mr President, every success in continuing to
meet the challenges of government in Mexico, and in further
developing Mexico's important and constructive role in the
world.