6.
PRIME MINISTER
CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY EMBARGOED UNTIL DELIVERY
SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTER
LAUNCH OF THE ASIA-AUSTRALIA INSTITUTE
SYDNEY 19 OCTOBER 1990
Justice Gordon Samuels, Chancellor of the University of
New South Wales
Professor Michael Birt, Vice-Chancellor
Mr Fred Millar, Chairman of the UNSW Foundation
Professor Stephen Fitzgerald
Senator Robert Hill
Ladies Gentlemen
Let me begin this speech about Asia, and about this very
welcome new Asia-Australia Institute, by reflecting first on
developments on the other side of the globe.
Just two weeks ago, the world celebrated the unification of
Germany, and the remaking both of the map of Europe, and,
with it, of the post-war international order.
Earlier this week, we received the news that President
Gorbachev has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Those remarkable events, which seemed until very recently
unthinkable, impossible, paradoxical even, are dramatic
reminders of how quickly the world is changing.
Australians of course share unreservedly in the celebrations
of these events the emergence of President Gorbachev's
policies of glasnost and perestroika, the dismantling of the
Berlin Wall, the democratisation of much of Eastern Europe,
the fading of rigid ideological divisions, the reduction of
the superpowers' nuclear arsenals, the dramatic draw-down in
conventional forces in Europe. The nightmare of a global
nuclear holocaust is passing and for that we can all be
profoundly thankful.
But no-one, and certainly no-one in Australia, can afford to
be complacent about the international order that is emerging
to replace the rigidities of the Cold War era.
S Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait is a sobering
reminder that large armies and power-hungry governments
can still threaten the common good;
S The struggle to achieve a worthwhile outcome to the
Uruguay Round of trade negotiations is far from over,
and the consequences for Australia and the world at
large of the failure of those negotiations, and a drift
to greater protectionism, or to rigid regional trading
blocs, would be catastrophic;
S We have not reached the point where we can say with
confidence that the international community has the
will decisively to resolve new global issues, notably
the protection of the environment;
S And, of course, old issues ranging from poverty to
abuses of human rights in the world have not
disappeared from the world scene.
So it is important to remember that the world now being
created will not necessarily be a more comfortable one for
Australia. It will certainly be no less competitive. It
will, more than ever, be a world in which Australia has to
work hard to advance our interests, and speak clearly and
forcefully to make our views known.
The task quite fundamentally, will be to ensure, so far as
we can, that the new international order is shaped in ways
which serve Australia's needs and interests.
Of course, Australia is a middle-sized country which has
only limited leverage when dealing with large powers and
with matters remote from our region. But we should never
underestimate the extent to which active and imaginative
Australian policy formulation and diplomacy can influence
the deliberations of the world's councils.
That is why Australia continues to commit heavy resources of
time and effort to the hard, grinding, work of multilateral
diplomacy through the United Nations, of course, which is
undergoing a very heartening revival as an effective
instrument of global will; through forums of disarmament
where we have pressed ahead with the tough but essential
negotiations to ban chemical weapons; through the Antarctic
Treaty where we are working with France to bring about a
total and effective ban on mining there.
And, where no institution has existed in which our interests
in a certain field can be advanced, we have helped fashion
one to meet our specific needs.
We have taken the lead in creating the Cairns Group to take
up the cudgels for liberalised agricultural trade in the
Uruguay Round and of special significance to our immediate
region we have taken the lead in the establishment of a
framework for peace in Cambodia and in the establishment of
the new forum for Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation.
Our success in all these initiatives underlines the
importance to Australia of a stable and peaceful world
order. By the same token, our interests are heavily tied up
with an international system in which blatant breaches of
international law are met by collective action by the
international community as a whole.
This of course was a major reason why my Government decided
to participate in the multinational naval task force in the
Gulf. We were acutely conscious that Iraq's brutal invasion
of Kuwait has provided the first major test a severe test
of the international community's response to aggression in
the post-Cold war period.
So events in Europe, the Middle East, North America and
elsewhere do affect this country's interests in powerful
ways, and my Government has not, and will not, ignore them.
But the area of the world in which Australia will have the
largest interest, and the greatest chance of influencing
outcomes, will be this one the Asia-Pacific region.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
There is perhaps no achievement of this Government since
1983 of which I am prouder and none, I am convinced, which
will have a longer-term or more beneficial influence on this
country than the way in which we have worked steadily and
consciously to build up a framework to enmesh Australia more
thoroughly into the Asian region.
And when I chose that word enmesh I meant it. Our policy
concept was not captured by weasel words about developing
relations with the region, enhancing our contacts and so on.
I wanted policy to be driven by a commitment to the most
intimate and irreversible tying of Australia into Asia and
the Pacific.
The reason we have worked so hard to do this is obvious.
The logic of both geography and economics directs Australia
towards the dynamism and vitality of the Asian economies.
The region generates one-third of the world's trade, and
more than half its economic output.
And it contains some of the fastest growing economies in the
world. The success story of Japan and the tigers of Taiwan,
Hong Kong and Singapore are well known. Following in their
wake are the newly-industrialising countries of Southeast
Asia with astounding levels of growth in recent years.
Thailand, for example, has posted consistent annual growth
rates of around 11 per cent; Malaysia and Indonesia have not
been far behind.
Such events challenge Australia in a way, and to an extent,
that we have never been challenged before. So we must make
sure we play a part in the continuing dynamism of the region
a dynamism that is lifting living standards through the
region and that will, ultimately, alter the balance of
economic and political power throughout the globe.
So the policies we have adopted since 1983 have gone far
beyond those weasel words, the simple rhetoric of the past,
to achieve fundamental policy adjustments fundamental
changes to the central areas of our national economic,
social, cultural and educational life.
Several important milestones have marked this process.
First, and most importantly, has been the series of
decisions my Government has taken to make the Australian
economy truly competitive internationally. So long as
Australia remained an isolated economic fortress,
inward-looking and slumbering, we were cut off forever from
full participation in the great shifts going on around us.
So the floating of the Australian dollar, deregulation of
our financial markets, the liberalisation of foreign
investment policy and the reduction of levels of tariff
protection to manufacturing industries by one third, have
all been critical to the process of making Australia more
relevant to Asia, and a closer part of it.
A second important milestone came in 1988, when I
commissioned from Ross Garnaut the report " Australia and the
Northeast Asian Ascendancy" which he delivered to the
Government almost a year ago. I wanted the report to
provide a stimulus for Government and community discussion
about Australia's place in the region, and about how we
might best go about realising our country's almost unbounded
economic potential.
Ross Garnaut's report did just this, providing the most
comprehensive review ever undertaken of Australia's
relations with Northeast Asia, and outlining in great detail
the adjustments required if Australia was truly to become
enmeshed with the region. The Government has already
implemented many of the Garnaut recommendations and is
pressing ahead with a number of others.
A third milestone came, of course, with the Asia-Pacific
Economic Cooperation process that I initiated in Seoul in
January 1989. Since then, several APEC meetings have been
held at ministerial and official level, and a detailed work
program has been adopted to build on the areas of broad
cooperation which have now been identified.
It is undoubtedly true to say that the success of the APEC
process in identifying and advancing the common economic
interests of the countries of our region is now widely
acknowledged.
Australia today is certainly a good example of regional
economic enmneshment.
Eight of Aust~ ralia's top 10 export markets in 1989-90 are in
the Asia-Pac: Lfic region.
APEC members plus the so-called ' three Chinas' the PRC,
Taiwan and Hong Kong take 68 per cent of Australia's
exports and provide 66 per cent of our imports.
This significant economic enmeshment has been matched by
unparalleled efforts to achieve a greater level of cultural
enmeshment. We have sought to raise the level of knowledge
and understanding of Asia in Australia, to reduce what Ross
Garnaut called the sense of " otherness" between Australia
and our regional neighbours.
In 1986 we established the Asian Studies Council, with the
specific mission of strengthening Asian studies at every
level of the Australian education system, and helping
Australian industry become better integrated with economic
development iLn the region.
I note here t: he very important role which the Director of
the Asia-Australia Institute, Dr Stephen Fitzgerald, has
played in the Asian Studies Council, and in the integration
of Asian studies into the broader educational framework in
Australia. The work of the Asian Studies Council is complemented by our
National PoliLcy on Languages and by the establishment of the
Languages Institute of Australia. Together these
initiatives have alerted educators, employers and the
community to the fact that the ability to communicate
linguistically and culturally is crucial to the quality of
Australia's strategic, cultural and economic relations in
the region.
This work is now bearing fruit.
More than ever, Australian children now have opportunities
to learn about the region. The number of Australian
students studying Asian languages has almost doubled over
the past seven years. Over the next three years we aim to
increase by nearly 5,000 the number of places devoted to
Asian languages or Asian studies in our tertiary
institutions, and to give all secondary students access to
the study of an Asian language by the year 2000.
I was particularly pleased, on my recent visit to Tokyo, to
be able to state that there is a higher per capita number of
students learning Japanese at primary, secondary and
tertiary levels in Australia than in any other country
outside Japan.
So taken together, these initiatives have thrust Australia
more fully into the affairs of the Asia Pacific region than
ever before. And as a result, Australia now stands at a
high point of its constructive influence in the region.
Ladies and Gentlemen
None of this is to say that the relationship between
Australia and Asia is purely the property of the public
sector or to say that fostering the relationship is purely
the Government's responsibility. On the contrary, it simply
can't be if we are to achieve the intimate, broad-ranging
relationship with the region which our policy requires.
In the end, only a changed approach to Asia throughout the
Australian community can deliver the full benefits which
will flow from better understanding of the region, and
enmeshment with it.
This means that all sectors industry, the trade unions,
the media, educational institutions need to transform
their attitudes to Asia.
I must say quite candidly that some sectors have met this
challenge better than others. With a number of
distinguished exceptions some of them represented here
today there are still not enough Australian businesses
prepared to invest in the nurturing of Asian expertise among
their employees, or equipped to take on the Asian market.
There are still not enough Australians willing to make the
effort to learn an Asian language, or to understand an Asian
culture. It is notable, for example, that in 1989-90, Asian
investment in Australia represented almost 21 per cent of
our foreign investment total. But at the same time,
Australian investment in Asia represented only 11 per cent
of our total investment abroad.
In 1989, total merchandise trade with Indonesia, our
immediate neighbour with a market of 180 million people
represented only 1.5 per cent of Australia's total trade.
Only six Australian companies are represented on the ground
in Korea, with its booming market of 50 million.
More than 97 per cent of Australian university and college
graduates still complete their courses without a single unit
focussed on Asia.
That is why I am delighted that the University of New South
Wales has shown the imagination to commit its effort and
resources to establish the Asia-Australia Institute.
I am pleased not just because it will benefit Australia but
because it will also serve the wider needs of the region as
a whole.
4 7.
The Institute's mission to develop an ' Asia consciousness'
among all the countries of our region is an ambitious and
a worthy ideal. The Institute will provide a framework for
the discussion of ideas and for the development of networks
of personal relationships that span Asia.
Let me suggest to you some of the more important questions
that await your consideration questions whose answers can
be elucidated by the Institute and, notably, through the
proposed Asia. Forum that will bring together regional
leaders at the highest levels from inside and outside
government. How can a greater sense of regional identity be
fostered, among the disparate countries of Asia?
What sort of strategic framework do we want to see
emerging in this part of the world?
How can China be encouraged back onto the path of
economic and political liberalisation so that it can
once more resume its full role as a member of the
regional and world community?
As I disecussed in Tokyo recently, what will be Japan's
role as it begins, as it inevitably will, to match its
economic power with new political influence?
Looking beyond a settlement in Cambodia, which this
Government has worked so hard to achieve, how can the
countries of Indo-china be integrated into the dynamic
region around them?
There are no easy answers to any of these questions; but the
University of New South Wales is a particularly appropriate
place to undertake the quest for answers.
The University has a long and distinguished connection with
Asia, including the highest number of students and alumni
from the region of any Australian university. Its
specialist work in Asian languages, its Contemporary Asia
Centre, and its Japanese Economics Management Studies
Centre, are all highly regarded and very relevant to this
exercise. Australia enmeshed with the region, home to a vibrant
multicultural society, and proud of its tradition of free
debate and academic enquiry provides an atmosphere of
unparalleled relevance and stimulation to these efforts.
The Institute's aims are ambitious. That's as it should be.
You have set yourself a job worth doing. You can be assured
of my best wishes as you set out on your task.
I am delighted now to launch the Asia-Australia Institute.