. L I lLA
PRIME MINISTER
TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRIMfE MINISTEIL THE BON p j KEATING, hip
DOORSTOP, CIVIC CENTRE, NAURU
11 AUGUST 1993
E& OE PROOF COPY
PM: The Prime Minister and I had a mneeing as you know at the pacific Forum a
yea ago, and in the intervening time he visited Australia. and our bilateral
relationship has been chuffing alonlg very happily since and we arc very pleased
with it, and we resumed defence cooperation and our two way trade is
growing, and things arc developing quite nicely We had a chat about our
bilateral relationship in broad, some of the trade relationships in particular. The
Prime Minister was kind enough to brief me about changes in the political
developments in Fiji, including the prospect of constitutional processes. And
we had then some discussion about trade opportunities, about Spartica and
how it might be better used to do things, and a general chat about our capacity
to get along together and do things together,
J: Mr Keating what were you able to say to Mr Rabuka about his request for an
ending of some of the rules under SPARThCA, the preferential trade
agreement?
SR: I didn' t really ask that, after looking at the statistics available to actually, we
thou~ ht there inight be a need to further look at those statistics and see if we
can have a common base for our officials to have a better understanding. He
gets a picture, I get a picture of the same thing so we thought we would go
back and Sct out people working on basic data.
J-So what would you describe the state of the debate on SPARTECA at the
moment as?
SR: I wouldn't even call it a debate really. It is a very general discussion and I am
happy with the outcome that we have so far
And from your point of view, Mr Keating,. what was that outcome?
I LL* 2
PM: Well as the Prime Minister said, we have got a trade agreement and a trading
relationship which is working, the Fijians product access to Australia, that is in
the textiles, clothing area, grew by about 30 per cent by value in the last six
months as the quotas have come off. And it means that in any growing
dhaning relationship it is sensible for us to talk about it from time to time.
And that's what we have done. And I should hope that we continue to do it.
Wherever we can smooth out a wrinkle, here or there, to make these
arrangements work better, so much the better. But as the Prime Minister said
it Is important for us to have the Samie data so that we are all working off at
the moment there is same variation in our data so we are workinS off the
same data.
ENDS I I rl LA ! J V I I 14 I I U L