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PRIME MINISTER
SPEECH VY THE PRIME MINISTER, THE HON P J KEATING, MP
OFFICIAL OPENING OF CeBIT
HANOVER 7 MARCH 195
I am very pleased to take part in the opening of
It is a particular pleasure to be in Hanover a3 the first
Australian Prime Minister to visit Germany wince
reunification. We are good friends, with a long history
of close co-operation and ties which go well beyond the
commercial. You are, however, also one of our ten
largest trading partners and investors.
The relationship with Germany means a lot to us. I hope
my visit this week will lay the foundation for
Australia's co-operation with Germany well into the next
century. I could have faxed this speech, of course. or used the
modem. I could have E-mailed it: or, as some remote
Aboriginal communities do these days in outbaCk
Australia, I could have video-conferenced it.
I could have used the highway Instead of the aeroplane.
E-mail is quicker, cheaper, more comfortable and doesn't
separate us from our families.
But for all its extraordinary power and convenience, all
its seemingly limitless potential, there will always be
some things the information highway cannot do.
Among them is the need to make personal contact of the
kind I will make in Germany Inl the next few days, or the
kind you are making here at CeSIT 95. Nor will it ever
relieve us of the need to make judgements and decisions
and to have the will1 to act upon them.
In fact, right now, no decisions are more important then
the ones we are reaching in regard to the revolution In
information technology and communications which is
transforming our lives.
CeBIT 95 is taking place at a time when policy makers all
over the world are having to grapple with new and complex
issues raised by Information technology,
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Last week, I launched the final report of an Australian
Government inquiry into the technical and commercial
preconditions for the delivery of broadband services to
homes, businesses and schools throughout Australia.
There is a striking similarity between the Issues we have
been investigating and those considered by the G7 at its
summit on the Information Society in Brussels last week.
The G7 meeting addressed the social consequences of the
revolution in communications technology: the democratic
imperatives. They asked the question what sort of
Society will the information society be?
Among other things, they concluded that government3
around the world must promote the universal provision of
services; diversity of content, including cultural and
linguistic diversity; open access to networks and
equality of opportunity.
In Australia vie have been saying things for some time.
In fact, wie have been doing the.,
The G7 Conference Theme Paper spoke about the " enticing"
potential rewards of the global information society:
" better social integration: the recovery of our sense of
community; enhancing the progress of democratic values
and sharing as wiell as preserving cultural creativity,
traditions and identities; improving the quality of life;
a stimulus to economic growth, job Creation and higher
economic efficien'cy 1 and so on.
In Australia, vie know what these things mean. The
Communications revolution suits our ambitions.
It suits our social ambition~ s which are social democratic
egalitarian and -inclusive.
It means that vie can deliver soc'i program5 more
efficiently and that we can reach the margins with them.
That is another amoitlon wie can pursue with the new
technology: we can overcome the vast distances which
separ-ate Australians and deliver, even to the most remote
areas, education, training and health services, including
medical teaching, rehabilitation programs and rapid long
distance diagnosis. we can deliver employment programs.
The new technology will enable us to take to the more
remote communities of Australia the nation's arts and
heritage.
Australians live in a relatively loose federation on a
continent the size of western Europe. ' We have a
population of just 18 million an extraordinarily
diverse multicultural population the vast majority of
whom live in Cities on the coastal fringe, we see In the.
Communications revolution an opportunity to effectively
reduce the physical, social and cultural distances
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between Austral ians and to r-reate a more equi tablea and
cohesive nation.
If the distances between Australians have always been a
concern, so too have the distances which separate
Australia from the rest of the world.
Some years ago an Australian historian coined the term
" 1the tyranny of distance" to describe the way in which
our isolation from each other and the world has shaped
our national development,
Overcoming this " tyranny of distance" has been, if not
Quite a national obsession, a powerful theme in the story
of Australia. Information technology and the
communications revolution is bound to be a decisive
Chapter in the story.
It will be all the more decisive because it Complements
another ambition of ours that is to integrate Australia
with the global economy and, in particular, the fastest
growing economies in the world those of the Asia-
Pacific. I know that this region is Of growinji interest
and importance to Germany.
For Australia, Asia is not the Far East but the Near
North. Our economic integration with the region has been
growing fast: a decade ago less than half of Australia's
merchandise exports went to north east and south east
Asia. The figure is now 60 per cent.
Nine of our twelve largest export markets are in Asia.
Australia supplies almost half of east Asia's Coal, iron
ore and beef and over hal f of i ts, wool and al umi n ium
ore. Australia has, to a very substantial extent,
literally fuelled east Asia's economic boom.
But although these commodity exports remain very
important to us, exports of elaborately transformed
manufactures to the Asia-Pacific have more than doubled
in the past decade. And we expect services exports to
double over the next five yea-s.
In the Asia-Pacific we are seeing the emergence of a
sense of community, an understanding among the countries
of the region that we need to work together if we are to
maintain high rates of economic growth.
This is what nas beer) driving the development of the Asia
Pacific Economic Co-operation organisation APEC.
In fact, the proportion of trade between the APEC
countries Is greater than that within the EU, In
Indonesia last November, leaders from the 18 APEC
economies committed themselves to the goal of free trade
and investment in the region by 2010 for industrialised
economies and 2020 for developing economies,
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When we meet again 11M Osaka later this year, APEC
Government leaders will be talking about the best ways to
implement their free trade goals anti working together oil
Issues like the harmonisation of standards and customs
regulIation.
ror both Australia and for the region the potential of
APEC is vast. Yot it is important for more than the
materi* 1al benefits it will deliver: It is important for
the message it contains. It is a watershed in the
region's history; and in Australia's history it marks a
change of the same dimensiaons it encapsulates the
effort we have made in the past decade to transform our
economy, redefi~ ne our independent identity and re-Orient
ourselves towards that part of the world in which -we live
and our future very substantially lies.
The communications revolution plays a defining role in
this Australian revolution,
Wo are very conscious of the fact that it offers us the
chance to dramatically improve the performance of our
existing industries and create new ones new industries
which will integrate us more thoroughly with the world
economy, and at the same time strengthen the fabric of
our national life, culture and identity.
Information technology is already a major Australian
industry and one of the most rapidly growing sectors of
the Australian economy. It is a significant export
earner now and the industry has set itself a target of
quadrupling those earnings by the year 2000.
That Australia has been chosen as Partner Country for
this year's CeBIT Exhibition, we regard not only as a
great honour, but as a very w'elcome testimony to
Australia's advanced capabilities in information
technology and communications.
I am 3ure that the 170 or so Australian companies
represented here will not mind if I say that their
presence speaks for more than the excellence of their own
operations and their own success it speaks for the now
Australia. Their presence speaks for a country which has radically
transformed its economy in the past decade and is
competing successfully in the modern global economy.
We hvpe, of course, that this Exhibition will1 help these
companies to expand their operations in Germany and
Europe. But more broadly we hope that our participation
at Cebit 85 will help the international perception of
Australia to catch up with the contemporary reality.
we are under no illusions about this: many Europeans
continue to think of Australia as a remote country -I
remote not only in the geographical sense, but removed
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also from the modern international market place of ideas,
innovation, technology and industry.
It is true, Australia is a long way from Hanover. It is
also true that we live in a country whose unique phySical
characteristics, along with its pas~ toral and mining
industries, have long been its defining characteristics.
And so long as those traditional industries continue to
flourish, and tourists come from all over the worldincluding,
I am happy to say, Germany to see the
outback and the rain forests and the beaches, we will not
be discouraging these perception5. J
Rather, we would like to add to them an appreciation of
the change that has taken place the change to an
outward-looking sophisticated manufacturing economy,..;
I could point to any number of examples of that change.
But none is more striking than that in information
technology and communications the field in which the
Australian companies represented here at CeBIT 95 are
excell1i ng.
It is to detract not at all from the energy and efforts
of these companies to say that they now work in a
domestic environment that could scarcely hav. e been
imagined a decade ago a much more favourable domestic
envi ronment.
Lot me state a few of the facts as briefly as possible.
One way of summ'arising our position is simply this: at
present, vith the exception of Germany. no country in the
EU meets all the convergence criteria set out in the
Maastricht Treaty for Economic and Monetary Union.
Australia does.
Modern Australia is a deregulated environment of low
tariffs, low tax rates and low inflation.
Last year~ the Australian economy grew by 6.4 per cent and
we forecast growth of 5.5 per cent in 1994-95. Labour
productivity increased by 4 per cent in the year to
September 1994, employment grew by 4 per cent and the
inflation rate was 2.5 per cent.
Over the last 10 years exports of goods and services As a
proportion of GOP have grown from around 14 per cent to
22 per cent. Cur international competitiveness has
increased by 36 per cent.
Over the last 5 years exports have grown by more than
7 per cent per annum. Our exports of elaborately
transformed manufactures have grown at more than twice
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The export base is diversifying rapidly in 1993-94, for
instance, exports of Australian-made computers and office
machinery, parts and accessories increased by almost
per cent. Exports of telecommunications equipment
increased by 34 per Cent in the same year.
Australia has a 540 billion IT and telecommunications
industry, with more computers and processing power on a
per capita basis than any country other than the United
Exoort earnings from our information industry at present
total $ 2.6 billion, and the industry expects the figure
to reach $ 10 bi llion by the year 2000 equal to our
annual exports of iron ore and coal.
Australia is indeed a remote continent. We are
accustomed to vast distances. But this has had its
advantages: it has taught us to innovate.
A century ago, for instance, it made us pioneers in the
science of refrigeration so that we could get our meat to
European markets. it put us among the pioneers of
aviation.
And in more recent times it has led us to develop one of
the most advanced telecommunicat ions networks In the
wiorld: networks which connect nearly all the households
and business premises in Australia.
Australia has more telephone lines per head of population
than Germany, Japan, Britain or the United States. One
in eighteen Australians use mobile telephones, the second
highest per capita rate in the world.
The Australian telecommunications 5ector is the eighth
largest in the world on per capita basis it is the
second largest.
These figures need to be understood in the context of the
Australian services sector-, a major user of IT and
telecommunications products, which accounts for 70 per
cent of the total output of the Australian economy and
employs three quarters of the workforce. As much as
per cent of the value content of everything Australia
exports involves services.
After Japan, it is thes largest services sector in the
Asian region, arnd Asia is a major user of Australian
services.
AS I said before. Asia is basically where Australia's
future lies.
what is equally important, Australians now recognise this
fact and, with the shift in perception1 has come a
rapidly expanding awareness of the potential to do
business in the fastest growing markets in the world.
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So too are there Opportunities for overseas companies to
establish their businesses in Australia as a gateway to
Asia and as a site for Asia-Pacific regional
headquarters.
Over a hundred international organisations have already
done this, including such European companies as Hella of
Germany, Ericsson, Vodaphone, SITA and Thomson CSF.
They have found In Australia that Government policy is
directed to maintaining a competitive domestic
environnrt, a strong international orientation and, in
particular, an intensified engagement with Asia,
They will find one of the lowest company tax levels in
the world; generous depreciation allowances on plant and
eqwipment; exemption from dividend withholding tax; and
1.50 per cent tax concessions on research and development,
They will also find that Australia has a standard of
living with very few equals in the region, or the world
for that matter, and a quality of life which is second to
none. Europeans w'ho choose to move there will find that
Australians have become familiar with Asia-Pacific
markets and skilled at doing bUSiness there.
And if these advantages do cause international companies
to decide to set up in Australia, they will find
streamlined immigration procedures for their employees
and tax deductions for their relocation expenses.
They will also find that there are considerable
advantages in working with Australia In areas of
information technology and communications.
For a nvmber of years now, we have been actively seeking
co-operative relationships with multinational companies
as a means of developing the expertise of Australian
firms.
Today, more than 40 multinational companies participate
in a program through which they invest a percentage of
their Australian sales in local joint ventures with
Australian research centres, in new product development,
and in assisting Australian technology firms to enter
International markets,
Overseas com~ panies coeitemplating a move to Australia
should also bear in mind that Australia is the second
biggest market for information technology and
telecommunication$ in the Asian region, and that
Australian governments are major customers for
international IT companies. 9
07/ 03 ' 95 17: a
when overseas companies come to Australia, they will find
that we have decided that IT and communications will be
one of the nation's great industries. They will find
that we are very confident of our technological
capacities. In rural communications, airport design and equipment, or
the design and management of nationwide telephone
systems, Australian engineers number among the preferred
suppliers throughout South-East Asia.
But it is not only in Asia that we aim to succeed.
Many of you may not be aware, for example, that
reservations, tracking and booking systems for Lufthansa
and other airlines are run by software developed in
Australia.
Or that telephone systems in Germany and other European
countries rely on Austral ian-developed switching systems.
Those systems are a product of expertise in ISON and data
communications technology which Australia implemented at
a very early stage. Indeed, we now have a highly
sophisticated network with one of the most extensive
optical fibre netwrorks in the world.
Australia's demographic pattern is almost certainly a
reason why we excel in remote communications, electronic
data interchange, geographic information systems,
computer systems for mining and mineral processing and
satellite navigation systems.
Far from the IT development centres of Europe and the
United States, Australians have had to develop
sophisticated solutions of their own.
As a result, wie have built powerful and flexible software
applications in areas such as banking, transport and
retail markets; and Australian accounting, banking,
insurance and treasury management packages, have become
world standards.
We discovered quite some time ago that living in the
Southern Hemisphere had the advantage of enabling us to
supply primary products to the Northern Hemisphere in the
off-season.
Today, the fax and modem have made us consciou5 of a
different fact: that the time zone difference between
Australia and Europe, which has always seemed to work
against us, can now work for us because now Australian
software firms can analyse problems while their European
clients sleep, and send the solutions before the start of
business in the morning,
03 fAb ( I a -j [ 001oI
Ir 0 4.) rX PRESS OFFICE
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There Is perhiops iso better aymbol of how change3 ' in
informatio~ n technology present themselves As
possihilities for Au3tralia.
Autstralia is nlow integrated with thin global economiy in
wAyR which unil now have always LUvvii denied u4. We see
uur-future in Asia, but not cxclusively. It is surely a
truism that in the inforn'atinn agp no-one's future will
be exclusive, if % mere is u blfilyle salient fact about
the information 3oc'mety, it is that our futur* is shared
it can be and it nuaght to be.
Our " A3ian futurc" can serve yours: Germany and tho
other eoikintriAX cit Europ2e can Use Australia as a bdse
from whiCh Lu einLer' thce V& 3t new niarketu.
Moreovpr you wil I ino Australia is a market Iii iiel, 1r
and a uredLive partner In develooing new tcchrmologies.
A-the Australian companies at CeP& TT 95 hear witness, you
will tirid that we are very deterrnine(. 1 Lo be a
p~ layIer in the information age.
We are very ConScIous that vie t. diiivt ;, Iaim to have
succeeded without succceu in Europe. That is why we pre
hera. It iS why Thc; 170 Australian companies are here.
And it i3 why I am very pleased to join in the opening o'f
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