E&OE...........
QUESTION:
My name is (inaudible), I';m from the Yield Centre for the study of (inaudible). I have two questions for the Prime Minister. Australia has been one of the most informed countries on Indonesia and according to your intelligence what would be the number of people who belong to Jemaah Islamiah in Indonesia. And secondly, this attack in Bali, was that in that Australian citizens are in general (inaudible) foreigners. Thank you.
PRIME MINISTER:
The questions for the third time, was how many people do I think are in Jemaah Islamiah and did I think the attack in Bali was directed specifically in Australia, or if not against whom. I can';t tell you how many people there are in Jemaah Islamiah, it goes without saying there are too many, but I just don';t know that. But it is an organisation that does have support and a network throughout Indonesia and obviously it';s important that all steps are taken within that country to identify and to curb its activities and to take whatever actions should be taken to deal with people who have committed criminal offenses. I';m pleased to say in that context that the investigation team involves a joint effort by Australia and Indonesia and we';re very grateful for the cooperation of the Indonesian Government.
On the second question of motive, there is no evidence that the attack was specially targeted at Australia, or Australians. The twin aims on my best assessment at this particular moment on the information I have, the twin aims of the attack were to inflict damage and death and grief and destruction on westerners generally, and an area frequented by westerners, sadly for my country in this case Australians more than any others. But I understand the number of citizens of the United Kingdom for example who were killed is now over 30, which is the second largest number of foreigners apart from Australians. It was chosen obviously for that reason, and secondly to destabilise the Government of Indonesia. The people who did this are no friends of Indonesia, they are no friends of stability or democracy or outward looking attitudes within Indonesia. The common theme of extreme Islamic behaviour, and this is extreme terrorist behaviour, I use those words very deliberately, it is not a manifestation of mainstream Islam by any possible definition or stretch of the imagination, it is extremist radical behaviour, a common theme is a distaste of western civilisation and its aim is to inflict hurt and damage and pain on western civilisation and its blind prejudice towards western civilisation is a common theme and it sees virtue in destabilising moderate Islamic nations such as Indonesia and I think those two common themes can be seen.
QUESTION:
Thank you very much Mr Prime Minister and I';m from China and we appreciate very much what you said just now that the subsidy that is (inaudible) agricultural are six times than the official aid to the least developing countries, and we appreciate it very much and we hope that there will be some improvement on this regard. And also you see according to the decision made several decades ago that developed countries should use their (inaudible) of their GDP as the official aid to the least developing country. So I think I would like to know what I feel is 0.7 cent of their GDP to the least developing country is still enough or do you think you would like to increase a little bit percentage of our GDP to help the developing countries.
And the second question is concerning the help to the AIDS and (inaudible) at the previous session to discuss this issue. And according to my knowledge that (inaudible) have already taken some measures to help the ease the AIDS issues that is concerning a pattern issue and they would like developing countries to use their pattern to produce the medicine to heal AIDS. So upon based on this finding I would like to know whether you think that developing countries government can also do something in this regard or (inaudible) can you think of (inaudible) that developing countries will use certain percentage, 00.1 percentage of their GDP to help least developing countries or developing countries to eradicate this AIDS issue. Thank you very much.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well sir, I think developed countries have two ways in which they can help developing countries. They can help developing countries through official aid and that can never be enough. And they can also help developing countries by removing trade barriers and the point I made in my speech was that removing trade barriers will be infinitely more valuable to developing countries than the existing levels of overseas aid. The other point has to be made and it';s particularly relevant to Africa but it can be relevant to other parts of the world, and that is increasingly and understandably donors are going to tie aid to questions of governance. That is clearly in the minds of those nations of Europe and the United States that are involved in the new economic plan for assisting in Africa, and certainly in my country';s immediate region where we see many small island states in the Pacific, the crucial, indeed overwhelming need in those countries is to have effective systems of governance, in many cases to work towards pooling governance resources, recognising the impracticability of trying to maintain the infrastructure of government for nations of, in some cases, fewer than 100,000 people. And I think you will find increasingly governments looking towards using aid as a method of improving the quality of governance. But I don';t want a debate about the level of overseas aid and as I said in my speech it can never be enough to obscure in any way the central point I made in my speech and that is reducing trade barriers will do a lot more than any collection of wealthy countries will ever do, no matter what the political complexion of their governments through official development assistance. And that is a plea that applies particularly to the European Union, in relation to the agricultural area and of course it also applies to the United States and Japan in relation to the agricultural area. Now that is a plea, as I said I declare an interest, I';m the Prime Minister of an agricultural country. But it';s not a plea I';m making on behalf of Australia, I mean my farmers want a fairer go and they';re determined to get it, but our vantage point is although coincidental to that of a vantage point of developing countries, our vantage point is from a different situation. And I think it is a very strong message, it';s got to be kept in the minds of negotiators as they go into the Doha round and because if we don';t get some progress in these areas at Doha then there is going to be a great loss of faith in the multilateral trading system and we';re all going to suffer a little bit as a consequence of that.
Thank you.
[ends]