E&OE……………………………………………………………………………………
QUESTION:
I have one to start anyway. Prime Minister we will just talking a little bit about what is what Australia has been doing in terms of the branding of the country, as you were saying, to attract tourists or just to be very careful in giving that correct impression abroad because I think that Mexico is just in the birth of really deciding which is what we want to project outside of the country in order to attract investment and of course tourists.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I would never presume to give other countries advice, I could perhaps, from our experience, openness, if you want investment you have to understand that investment is very footloose in the modern world. There are plenty of investors and they pick and choose. And if you have a stable economy, you have a relatively attractive taxation regime, you have a strong code of corporate governance and you give people predicability and stability in relation to their investments you are more likely to attract investment. Price is only one thing, stability and reliability of supply and delivery are other things as well and for all of those things together. Australia’s been successful because we are seen around the world as an open stable country, a very safe country, and one that welcomes visitors. And of course a country that has built its population from the four corners of the world. And that’s a very important element of the modern Australia and all of these things do help. As I’m fond of telling European audiences, Sydney, the city in which I was born and the largest city in Australia, the language other than English which is most frequently spoken in Sydney now are the dialects of Chinese, which is a surprise to European audiences and I guess it is a surprise to American hemispheric audiences as well. But it’s an indication of the diversity of our country, and that’s one of our strengths and we work very hard at blending the traditional characteristics of Australians, which people identify with, but also reminding others that there are some modern characteristics of Australia that perhaps people are not so familiar with. And if we can achieve the trick, if I can put it that way, of balancing those two then I think that’s good for our future.
QUESTION:
Prime Minister, I think that you have been very modest from your comments about the achievements of Australia over the last few years. I think that (inaudible) Canada and perhaps the UK, Australia has had an outstanding record of economic growth and as you mentioned the economic reforms that have been undertaken have made the economy more flexible. One of the points that you emphasised was this change in industrial relations, making labour more flexible. We are at present in Mexico serious economic reforms (inaudible) and they have the same aim, which is to make our economy more flexible, to help our, I would say, (inaudible) GDP (inaudible) would be very grateful if you could expand on this issue of flexibility.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well Governor you mentioned industrial relations reform which is something that’s been very close to my political and reform heart now for many years. Every country is different and I don’t want to say that what works in one country will automatically work in another. But if you look at the Australian economy over the last few years the really big signal is the importance of higher productivity. Our productivity rise in the last few years has actually been greater than that of the United States. And there are a lot of reasons that our productivity has got better. One of the reasons is that we have liberalised our labour market and we have improved workplace practices. Labour unions, I think that’s the American expression, we call them trade unions, but labour unions frequently oppose a less regulated labour market because they say it depresses working conditions and living standards. Our experience has been the opposite because over the last six or seven years real wages in Australia have risen by about 12 per cent and the picture for the Australian worker, if I can put it that way, the wage and salary earner over the last few years, is that his or her real take home pay has gone up because interest rates are lower, real wages have increased because we’ve had higher productivity and low inflation. Now in a way that has to be the goal of any government because economic theory and economic policy is no good unless it delivers improved outcomes for people. I mean I’ve never taken the view that economic theory or policy has some kind of mystical end in itself, it’s not a theology, it’s a way of improving peoples’ living standards. When you allow it to become a theology you get yourself into a lot of difficulty and you lose connection with what it is all about. We think if you look at that, you can see some very good lessons. And hand in glove with that we have been able to maintain our social security underpinning, Australia traditionally has sort of struck a middle course in social security and welfare between the United States and Europe. We’re not as paternalistic as the Europeans, but we are not quite as laissez faire in relation to a safety net as the United States. And it’s what I would call the Australian way and I think it’s over the years has proved very important to the social harmony of our country and while there are gaps between rich and poor in Australia, I wouldn’t deny that, of course there are, and that there are still many things to be done on the social welfare front but we have been able to maintain the social security safety net in a fairly effective way.
QUESTION:
Mr Howard, I’m Bernard Wheelahan, I’m from your council on Australian (inaudible) relations so I declare my interest. I would like to compliment you Prime Minister and your fellow ministers on the very successful visits you’ve made this year and on the lifting of the profile of Australia and Mexico and vice-versa that’s resulted from that. But specifically I’d like to ask you about education, there are thousands of Mexican students, outstanding Mexican students I might say, working in Australia now, studying there, and the rate of growth of Latin students generally in Australia is very very high. I can recall, like you can I’m sure, the enormous impact that educational exchange had on the development of our cultural and trade relationships with Asia and I wonder if you can give us your views on how you might see educational links developing between our regions?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I think you’re absolutely right in saying how important those exchanges are and if I can just say something about Asia and then come back to Mexico. You can go through periods of difficulty in the relationship with a country at a leadership or political level, but if the grassroots of the relationship is very good then it will sustain you. I mean by way of illustration if you look at all of the countries of Asia you have ups and downs in the relationship, no particular countries, no particular names. But if you’ve got a lot of people who’ve been educated in Australia, remembering their links with Australia as a result of that, then it’s a very strong bond and we have tried in building our association with so many of those countries to do that and I think it’s been very successful. And I would like to see it expanded. I mean my philosophy on this, we’re not wanting to play favourites, obviously there’s a heavier concentration because of the geographic proximity but if we can develop further the Latino contribution, the educational linkages not only with Mexico but other countries of this hemisphere than I think that is a very valuable thing.
I said in my opening remarks that the young of the world travel now more than ever before and I said that in the context of the challenge of terrorism but from a more positive point of view if you live in a world and we grow into a world where there are more and more of those exchanges at a grass roots level. And if you live in another country when you’re young and you’re educated there and you have a happy experience of that you’ll never forget it. And you’ll always have a soft spot for that country and I found that as I travelled around Asia. I mean one of the stories I’m very fond of telling is I went to a gathering at a university in Singapore of the alumni of the Australian universities and there were about 900 or 1000 people there and one man came up to me and said my daughter was at your home two weeks ago, and I said how come and she said oh well she goes to Sydney University and your daughter and she were in the law review together and they went back for a cast party at Kirribilli House afterwards. And it was just a beautiful personal reminder to me of the living character of those sorts of relationships. Now I’d like to see that with the young people of all countries and I hope we can do it for Mexico and other countries in this part of the world as well.
QUESTION:
Mr Prime Minister …I just want to congratulate you because I was telling you in private when Australian companies win the (inaudible) we’ve always achieved a very high quality product, reliability which is key to us and we have absolutely no problems (inaudible). Thank you very much and congratulations on the quality that you have achieved.
PRIME MINISTER:
I can’t let the opportunity go by of reciprocating and saying we have lots of very high quality coal and we’re very reliable when we supply products. We also have lots of natural gas and so we are, you know, we’re very keen to develop associations all around the world. It’s been very successful with a big LNG contract with China but we don’t just see these things in our region, can I assure you of that. One of the things I have tried to remind my fellow Australians of is that we are, when it comes to trade, we’re a citizen of the world. We may have some very close linkages with the Asian Pacific region but all the other regions of the world are of great importance to us.
QUESTION:
(inaudible) so you know (inaudible) might reach some sort of agreement there. Who owns the coal and the natural gas in Australia?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well a variety of companies, quite a lot. The group that sold the LNG to China was a consortium, including, it was Woodside and Shell and BP and Phillips have interests, there’s a whole list of them. And coal is, there are some Australian based companies and there are Japanese companies have interests, Americans, there’s a whole mixture of companies. I mean in the 1980s when we were developing many of our coal deposits we needed foreign investment to help do that and I can remember I was Treasurer or Finance Minister at the time and making some decisions that insisted that there be partnerships between Australian companies and foreign countries in the development of those deposits but we’ve over the years taken a fairly open attitude to foreign investment but equally we’ve insisted that there be some reasonable chunks of Australian equity where that’s possible. But it’s a mixture. But they operate, I hope and I believe in most cases according to the Australian national interest and we think that’s important.
[ends]