It is indeed an honour to be back in Singapore, and to be at your National University.
A university with its own virtual university - creating a student co-designed, co-built and co-owned campus in the virtual world.
I'm told you can create your own avatar and make your way around the virtual campus.
I'm not sure if you can get a virtual degree - but if it were my university student son, he would be equally keen on the idea of virtual exams, and virtual assignments as well.
It's great to be here today with so many young people from the university and the schools.
You are the future of this extraordinary island Republic.
And I know that you share many aspirations with the young people of Australia.
To feel confident about the quality of the educational opportunities on offer.
To feel confident about the future you can craft for yourselves because of that education.
To be confident of the future contribution you can make also to your community, your country and the wider world.
Today, we are able deploy the new powers available to us in this modern world - the power of new ideas, the power of new technologies, and the unprecedented power of an information revolution now capable of disseminating innovation around the world in an instant.
To re-shape things that are old.
And, in the great spirit of innovation that characterises our age, to shape things that are entirely new.
As the students of today and as the leaders of tomorrow, you are pioneers in one of the most challenging, innovating and exciting periods in history.
The rewards are great.
But so too are the responsibilities that will fall on your shoulders.
To rise to the challenge of this first truly global age.
The ties between our two nations, Singapore and Australia, go back many years.
We have a shared past, forged through the enduring legacy of war.
A time etched in both our nations' memory and so poignantly remembered at Kranji War Cemetery, which I visited last year.
Singapore and Australia share a long-standing desire for peace and economic development.
A desire that we can achieve through dialogue, through cooperation and through education.
Education has the power to transform the lives of individuals , of communities, of cities and of nations.
This great university counts among its alumni one of Asia's preeminent statesmen, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew.
And each year welcomes over 30,000 students from all over the world to its campuses.
It is a University of remarkable quality, with outstanding international links and a great reputation for cooperation and entrepreneurial drive.
We see this quality in your international student exchange programs, which you extend to eight Australian universities.
And the joint degree programs that you deliver with some of the world's top institutions, including my alma mater, the Australian National University.
Your hosting of the Association of Pacific Rim Universities also demonstrates your very real commitment to cooperative research and teaching, to the benefit of all.
My message to you today is simple: Education will be the driving force of the 21st Century.
The most educated, the most skilled, the best trained societies will also be the strongest societies in the 21st century.
They will also be the most resilient economies in the 21st century.
Education that is illuminating, that is innovative, that is outward looking, that draws on the widest canon of ideas and that brings together young people across the continents and across the disciplines - the education we will need to negotiate the complex century that lies ahead.
The power of education has long been understood.
As the English essayist and poet Joseph Addison said:
"Education is a companion which no misfortune can depress, no crime can destroy, no enemy can alienate, no despotism can enslave.
At home, a friend; abroad, an introduction; in solitude, a solace; and in society, an ornament. ......
....It gives at once grace and government to genius."
Education is the engine room of ideas, of economies and of nations.
Education builds the fabric of societies.
Education revolutionises opportunity.
Education promotes understanding as its intrinsic disciplines require us to look beyond the narrow shores of prejudice, to look widely at the world through the eyes of others.
Education therefore fosters tolerance.
And through tolerance, harmony.
Education also satisfies our basic aspiration to bequeath a better world to those who follow.
Better equity.
Better opportunity.
Better productivity.
Higher levels of workforce participation.
Better health.
Better environmental sustainability.
Education is therefore the single most important ingredient for success in the economies of the 21st century - and here I use the term success in its narrowest and broadest measures - economic and social; personal and national.
The OECD has previously reported that tripling the time spent in school in developing countries was accompanied by a tripling of gross domestic product in those countries.[1]
Access to secondary and tertiary education is the key to building a knowledge-based workforce.
And the benefits of higher education are multiplied when students attend overseas schools and universities.
According to the OECD, the number of students studying overseas doubled over 20 years to the early part of this decade.[2]
These students not only gain and transfer knowledge but also create the people-to-people links that help investment, cultural understanding and official diplomacy.
As Singapore's own Prime Minister Lee said recently, education 'bridges the gaps between dissimilar cultures and promotes understanding among people'.
Australia is working to promote regional cooperation in education in practical ways.
Within APEC, we promote cooperation on governance of education systems.
We also promote open and transparent regulatory systems, so that students and education providers can move freely between member economies.
Australia is also a strong supporter of the efforts within the East Asia Summit (EAS) to increase education cooperation.
We have funded research on regional competitiveness and community building.
We have also offered to work with the ASEAN Secretariat to convene two EAS Education Workshops in 2010.
Workshops that we hope will help member countries to identify further areas for education cooperation.
One of the most exciting EAS education initiatives, which the Australian Government supports, is the proposal to revive the ancient Nalanda University in India.
This is a University with a 700 year history as a centre of cultural exchange across Asia.
The initiative will help promote tolerance, understanding, and harmony and contribute to building a community of learning across the Asia-Pacific.
Initiatives such as this, and efforts to promote and share in education more generally, demonstrate that we have far more to gain by standing together, than standing alone.
The Australian Government recognises the power of education.
In Australia, we are promoting what we describe as an Education Revolution.
A radical new quantitative and qualitative investment in the Australian education system - from early childhood education, through school education, vocational training, universities and post-graduate research.
Our mission is clear - to build over time the best educated, the best trained, the best skilled workforce in the world.
And also, through our comprehensive Asian language education program in our schools - under which aroun three-quarters of a million students in our schools are studying the principal languages of Asia - to help make the coming generation create the most Asia literate country in the collective west; a country and a people for whom the languages and cultures of Asia are no longer foreign but familiar.
Australia also recognises that getting access to education, especially higher education, is an acute challenge in developing countries.
A lack of educational opportunity is not without precedent.
It was especially evident after World War Two.
The fear then was that the lack of opportunity would lead to sustained poverty and lead in turn towards ideological radicalism.
So in the midst of those troubled times, many nations - developed and developing - came together to create the Colombo Plan.
The Colombo Plan - in which Australia was proud to be active from the start - has become a byword for successful cooperation, personal opportunity and economic development.
The scheme ran in its full form for over 30 years and benefited more than 40,000 young people from across Asia.
The Colombo Plan boasts a number of prominent current Asian leaders.
Here in Singapore we are proud to count among Australia's Colombo Plan alumni three Cabinet-level Ministers - Minister for National Development, Mah Bow Tan; Minister for Health, Khaw Boon Wan; and my good friend Minister for Transport, Raymond Lim.
I am delighted that another distinguished Australian Colombo Plan alumnus is with us here today.
Currently Chairman of Keppel Corporation, Dr Lee Boon Yang has a list of past ministerial appointments too long for me to mention.
We can't claim credit for all his achievements... but I note his alma mater is the University of Queensland from my home state.
We see Dr Lee as not only an honorary Australian but equally an honorary Queenslander.
Other Australian alumni in the region include Dr Boediono, Indonesia's recently-elected Vice President.
Also, Dato' Mustapa Mohamed, the Trade Minister of Malaysia.
And Dr Sirikorn Maneerin, a former deputy education minister and first president of Thailand's Knowledge Park is also an Australian Colombo scholar.
Clearly, the Colombo Plan was an enormous success.
But the tradition of educational cooperation between Australia and Singapore has continued beyond the Colombo Plan.
Indeed, more than 100,000 Singaporeans have studied in Australia over the years and many have gone on to make substantial contributions to Singapore, Australia and the broader Asian region.
These alumni include people like former Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Tony Tan Keng Yam, who undertook his doctorate in Australia.
We also like to count Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, as one of our honorary alumni.
The Australian National University - my alma mater - awarded him the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws for his service to the development of Singapore, his international statesmanship, and his friendship with Australia.
In short, education has long been the lifeblood of the Australia-Singapore relationship and more broadly across the region.
With alumni of this calibre, and the high priority that Australia places on education at home and abroad as well as our comprehensive engagement across the Asia-Pacific region, it should not be surprising that the Australian Government sees great benefit in building further the education bonds between our country and our region.
Today I am announcing the creation of a new Australian international scholarship program.
This program will be entitled "The Australia Awards".
Awards inspired by the original Colombo Plan.
Awards that will become for Australia the Colombo Plan of the 21st Century.
Awards which will over time extend the long-standing Australian scholarship program that has shared the benefits of our world-class education sector with many.
Our existing scholarship program is already extensive.
But we intend to make it even better.
And we intend to bring these many programs under one single roof - bringing together as many as 5000 Australia Awards offered each year to students abroad to study in Australia and for Australians also to study abroad.
The first phase of this new program will be launched in 2010, under the name the "Australia Asia Awards" - or the "Triple A" awards.
These awards will also include, in the initial four years, scholarships for high-achieving individuals across Asia to study in Australia, and for Australians to study in Asia from 2010.
Furthermore, a highly prestigious alumni program will be developed to deepen the experience for the AAA awardees to help maintain their connection to Australia over the long term.
The Government has committed $8 million for the first phase of the Australia Asia Awards that will be devoted to supporting the new Australia Awards brand, alumni and support services.
Some of these AAA awards will be earmarked as 'Achievement Awards'.
So individuals who have already demonstrated their potential to be leaders within their own countries are fostered and given every opportunity to fulfil their potential.
These scholarships will be open to applicants from all over Asia, including Singapore.
And I encourage everyone here today to think about applying - and become our first AAA scholars from 2010.
A second group of awards will be called 'Development Awards' for high-performing students from developing countries.
$10 million will be devoted to providing up to 170 additional scholarships for students from developing countries in Asia.
Asia is the first stage for these new Australia Awards.
In coming years, the program will expand to provide scholarships for the Pacific, Africa, the Middle East, the Americas and Europe.
To ensure a high quality global program, the Australian Government will appoint a highly experienced Board to help oversee the program.
Board members will be drawn from the government, corporate and academic sectors, and from home and abroad (including some of our existing illustrious Australian alumni) to advise the Australian Government on how the Australia Awards program can best achieve its objectives.
These objectives include developing the leadership potential of each participant.
I also intend to ask the Board to explore opportunities for Award winners to work with Australian industries during their stay.
The program will also provide opportunities for young Australians to undertake study and work in our region and to study with students from around the region at home in Australia.
The scholarships will enable Australia to showcase its cutting-edge capabilities in the education sector, which already includes eight of the world's top 100 universities.
They will build on the significant numbers of international students who already benefit from studying in Australia - currently over 500,000.
And they demonstrate Australia's ongoing commitment to building closer and enduring ties with the region, including at the personal level.
I'd like to conclude by reflecting John F. Kennedy's remark, half a century ago that:
"Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education."
We can take his idea one step further today: our progress as a regional community and our progress as a global community can be no swifter than our progress in education.
In this rapidly changing world, we can no longer afford to see ourselves as existing in isolation.
In order to progress, we need to understand more about our neighbours.
To do that, we must give something of ourselves.
We must also learn more about the way the world works, about the ways people think, about the way cultures shape the way people think, and about ways to communicate ideas and respectfully deploy the new technologies of our age across the old divides of language and culture.
This is a task that we can all tackle together.
As a regional community that works towards shared goals, for the benefit of all our peoples.
In the 21st Century, the world's centre of strategic and economic gravity will move to the Asia Pacific region.
As the leaders of tomorrow, your responsibility will be great.
Because not only is it important for Asia how we conduct our affairs to guarantee our future peace and prosperity.
It is also important for the world - because the future of the Asian century will now for the first time shape the future of the world.
The Australian Government believes, consistent with our proposal for an Asia Pacific community, that the countries of the region should work together.
To develop, together, an architecture to meet the challenges associated with this shift.
To shape our collective future.
Not simply to respond to events.
Not to allow strategic drift to occur in the hope that regional peace and prosperity are somehow deterministically assured.
History informs us that it is not always the case.
We must constantly shape our future.
Rather than simply allowing the future to shape us.
We must drive forward regional financial and economic integration, nurture a culture of dialogue and collaboration, and build over time a genuine sense - and in time institutional structures - that foster a sense of economic and security community.
Building high level engagement through education will make an important contribution to these objectives.
And through the Australia Asia Awards we will play our part by bringing the next generation of Asian leaders together in whatever fields of political, economic, scientific, academic or professional endeavour they choose to pursue.
The Australia Asia Awards will help nurture this next generation and assist to give full expression to their talents.
I am an optimist about our region's future.
The challenges are vast.
The threats are real.
But the opportunities, too, are great.
And I am confident you, the young people of Singapore, together with the young people of Australia and the region at large, will rise to the challenge of turning this century of the Pacific into a truly pacific century.