Great Hall, Parliament House, Canberra
His Excellency, Prime Minister Najib Razak and Madame Rosmah Honourable Ministers,
Honorable Members of Parliament from Malaysia and Australia Senior officials, diplomats and friends, Prime Minister,
Welcome to Australia and welcome to our Parliament.
Your visit to Australia is a milestone in the long friendship between Australia and Malaysia.
It is a visit full of significance for us.
Yours is the third visit by a Malaysian Prime Minister in 30 years.
And it follows in the steps of one Malaysia's greatest son,s the man who more than any other set your nation on the path of modernisation, your late father, who through great suffering, served the Malaysian people until his final days and whose role and legacy you inherit.
Prime Minister Gough Whitlam was proud to welcome Tun Abdul Razak to Canberra in 1975.
As Gough's friend and successor, I very proudly welcome you and I thank you for making this journey: This journey of understanding, dialogue and cooperation.
Your Excellency's visit comes soon after my own visit to Malaysia last year.
I want to thank you for your concern that you were not able meet me at that time, and for taking the time to telephone.
In choosing Malaysia as the first regional country to make a bi-lateral visit as Prime Minister, I wanted to signal just how much we value the relationship with Malaysia.
I wanted to reaffirm also Australia's deep and principled commitment to regional engagement and to all we can achieve together as partners and friends.
Our ties are longstanding and they are strong.
We value our defence history as we stood together against the successive evils of fascism and communism.
We value our education links, going back to the Colombo Plan - that have seen 300,000 Malaysian alumni from Australian universities make an important contribution to your nation's development.
We are working together in new and important areas such as public sector reform, superannuation and regulatory reform and we would be very pleased to deepen this partnership.
And, of course, we share a deepening economic relationship, with two-way trade valued at A$14 billion and considerable scope to grow further.
But most importantly, your visit is about the future because the region we share is where the destiny of the 21st century is being written.
Prime Minister,
You are a leader in our region, and a friend.
You are an exemplar in the fight against extremism and upholding the true values of Islam, and I salute your leadership of the Global Movement of the Moderates.
And like us, you share an abiding commitment to the benefits of free trade, which is why our work together on the Trans Pacific Partnership and a prospective Malaysia-Australia Free Trade Agreement is so vitally important.
Prime Minister,
Your visit strengthens further an already strong education relationship.
Both of us have served as reformist Education Ministers for our nations sharing a passionate commitment to the role a great education can play in opening up opportunity for every child and in forming human capital that will be the source of our future growth and wealth.
Given our shared commitment, I know you join me in taking great pride in the fact that 23,000 Malaysians are currently enrolled in Australian education institutions young men and women who will play such an important role in realising your dream of creating a knowledge economy for Malaysia's future.
We are proud to be an international education destination of choice for your nation.
And today's Memorandum of Understanding on Education Cooperation, which we witnessed earlier will extend our sharing of expertise in the development of vocational education and build on the work that you undertook as Education Minister.
How appropriate, then, that Australia's largest university is tomorrow awarding you an Honorary Doctorate.
Monash University was named after John Monash,was Australia's finest military leader but also a man who valued education very, very deeply.
He had three university degrees, including a law degree from the same faculty I was privileged to graduate from many years later.
And he saw education as the key to a nation's future and the quality of its leadership.
The Australian community finds abiding inspiration in the life and example of John Monash. I'm sure you will too.
Of course, Prime Minister,
The benefits of education extend far beyond our own shores.
Our education cooperation is also benefiting third countries, like Afghanistan where the Malaysia Australia Education Project is skilling Afghan master teacher trainers.
We think of the children who will benefit.
In some cases, their families have not known peace since these children's grandparents were themselves children.
And now, after decades of conflict and poverty, these children will have the chance of a new life.
Mr Prime Minister,
Our nations have longstanding defence ties, which stretch back to before Malaysia's independence in 1957.
Our personnel have experienced the hardships of Somalia, East Timor, Afghanistan.
And we have done so, not for any material gain, but to assist the cause of security and freedom.
This year we celebrate the 40th year of the Five Power Defence Arrangements, a set of agreements that underline our shared strategic interests and affirm our commitment that Asia will never, we hope, know war again.
The Australian Defence Force continues to utilise and has personnel based at the Royal Malaysian Air Force Base at Butterworth.
The Malaysia Australia Joint Peacekeeping Initiative is building regional peacekeeping capacity in support of mutual regional security objectives.
And we have jointly trained PNG and East Timor forces, with a third workshop being considered this year.
Likewise, in law enforcement, I acknowledge your leadership in combating transnational crime including people smuggling and human trafficking in the region.
I warmly welcome Malaysia's action to criminalise people smuggling, and recognise your strong leadership in disrupting criminal syndicates in the region including the outstanding contribution of Malaysia's law enforcement community.
Of course, we know much more needs to be done to address the issue of irregular people movements that can so often lead to tragic consequences in our region.
Your Excellency,
These developments all lead back to the same point: that our region can best succeed through dialogue and cooperation.
Malaysia has always been at the forefront of dialogue: As a founding member of ASEAN and APEC, a founding member also of the WTO, as a member of the Cairns Group, as the host for the inaugural East Asia Summit in 2005, Malaysia has a proud record of regional leadership.
And I thus look forward to working closely with you to ensure the successful future of the East Asia Summit with the US and Russia set to join shortly.
It is Australia's priority to work with you on developing a substantial political and security agenda for the EAS, in order to strengthen its future role in the region.
We also seek, in partnership, to set a new ambitious agenda for APEC at this year's Summit.
These are only some of the things we plan to do in the future.
Prime Minister,
Your visit marks a new chapter of a comprehensive partnership. A partnership based on warm and cordial relations between ourselves, between our Ministers, between our civil service, law enforcement and military authorities.
And it is not just the Governments that are making a significant contribution to the relationship.
It is our people ... our greatest strength.
Through the Australia-Malaysia Institute, AsiaLink, Malaysia's Institute of Strategic and International Studies and other institutions our scholars and diplomats, our artists and writers, and our civil society organisations engage in open and thoughtful dialogue.
Our schools are twinning together.
Our young people can now travel and explore each other's cultures on working holiday visas.
And direct Malaysia Airlines flights between Kota Kinabalu and Perth have now made people-to-people links even easier.
Prime Minister,
Just 10 days ago, a courageous and brilliant athlete mastered a very serious injury to win bronze at the World Cycling Championships in Manchester.
His name, of course, is Azizulhasni Awang.
This young man carried your nation's flag in Beijing and yet he trains with an Australian coach in my home city of Melbourne.
It is a metaphor for everything we seek and everything we hope.
It characterises the relationship our predecessors have built. The relationship we will build even further. Because, having come so far and achieved so much, there is no limit to what we can do in the future.
A future we will share and shape together.
A future that has come closer because of your visit to our shores this week.
Terima kasih. Thank you.