Asia-Pacific Focus, Australia Network
HOST: Prime Minister, welcome back to the program.
PM: Thanks Jim.
HOST: Let's deal with this first - the PNG Prime Minister says he wants asylum seekers processed on Manus Island as speedily as possible. You say they're to get no advantage over other refugees. Your own immigration department says that 75 per cent of applicants for refugee status can expect a visa within 12 months.
Does that mean that people on Manus Island can expect to stay there no more than 12 months?
PM: Jim there's three stages here.
Firstly, people are processed, and of course we do processing as quickly as possible, to ascertain whether or not someone's a genuine refugee. If they're not a genuine refugee then they can expect to be returned to their home country or to another country that they've got a right to enter.
Second, under the Houston principles, there is then waiting time. So even if you are a genuine refugee, you would not get a resettlement opportunity earlier than you would have got it if you hadn't moved by boat.
Then third, of course once those stages are acquitted, we want people resettled as quickly as possible, as does the Prime Minister of PNG and the President of Nauru.
HOST: But that means people in PNG on Manus Island are going to be there for years, does it not?
PM: We haven't as yet announced the times that they will be there. We will consult with UNHCR and others - the High Commissioner for Refugees - to ascertain what the right amount of time is.
But the aim here is so people don't get an advantage if they get on a boat, pay a people smuggler and risk their lives at sea.
HOST: Fair enough. Let's move to the APEC agenda itself. Your passion for education is well-enough known. The education crusade, as you've described it, that you're on now, it's also intersecting with the agenda for this summit. Vladimir Putin's initiative - the success of it - would appear to depend on incentive and quality.
If students are going to travel abroad to study they at least need to know they're going to get credit for what they do overseas back home. Is that right?
PM: I think that's a big element of it. We're very pleased that Russia, in its leading of APEC this year, has put this squarely on the agenda. And we believe leaders will agree to what is a comprehensive program of work to achieve a few things.
One is student mobility, so that is recognising each other's qualifications or at least getting an accurate description of what those qualifications mean, out of different systems so there's more mobility after people have qualified.
There's also mobility while people are studying. An Australian, perhaps coming here to Vladivostok and doing one year or one semester of their course and having it recognised.
There's the mobility of researchers and academic staff and importantly for Australia there would be Australian institutions able to go and set up campuses overseas.
Now they do that now, but the easier it is the better for Australian universities who are very export-oriented and want to take Australian education into the region.
HOST: Do you think that Australians underestimate the quality of institutions, of educational institutions available to them within the region? There are 175,000 students from APEC economies studying in Australia. Only a handful by comparison to Australians studying in Asia.
Is this something that we need to fix?
PM: When we chart the future course of our nation through the Asian Century white paper, we will be making very clearly the point that the global economic weight will be in our region of the world.
You will see Asia continue to rise and its middle classes boom. You will see the quality of its institutions like universities continuing to rise.
And so a young person in Australia in the future might well say to themselves that the best university they could go to is a university in our region rather than a sentimental view about going to Oxford or Cambridge or even Harvard in the United States.
This is going to be our future and I think we've got to deepen community understanding of it.
That's why I was so enthusiastic about the white paper process. It's not just about government, it's about everybody in our nation thinking about what this future of change in our region of the world really means for us.
HOST: When you say everybody in the nation, does that mean that you are thinking of enlisting business to have a role in expanding Australian students' educational horizons, either through overseas scholarships, even overseas cadetships?
PM: I'd like to see everybody playing their parts. I'd like to see business leaders helping the Australian community understand the tremendous opportunities for our economy in our region of the world.
I'd like them to talk about how important it is for young people to get an experience in one of the countries in our region of the world, and how they will value that Asia-literacy as an employer.
I'd like our media organisations to routinely report the economic news from Indonesia. I see plenty of news on our TV that's about the economy of Germany, the economy of France.
I can understand why that news is on our TV, but I think I'd find it pretty hard to get a channel on my TV screen that's telling me in detail about the economy of Indonesia or Vietnam or so many of the other countries in our region.
At every level we've got to be preparing for this century of Asian economic growth. It will be our future, an age of prosperity for us, if we get out there and seize it.
HOST: Will the white paper be recommending additional assistance, additional expenditure to help Australians study abroad, particularly within the APEC economies?
PM: I'm not in a position to tell you what's going to be in detail in the white paper, but I would make this point. We are already at record expenditure for scholarships for people from our region to come and study in Australia.
That's great for us, those people-to-people links, those future leaders of nations in our region, actually getting an experience in Australia. Obviously I want to encourage young Australians to get out and do the same.
HOST: Food security is once again on the agenda here at APEC. Do you understand why many Australians worry that food security - the term - is simply code for foreigners buying up Australian land?
PM: I do understand that people feel concerns, and there's often times when the way in which this is reported in the media, to be frank, is overly dramatic.
Let's get the statistics right. 99 per cent of Australian agricultural businesses are wholly Australian-owned. Only 6 per cent of land is wholly foreign-owned. So let's keep it in perspective.
We are a nation that cultivates an abundance of food and we export it to the world. That's how our farmers earn their income, and long may that last because that's a source of great prosperity for our nation.
We will best prosper in this century of economic change by having our face looking towards our region rather than closing inwards or succumbing to some very silly populist debates, even if they are being pursued by leading personalities in the Opposition like Barnaby Joyce.
HOST: Do you fear, though, that foreign investment could become as divisive an issue in Australia in the lead-up to the next election as asylum seekers proved in 2010 and right to this day?
PM: That's a question you'd really have to put to the Leader of the Opposition.
HOST: But isn't it also about your ability to market the benefits of foreign investment to Australians to assure them and reassure them that they don't lose anything from having foreign investors buying Australian land, buying Australian food producers?
PM: I will certainly be doing that, and that is my responsibility as Prime Minister, to explain to people what is in our long-term economic interest, even if it's not instantaneously popular.
At the end of the day that's what pricing carbon is about; in our long-term economic interest, not instantly popular. NBN, all of the work we're doing in education, infrastructure; about building this positive economic future for our country.
We've got 21 years of economic growth now. I want to keep building for the future.
HOST: One final question about this subject. Is foreign investment essential if Australia is to achieve its ambition of being an even greater food bowl for the burgeoning nations of Asia?
PM: We are a net capital importer. You will see investments from overseas in all sections of the Australian economy. There is a rigorous national interest test that we have through our Foreign Investment Review Board processes.
No one should pretend that somehow this is unregulated or that the statistics are anything other than the ones I've given you. That's the facts, that's the truth.
HOST: Prime Minister, it's been a pleasure talking to you.
PM: Thanks Jim.
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