Vientiane, Laos
PM: Well I'm delighted to be here in Vientiane to attend the Asia-Europe Meeting. I arrived last night and since my arrival I've had the opportunity to meet with the Lao Prime Minister. I've also attended a business breakfast this morning.
In my meeting with the Lao Prime Minister last night I was able to make points about the strong and enduring ties between our two countries. Indeed, we are celebrating our 60th year of diplomatic relations.
We have a strong economic relationship, particularly based on mining, but one we are working to broaden, and I was pleased at the business breakfast this morning to meet a number of leading Australian business people who are here making their way for Australian business.
We also have significant people to people links, with 10,000 Lao people living in Australia. And we're very strong partners for development, indeed Australia is one of the top two development partners here in Laos.
Yesterday, I was able to advise the Prime Minister of two new initiatives that we intend to take for development in his nation. Firstly, we will make a $43 million commitment to assisting with rural livelihoods. This is working with people who are subsistence farmers, working to develop their prospects. It goes to very practical measures like de-mining arable land which currently can't be used for faming because of left over unexploded ordinance. It also goes to micro finance and enabling people to start small businesses through micro finance initiatives.
There is also a second initiative which is the development of an institute, a $20 million program, so that we can share our expertise in public policy capacity. So these are two great programs which show in practical ways the way in which Australia can make a difference for countries in our region.
I'm looking forward today to attending the opening of the Asia-Europe Meeting. This is a meeting attended by around 50 leaders and senior ministers from Asia and from Europe as the title would imply. Nine of our top ten trading partners are members of ASEM, as are more than half of the G20 membership and four of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.
The agenda of the Asia-Europe Meeting is truly a broad one. It covers the global economic outlook, multilateral trade, non-proliferation issues, and global and regional challenges such as Iran and North Korea.
I will be addressing a section of the meeting this morning on economic matters, and I will be taking the opportunity during the course of the meeting, in my capacity as a Millennium Development Goal co-chair as appointed by the UN Secretary General, to raise the need to push on the achieve the Millennium Development Goals. I'll come back at the end to the intervention I intend to make on economic matters.
I will also, whilst I'm here, take the opportunity to engage in a number of bilateral meetings. I will be seeing the President of France, the President of the European Council, the Cambodian Prime Minister, the Prime Minister of Pakistan and the Foreign Secretary of the UK. I will also be seeing Myanmar's President, Burma's President, and that will be the first formal bilateral meeting between an Australian Prime Minister and a leader of Myanmar, of Burma, since 1984.
On the intervention I will be making in the economic discussions, my focus will be this. The Asia-Europe Meeting brings together two regions of the world which are mutually interdependent but are facing very different economic circumstances.
Europe is facing challenges of restarting growth. It is seeking to come out of recession and to harness growth to create jobs. Asia is facing different challenges. This is the growing region of the world, where economic weight is coming to this region of the world, where rapid growth is being experienced.
Whether facing either of these two challenges, nations need a clear plan, and regions need a clear plan. For Europe that means individual nations need to deal with the difficult problem of finding a fiscally sustainable path forward, whilst promoting growth and jobs, and Europe needs to build on its current endeavours to address the crisis in the Eurozone to find long term sustainability for the Eurozone - in the language of Europe, to create more Europe not less.
Here in Asia, nations need to be managing growth, and particularly managing a switch towards domestic consumption and servicing the needs for infrastructure in their nations.
Here in our region we will continue to work with APEC to address behind the boarder barriers and regional integration through the East Asia Summit. So different challenges, different regional strategies but ultimately mutual interdependency which is why it is important that this meeting endorse the work of the G20 to guide the globe to sustainable long term growth which supports jobs, and to resist protectionism.
This is the first meeting that I've been able to come to where we can say three things. Australia is going to be hosting the premier global entity in the world, the G20. Australia is becoming a member of the UN Security Council and Australia has a clear national plan for its own outlook for growth which is the white paper that I delivered for Australia in this Asian Century.
I think that they are three things that Australians can rightly be proud of, and I will certainly in the course of my discussions with fellow leaders and representatives here, be briefing people of the contents of our White Paper on Australia in the Asian Century, our plan to ensure that Australia is an economic winner in this time of growth in our region.
I'm happy to turn to questions.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, how do you think your message to European leaders will be received?
PM: Well, I find whenever I have these discussions, media reporting put to one side, I find whenever I have these discussions that they are productive ones. Europe knows that the rest of the world has been very focussed and concerned on European measures to address the Eurozone crisis. Now that wasn't just a bystander's interest that was because the rest of world understood that should matters in relation to the Eurozone become even more problematic that it risk contagion into the global financial system and we'd just seen that with the Global Financial Crisis.
Happily, we are in the situation where Europe has taken a number of effective and important measures to address issues in the Eurozone and more broadly to address issues about fiscal integrations, to address issues through the European Central Bank, to assist those nations that are seeking to recapitalise their banking systems - so a lot of good work has been done. Now as Europe turns its eyes to building on that good work, it forces the subject of discussion at a meeting like an Asia-Europe Meeting.
JOURNALIST: What issues will you be raising with the Burma President and how significant in your view is this first meeting in almost 20 years?
PM: I think it's significant in the sense that it's another way of recognising the progress that has been made in Myanmar, in Burma, in progress towards democracy.
I think many Australians have followed issues in Burma closely, many Australians are very big admirers of Aung San Suu Kyi and her ongoing struggle for democracy and change in Burma and we have seen change happen. And as change has happened, every step of the way we have welcomed that change and we have shifted Australian foreign policy settings to recognise that change.
So we have opened up for example economic and trade links. Minister Shorten was recently there, Minister Carr has been there; I think this meeting is another recognition of that change.
Now more needs to happen, you know, more needs to happen on questions like human rights for ethnic minorities so that there is still more to do but we should be welcoming the journey that is being undertaken in Myanmar.
JOURNALIST: Will you be actively encouraging change in the relationship with Burma? Actively encouraging trade for example?
PM: We've already changed. We've already changed, we used to have a very comprehensive sanctions regime and we have moved to lift those sanctions so that at every stage they have been appropriately addressed as Myanmar, as Burma, has changed and so you've had Minister Shorten in the last week or so leading a delegation there including Australian business people.
Our remaining sanctions are very limited indeed, targeting as they do a limited number of members of the regime, in terms of their personal ability to deal with Australia and we've still got some decisions to make on future defence cooperation.
JOURNALIST: In that meeting, will you mention the atrocities and will you make it clear that Australia won't stand for that? What will you be saying about human rights?
PM: I will certainly say, as I have said here, that we have continuing concern about human rights questions for ethnic minority groups.
JOURNALIST: On the white paper Prime Minister, there's some criticism of it today from Richard Woolcott who's made the criticism of it that it's not addressed in relation with China fully. He's suggesting that there be a top law regular, top level contact between Australian and Chinese leaders and to assure China that we're not, that Australia does not believe in a policy of containment. What do you think of his comments on that regard?
PM: One of the things I wanted to do through delivering the Australia in the Asian Century White Paper was to provoke what I hope is an all-consuming national debate about our future in the region in which we live, so I welcome all of this commentary and dialogue. It's exactly the national debate that we should be having.
On the Asian Century White Paper and it's the outlook on China. The white paper is very clear, as the Government has consistently been clear, we welcome China's rise into the global rules based system. We've got deep relationships with China at every level, we will continue to build on those deep relationships and we do not support and we do not engage in a containment strategy.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, would you be, like to meet a victorious Obama in Phnom Penh in a couple of weeks?
PM: I don't comment on elections in other nations. Obviously, all of the talk is of the American election which is understandable. I know many people who'll be back at home watching the coverage as it comes through.
Whoever is the President of the United States, we will continue to have a strong relationship with the United States. We are the oldest of allies; we are the deepest of friends. That alliance, that friendship has survived the twists and turns of politics in both nations over decades and decades and decades and it will endure for the future, whatever the outcome of the election in America, in and around our Melbourne Cup day. We call it Melbourne Cup day but the time change makes it slightly different.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, are promising to deliver a budget surplus even though Deloitte Access Economics is forecasting now a $4 billion deficit?
PM: Well the Treasurer's dealt with this domestically and let me say what he said and what we said in the Parliament last week. We faced revenue write-downs of more than $20 billion when we delivered the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook.
We made the hard decisions necessary to ensure that when we delivered that outlook there was a budget surplus. We stand by the predictions, the entries in the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook, we stand by the figures and we're on track to deliver a budget surplus.
JOURNALIST: Can you promise, can you guarantee that you will deliver it?
PM: And mining, MRRT revenue got written-down in the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook.
JOURNALIST: And can you guarantee or promise that that surplus will be delivered?
PM: We've just delivered MYEFO including big savings which just once again shows our determination to reach surplus. We are a Government that each budget, each Mid-Year Economic Outlook has made big savings, tough decisions and as you see from the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook we are determined to deliver a budget surplus, we stand by the forecasts and we're on track to deliver it.
JOURNALIST: If global growth though continues to slow as has been forecast, have you allowed for that?
PM: We don't produce a budget or a Mid-Year Economic Fiscal Outlook which is based on hypotheticals. We produce those based on the best projections that Treasury can give us.
These are the professional people who assist this Government, who assisted the former Liberal Government, on whose projections budgets have been made since Adam was a boy.
JOURNALIST: When you say you're on track though, do you acknowledge that there are global risks that could mean that you go off track?
PM: Well, we don't deal with hypotheticals. We deal with what's happening, and what's happening has been taken into account in the Treasury forecast in MYEFO.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, Tony Abbott says if there's another interest rate cut that would be a sign of economic weakness, do you agree with that?
PM: Well you'd want to walk up into the home of an Australian family buying a house and say, I don't believe you should have an interest rate reduction.
I mean what a ridiculous thing to say. What an offensive thing to say to Australians who work hard and whose dream it is to buy a home. It shows a complete misunderstanding of the economy for which Mr Abbott is famous. His colleague Peter Costello thought he didn't know anything about economics and he's just proved that again today.
One of the reasons we are very focussed on fiscal discipline is it gives monetary policy, that is interest rate policy through the Reserve Bank maximum room to move.
The Reserve Bank makes those decisions independently of Government which is of course appropriate, but the fact that a family today on a $300,000 mortgage for their home is paying $4,500 less a year for that mortgage than they did when Mr Abbott was in Government is a relief to those families. Clearly, Mr Abbott doesn't think they should have the benefit of those kinds of interest rate reductions.
JOURNALIST: Is Treasury being politicised given the leakings of the Coalition's policies and given that the leaking is clearly aimed to damage the Coalition?
PM: This is the kind of offensive nonsense we've come to understand from the Opposition.
If a climate change scientist speaks, they attack the climate change scientist. If an economist speaks in favour of carbon pricing, they attack the economist. If public servants professionally get about their jobs, then they attack the public servants.
The truth is, as anybody familiar with the operations of Government would know, that Treasury, full of professional people, is doing its job for this Government, the same way that Treasury used to do the job for the Howard Government.
To suggest anything else is an insult to those hardworking professionals, and I trust in due course it will be apologised for.
JOURNALIST: Did the Government leak the Treasury analysis?
PM: Well Treasury does its job. If people have got issues with the Government then direct them at the Government, don't criticise hardworking public servants.
Okay, thank you very much.
JOURNALIST: Any tips for the Melbourne Cup?
PM: I'm going to go for Americain on the basis that everybody is very focused on US election. So, I'm not an expert when it comes to horse racing so I'm not suggesting people should be necessarily following my tips. There's a whole industry to help people with this who spend more time studying the form.
JOURNALIST: Are you putting money on this?
PM: I understand a strong stayer, so a good horse to back. I'll be participating in a sweep right here with our Embassy staff. Which horse I'll get in the sweep, I don't know.
Thank you very much.