PRIME MINISTER:
I would like to welcome you to this news conference. I am delighted to welcome to Canberra on this, the first ever official visit to Australia by a Norwegian Prime Minister, the Prime Minister Mr Bondevik. He's very welcome and we have commenced our discussions and we will be continuing them over lunch.
Australia and Norway have a great deal in common - most importantly our common values of commitment to democracy and our efforts in various parts of the world to achieve peace and our cooperation in the campaign to prevent the proliferation of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. It may be of historical interest to remind you that the first twinning of a President of the United Nations General Assembly and the Secretary General of the United Nations brought together an Australian and a Norwegian. Dr Evatt was the first President of the United Nations and Trygve Lie, a Norwegian, was the first Secretary General of the Untied Nations.
You may be interested to know that Australia, with 4,200 Norwegian students, is the largest overseas university destination of young Norwegians. Many Australians, who share of-course the Prime Minister's passion and capacity at skiing, have enjoyed the ski slopes of Norway as they have of many other European countries.
Can I take this opportunity of particularly commending the contribution that Norway has made to peacekeeping efforts and bringing about peace in recent years. Of course the Oslo Accords bulk very large in the ongoing conflict between the Palestinians and Israel and more recently of course the contribution that Norway has made towards bringing about a settlement in Sri Lanka is very important and the United Nations Special Envoy, Mr. Roed-Larsen, a Norwegian, is playing a key role in securing Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon.
So for all of those and for many other reasons, I am delighted to welcome the Prime Minister here to Canberra and I hope he has an extremely enjoyable stay here in Australia.
PRIME MINISTER BONDEVIK:
Thank you Prime Minister. Oh look I can assure you that I really have. It is a great pleasure to be here and to come here as the very first Norwegian Prime Minister visiting Australia. Next year we will celebrate 100 years of diplomatic relations so it was high time I came.
Relations between our two countries can be summed up in one word - that is excellent. Excellent relations and I think we also have an important common agenda in international politics as mentioned by the Prime Minister, we cooperate closely within the framework of the United Nations.
We have also agreed upon the important role of the UN to coordinate peace efforts, development efforts, and we saw also after the tsunami disaster how important it is that UN has such a coordinating role. We will continue to discuss over the luncheon the reform process of the UN. This is of great importance in order to strengthen the role of our global organisation. I think we need UN for both for development, for security reasons and to follow up the millennium goals and I think we meet again in New York in September at the Summit where we will discuss the report from a high level panel which is now considered by the Secretary General and he will make the report to us.
I also very much appreciate the role Australia's playing in this part of the world and we acknowledge the role of Australia for countries in this part of the world. I am thinking of Indonesia especially, Sri Lanka (where Norway is also engaged in the peace efforts), Burma, the Korean Peninsula and I would like to discuss these issues with the Prime Minister also during our luncheon.
The Prime Minister mentioned the Norwegian students here in Australia. I recently met them at the University in Canberra. We have about 4000 of them in Australia as mentioned but considering that we are a nation with only 4.3 million people this is quite a high number. It's our highest student population in a foreign country and this bodes well also for our future bilateral relations. I can assume that Norwegian students in Australia, they come back to Norway as ambassadors for Australia so there are many of them in Norway already.
It's also important to us to develop our business cooperation. In Sydney yesterday we had a luncheon with mainly Norwegian business people here in Australia. Some of the most important Norwegian companies have partners in Australia and more of them want to have. So I am sure that we will further expand our economic relations. On Sunday I took part in a very special event in Sydney - we re-opened a Norwegian Seaman's Church in Australia. It has been closed for twenty years because the number of Norwegian seamen coming to harbours of Australia was falling but now we have so many students here so now we have reopened it and I think that is also an expression of the strength in the bilateral cooperation between our two countries. Thank you.
PRIME MINISTER:
We'll have a couple of questions.
JOURNALIST:
What is it about Australia that is so attractive to Norwegian students?
PRIME MINISTER BONDEVIK:
I think many of them want to go far away to study and see other places of this world. I think also of course that the system you have at your universities, your programmes, your curriculum is very attractive and here at the university, ANU, you have a special programme for peace studies. And since Norway and people of Norway are very peace loving people, as mentioned by the Prime Minister we are also involved in some peace efforts in different parts of the world. To come here to study peace and also Australian students can come to Oslo and study peace as they do, this programme of exchange is very attractive.
JOURNALIST:
Mr Howard are you going to have a chance to speak to Senator Lightfoot today and are you satisfied with his denials that he smuggled any money into Northern Iraq?
PRIME MINISTER:
You would've all heard his denial of the substance of that. I have spoken to him briefly as has Senator Hill. He will be making a statement to the Senate later today and I won't have any further comment until that statement is made.
JOURNALIST:
Are you satisfied...?
PRIME MINISTER:
I'm satisfied with the way in which he his responding to the matter, yes.
JOURNALIST:
Is it appropriate for Australian Senators to be carrying weapons around Northern Iraq?
PRIME MINISTER:
I think we should wait until the statement is made.
JOURNALIST:
As a general principle do you think it's acceptable for members of Parliament to be carrying weapons?
PRIME MINISTER:
I don't think you can get into statements of that which are divorced from the circumstances of Senator Lightfoot's situation.
JOURNALIST:
You are meeting with Indonesian Ministers this afternoon on tsunami aid, the tsunami aid package, how concerned are you about reports that that money isn't going to where it should be?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well none of it has gone anywhere yet because the projects have not been approved but I am very confident that the arrangements that will be agreed and established will ensure that the money goes where it is needed and as I announced in Jakarta in January, no project can proceed without the approval of both the Indonesian Government and the Australian Government.
JOURNALIST:
The Liberal Party think-tank, the Page Research Centre just released a report. The central recommendation is for a Government-owned fibre optic link costing $7 billion to be rolled out to the bush to provide competition. They're basically saying that's necessary because Telstra won't provide the services. What's your initial response to that suggestion? And they want the money taken out of T3 proceeds as well.
PRIME MINISTER:
Steve I haven't seen the report. I've been busy talking to my colleague from Norway and doing other things but I will have a look at that report and it will be part of the ongoing debate. The Government's policy is well known. This is an issue that needs continued further discussion inside the Government parties but I have no doubt that the matter will be appropriately resolved. It remains our policy to sell the remainder of Telstra but upon the basis that services in the bush are up to scratch.
JOURNALIST:
A question for the Norwegian Prime Minister. OPEC leaders overnight have agreed to pump out some more oil, and there's been a call for non-OPEC members to increase their production. Is there room for Norway to increase its oil production?
PRIME MINISTER BONDEVIK:
Well we take our own decisions. We have contacts with OPEC but we are not a member. So this is a rather new decision from OPEC. We have to consider it at home in Norway and have to discuss it with my Minister of Energy, so I cannot give you a clear stand- point today. But our potential for increasing the production is very limited.
JOURNALIST:
(inaudible) You talk about the famous turnaround of the Tampa in 2001 - did that enter your discussions with the Prime Minister?
PRIME MINISTER BONDEVIK:
It's behind us now. You know that there were disagreements about this and some disappointments but this is behind us.
JOURNALIST:
Regardless of his statement to the Senate, should the allegations surrounding Senator Lightfoot be referred to the AFP at all?
PRIME MINISTER:
I think you should wait and hear his statement and then I think you will form a commonsense conclusion as to what that answer ought to be. And I think the Prime Minister and I will now go and have lunch and we'll see you all in the Gallery at 2.00pm.
Thank you.
[ends]