PRIME MINISTER:
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to welcome you to this news conference and say on behalf of the Australian Government and the Australian people how delighted we are to have President Lagos of Chile in Australia. It's his first visit as head of state of a country that Australia has had a long historical association with, but in recent years is a country with which our economic relationship has greatly strengthened. Australia is the largest foreign investor in Chile and that investment takes place particularly in the mining industry but not only in the mining industry. We have very extensive people to people links; there are some 45,000 people of Chilean heritage in our country. And to further those links, we have signed a Worker Visitor Programme this morning. We are commencing negotiations for a double taxation agreement in September and we have also signed a memorandum of understanding regarding cooperation in the area of nuclear technology. And this follows the visit to Chile recently of the Minister for Education and Science Dr Nelson.
Importantly of course, Australia and Chile are fellow members of the Cannes Group of Countries as well as being fellow APEC members and in our discussions this morning the President and I canvassed the desirability of movement forward in the area of agricultural protection, which is not only damaging of course to Australia and Chile, but its also perhaps even more importantly, damaging to the least developed countries in the world. And we very strongly have the view that those countries with very high levels of agricultural protection should examine the contribution that they could make to helping the least developed countries in the world by lowering those very high barriers of agricultural protection.
Naturally enough, the President and I talked about the tragic events in London of recent days and reaffirmed the commitment of both Australia and Chile to doing all that we can in a cooperative fashion to further the fight against terrorism, both as friendly countries in our own right but also as fellow members of APEC.
And finally and importantly, I can indicate that Australia and New Zealand will join Chile in relation to fisheries cooperation in our part of the world. We both recognise the importance of countries, the literal states working together as best we can to counteract illegal fishing and also in relation to relevant conservation measures. But can I conclude by saying to you Mr President, my wife and I immensely enjoyed our first visit to Santiago at the APEC meeting in November of last year. The warmth and hospitality of your welcome to both of us and to our party and the warmth and hospitality of the Chilean people is something we remember. And I just want to say that this visit will further cement the very friendly and growing relationship between our two countries.
Now the President I know wants to say something at the beginning in Spanish about a very important constitutional development in his country, a good one. It's never a smart idea to have bad developments in your country when you're out of it. But I know it's a very good one and I know he wants to say something about it. Mr President.
PRESIDENT LAGOS:
According to what the Prime Minister said I'll do a few words in Spanish for my journalists here.
(address in Spanish)
Now I would like to turn to and say something because the Prime Minister has been so kind with me. I would like first of all to thank you for this very warm reception here in Australia and this very warm reception here in Canberra. I have arrived here with a delegation of Ministers, senior officials, businessmen, scientific, quite an important delegation. What we would like to do is to raise the level of the ambitions in our bilateral relations. We have so many things in common that we can tackle together now. And you presented in a very clear- cut way, the agreement of trying to find an agreement on double taxation in September, and our agreement to participate in those regional groupings vis-a-vis fisheries in the Southern Pacific. The way that we can cooperate in some of the areas like in the area of science and technology and there is technology is quite a number of areas vis-a-vis our export products. The way that we can cooperate also in some of the areas like nuclear energy and nuclear cooperation and also from the point of view of our own energy needs. You in Australia have plenty of natural gas and we would like to have part of that gas down in Chile. And in addition to that, in addition to investment, that we really thank you for the amount of Australian investment in Chile. The idea of having a double taxation agreement is that for many foreign firms in Chile are taking Chile as a platform, as a launching pad for the other Latin American countries. And from this point of view I'm sure that if we have the kind of taxation agreement, much more Australian firms are going to be in Chile.
At the international level, at the multi-lateral level, we have agreed so much about how can we do most in order to succeed in the Doha Development Round, but people having the next negotiations that are going to take place in Hong Kong in December this year. To what extent is possible, also to expand the bilateral agreements. US is doing the negotiation with China. So are we doing the negotiation with China and India. And in addition to our agreement with South Korea we hope to be able to launch negotiation with Japan in our next meeting in APEC later this year.
As you know, Chile is probably one of the countries in the world that has a major number of free trade agreements with the European Union, with United States, Canada, Mexico, South Korea, the European Free Trade Association and therefore most of our trade now is open. And when you are a country rather small like Chile, more than 65% of our GNP is represented by our exports plus imports and therefore when we are here in Australia we are looking also in what extent we can increase our trade among our two countries.
And finally, we also have some ideas, very similar ideas. How are we going to proceed via-a-vis the changes in the United Nations that are being presented by the Secretary General and at the same time to what extent the time has come to update the institutions that where forged in 1945 and to what extent those institutions may be according to what is the realities of today's world n 2005? We are very realistic and pragmatic and we know that is not an easy task, but at least we agree to have our similar views in this issue and we would like to work together like many other issues with our friends here in Australia.
Finally, I would like to thank you John Howard for this very warm reception. Thank you very much.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you. We could have a couple of questions from the Australian media, a couple of questions from the Chilean media and then we could allow you to go about your business.
JOURNALIST:
Mr Howard, Mr Beazley wants you to raise with President Bush and Mr Blair a timeframe for withdrawal of Australian troops from Iraq. Will you be taking up the Opposition Leader's suggestion?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I won't be taking instruction or advice from Mr Beazley in dealing with our commitment in Iraq. The Labor Party has been weak and confused and contradictory about Iraq. He would be the last person in the world to listen to when it comes to mapping out a sensible approach to Iraq.
JOURNALIST:
Mr Hill this morning has said he's seen no specific intelligence about potential suicide bombings in Australia. Do you stand by what you said last night on the 7.30 Report?
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes I certainly do. Mr Blair had seen no specific intelligence about what happened in London. Need I say anymore? The fact that you haven't seen any specific intelligence doesn't in any way alter the commonsense of what I said last night, and I don't retract it one iota. Any complacent assumption that this country is immune from that kind of happening is foolish. It is complacent. I said last night that I didn't believe the likelihood here was as great as in a country such as Britain but I said we would be foolish and complacent if we rule it out and the stark and arresting thing about what happened in Britain is that there was no intelligence. The people apparently responsible were cleanskins. The people, the suicide bombers, nobody suspected them. According to the press reports the police in Britain were first alerted because the mother of one of them hadn't heard from him. Now if that can happen in Britain, is Mr Rudd and Mr Beazley and others seriously suggesting that I'm wrong to say it might, albeit less likely, happen in Australia? I think they're a bit unrealistic and I think they're being a bit complacent.
JOURNALIST:
Mr Howard, should Bill Farmer consider himself lucky today given the imminent?
PRIME MINISTER:
Look I think we could have a couple of, you know, I'm going to be at the at the press conference this afternoon with Senator Vanstone, so perhaps we could be courteous to our visitors from Chile and have a couple of questions from the Chilean media. You've had a couple from Australian media.
JOURNALIST (through interpreter):
Prime Minister, is there any possibility that both Australian and Chilean Governments can help each other in the exportation of natural gas?
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes we are very keen. The answer is a big yes. We are very very keen to help. We have lots of natural gas, its good quality, it's always delivered on time.
PRESIDENT LAGOS:
And very cheap you told me.
PRIME MINISTER:
It's always delivered on time and, yes, well at a reasonable price. But very seriously, we have talked about it and I hope that as Chile expands her need for energy and the President said to me that the energy requirements of Chile, because of its strong performing economy is growing all the time. And we're on the lookout for new markets and given the very strong association that's already there we'd be very happy to see that occur.
Thank you.
[ends]