Thank you very much for that welcome, to Mr Hoang Trung Hai, the Minister for Industry, Mr Graham Kraehe the Chairman of BlueScope Steel, Mr Kirby Adams its Managing Director and Mr Andrew Heycott, the President of Blue Scope Steel Vietnam, ladies and gentlemen.
Both symbolically and also in substance, today's opening and the investment that it represents does send a message about the modern and future relationship between Australia and Vietnam. Our two countries are forever linked in the fastest growing area of the world economy. In the next five to ten years the centre of gravity of the world's middle class will finally and permanently shift from Europe and North America to Asia and Australia and Vietnam and the investment that BlueScope represents are part of that decisive and changed future.
The countries that will do best in that new environment are those that embrace open trading policies and create encouraging and consistent rules of business operation for all foreign investors. I congratulate Vietnam on her accession to the World Trade Organisation and also on the skilful way in which the Government and its country has hosted the recently concluded APEC meeting in Hanoi.
BlueScope Steel is a great Australian company that has been successful not only domestically but in many parts of the Asian Pacific region and this latest investment in Vietnam which is the largest single investment made by any Australian enterprise in this country is a tribute to its leadership under Graham Kraehe and Kirby Adams and all the other local leaders who've made a very significant commercial mark here in Vietnam.
And on occasions like this we should never lose sight of the reinforcing value of the people-to-people links between societies. There are almost 200,000 Australians of Vietnamese heritage and there are now something in the order of 5,700 Vietnamese students studying in Australia. Australia is a growing place of study for increasing numbers of Vietnamese young men and women.
I congratulate BlueScope Steel on its commitment, its enterprise and its investment. I thank all of the officials of the Vietnamese Government and I also congratulate the Australian mission here in Ho Chi Minh City, its Consul-General and the Australian Ambassador in Hanoi for the cooperative way in which they are their personnel have assisted all Australian investors in this country.
It's a happy occasion, I hope it is seen as sign of the friendship between our two peoples. I hope the company does well, I hope it makes lots of money, pays as it will its taxes, repatriates money back to Australia and employs lots of Vietnamese people and in that spirit I have great pleasure in declaring the BlueScope Steel investment here in Vietnam well and truly open for business.
Thank you.
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