Prime Minister
PRIME MINISTER ABE: Welcome to ScoMo on your first visit to Japan as Prime Minister. I'd like to offer my congratulations on your historic victory in the general election.
I'm looking forward to working with you, hand in hand with ScoMo. I strongly empathise with the speech on diplomacy that you delivered yesterday. We have a special strategic partnership with Australia. We must promote that forcefully so that we can cooperate for the realisation of a free and open Indo-Pacific.
Once again, I'd like to welcome the visit of Prime Minister Morrison to Japan.
PRIME MINISTER: [Inaudible] …relations as well. It’s a great thrill and pleasure to be here with you again, and on this occasion my first visit to Japan as Prime Minister, but not my first visit to Japan.
I want to thank you again for when you visited Australia and we were able to meet, and particularly to meet in Darwin. It was a very important opportunity for us all to reflect, and I can tell you that visit along with your wife, Mrs Abe, this had a profound impact on Australians and we remember it extremely fondly. Now, at the beginning of the Reiwa Era, with such significant events occurring, not just the G20 here today and over the next few days, but also with the Rugby World Cup upon Japan soon, as well as the Olympics next year, this will be a very exciting period of time in Japan.
Of course, as we move towards the end of this year and your own term as Prime Minister - reaching the longest ever for any Japanese Prime Minister - is a real testament to your both endurance and leadership and what you’ve been able to achieve in leading Japan, but not just Japan. I meant what I said in Sydney yesterday - your statesmanship in the region holds you in very high regard, well beyond the office. And I wish you well for the next few days and we're here to thank you for the support you gave in Australia some years ago at the G20 in Brisbane and we're here to return that support and assist in any way we can. And I particularly want to thank you Prime Minister for your support in relation to the combating terrorism on the internet. That initiative, and your support in allowing that agenda to come through into the meeting, and we look forward to what we might be able to achieve in that area, as well of course with the Osaka Track on the digital agenda.