Prime Minister
PRIME MINISTER: Thank you Prime Minister Phuc, and thank you to you and to the people of Viet Nam for the incredibly overwhelming and generous and friendly welcome that you’ve given to me as Australia’s Prime Minister and to my wife Jenny and to my entire delegation. This is indeed a warm reception and we thank you very, very much.
Prime Minister Phuc has outlined comprehensively the nature of our discussions today and I concur with his summary and I won't repeat the list of the wide range of issues we discussed today. Instead, I'd like to talk about the uplift that we've had again in our relationship and in coming here today. Prime Minister Phuc and I are friends. Australia and Viet Nam are friends and today, to use an Australian parlance, we've gone from friends to mates. Mates stay together, mates try and understand each other, mates work through difficult issues, through problems, they create opportunities together, and they always stick together as they pursue those opportunities together. And that’s how I see the relationship [inaudible]. It’s an extraordinary journey we’ve been on to get to this point in our relationship. A journey that has seen us come from different languages, different cultures, different peoples. But come together to enjoy a shared strategic outlook about the future. An outlook which embraces the ASEAN Indo-Pacific view. An outlook that sees a combination of independent sovereign states simply seeking to lift the standards of living of its peoples, to live peacefully with each other, and to seek the best for each other.
Prime Minister Phuc and I discussed what was necessary to achieve that vision today and central to that is that we all uphold the principles of international law as it applies in the region in which we all live. Principles that relate to freedom of navigation, freedom of overflight. Ensuring that nations can pursue the development opportunities that exist within their EZ’s and within their sea boundaries and they can go about that business in a way that is uninhibited and is supported and upheld by the regional architecture and the rule of law that supports that free conduct of activity.
About working together to counter the threats of illegal trafficking activity. Of illegal fishing that robs the future of peoples in the region for whom their fishing resources are their very livelihood. Of ensuring that we work together to ensure peace and stability and security in the region through our cooperation on peacekeeping initiatives or other things more broadly. About removing the blockages to trade, the things that impede us doing business with one another - whether that be through the CPTPP or moving to conclude the RCEP by the end of this year. And protect our environment in which we live, and I want to thank Prime Minister Phuc in particular for his support in our conversations about the work that we all must do to reduce the plastics pollution in our oceans to ensure the health and well-being of our oceans. That because as nations such as Australia and Viet Nam that have long coastlines, whose communities depend absolutely on the health of our seas and our maritime environments, that we need to take absolute care of these. And I thank him for his encouragement around Australia's global advocacy when it comes to the health of our oceans and the reduction, if not elimination, of plastics pollution in those oceans.
So I thank you for having us here again today, Mr Prime Minister, and I am glad that we came as friends and we leave as mates.