Julie Bishop - Member for Curtin

Remarks to the Australia New Zealand Leadership Forum - Remarks by Leaders of the Opposition

E&OE… 

Let me begin my remarks this morning with a confession, an admission and an observation.

The confession? I am an apple grower’s daughter. Six generations of apple growers!

The admission? I’m a mad keen Aussie Rules fan. In fact, I am on the board of the West Coast Eagles and I believe that the next phase in CER and trans-Tasman relations will be when New Zealand fills the 18th team in the AFL.

As far as an observation goes? I am from Perth, the city of that economic powerhouse state of Western Australia, and yes it has been mistaken for another country. We do things differently in the West.

For a start, when we talk about our region we look north and west. The Indian Ocean is our boundary and we see ourselves as part of the Indian Ocean rim of nations. And for us in the West it is not just about a geographic location, it is actually a state of mind.

While I am on the point of differentiation, perhaps I could make a comment about Bill English’s take on Australia-New Zealand relations as fierce competitors, and I will use a personal experience for the analogy.

In another life I was the Managing Partner of a major national law firm in Australia in Perth, and our firm sought admission to a network of legal practices across the Asia-Pacific.

Having gained membership we then found it difficult to access new legal markets to gain entry into the jurisdictions of the member firms in the Asia Pacific.

We soon learned that if we teamed up with our New Zealand firm, with whom we had so much in common, and joined forces, together we were able to make great inroads into the new legal markets and forge new business.

But I tell you once we had established a foothold, then we competed like hell and it was a win-win. It worked.

So you unite across the Tasman, you join forces and face the world, you establish the new markets and then, and only then, do you compete in the fierce way which only Australia and New Zealand can do.

I think it is worth observing that Australia and New Zealand are not a natural part of any particular constituency of nations, and let me use the United Nations informal voting bloc as just an example of this.

There’s Africa, Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Australia and New Zealand are in Western Europe and Others. We’re the “Others”.

What this means is that we cannot assume a bloc of support in much of what we do and it is very hard for us to form alliances and partnerships or gain entry to organisations, particularly regional fora, but it is much easier when we collaborate and do it together. Our sum is greater than our parts.

On the issue of trade we have a great common purpose and of course a successful Doha Round would bring great benefits. But in the absence of a successful Doha Round then we must vigorously pursue comprehensive and high quality bilateral and regional free trade agreements.

And this is where I suffer from a little New Zealand Envy.

I believe that your free trade agreement with China was a great step and it is not lost on us that we both commenced negotiations separately with China for a free trade agreement in 2005. Three years later you concluded yours, six years later our negotiations are “continuing”.

Likewise, I think it was an inspired decision to commence negotiations for a free trade agreement with Russia. It is timely, given Russia’s entry into the East Asia Summit and also its chairmanship of APEC in 2012. Maybe a tri-lateral free trade agreement would be very appealing!

I think on the question of aid there is much that we can do together, and Richard Marles spoke yesterday about some of the challenges we are facing in the Pacific.

We must get a lot better at the effective and efficient delivery of aid, particularly focussed on our region. Corruption is the scourge of a number of recipient countries and together we must tackle it.

I would like to see Australia and New Zealand do more together in Papua New Guinea, for example. Not in the traditional aid overseas development model. We can do better than that. Maybe it is an extension of CER, maybe it is on a join venture basis, but given the potential opportunities facing PNG with LNG and other resource development I think there is a huge opportunity for us to be a positive force for good in our region.

I know that there has been a lot of concern expressed about China and its ‘dollar diplomacy’. Maybe this is an area where Australia and New Zealand could actually team up with China and do some joint venture projects in aid development, three-way projects. Collaborating rather than competing for the airspace.

Speaking of China, and I will finish on this, I think one of the greatest challenges facing our region is energy supply, the cost of energy, energy security.

According to the International Energy Agency the global demand for energy will increase by 40 percent over the next 20 years, 90 percent of that demand will come from our part of the world, mainly China but also India.

The statistics and forecasts around China’s need and demand for energy are not just (as Tim Groser put it, BFN - Big Friendly Numbers), they are FBFN! And Australia is well positioned to take advantage of that opportunity. We are suppliers of coal and gas and uranium and, again from a Western Australian perspective, we see this as huge opportunity for Australia going forward.

Given the ongoing debate about global greenhouse gas emissions, there is a huge challenge for China because its carbon dioxide emissions in total numbers over the coming decades will skyrocket.

Where I see an opportunity for Australia and New Zealand, and where I believe we can make the greatest contribution to this global debate, is in the area of technology and let me use the word ‘innovation’. That is where I believe Australia and New Zealand, together collaborating in the area of technology and innovation, will be able to come up with the solutions for the quest for baseload low emission energy that our region will so desperately need.

May I thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak - this is my first Australia-New Zealand Leadership Forum and I hope it is not my last for I have enjoyed it very much.