Asialink Leaders Summit Speech

Thank you very much. I want to start, of course, by acknowledging the Ngambri and Ngunnawal people as the traditional custodians of the Canberra region. I understand Paul House did a welcome to country yesterday. I always learn something from Paul, he’s a very significant figure in Canberra’s social and political life.

I thank the National Press Club for hosting this today. I understand that this is a sort of mobile conference that you’re sort of popping up all over Canberra. Parliament House yesterday, National Press Club today, goodness knows where tomorrow. But I did just want to say to this audience, your work is really important, and I'm delighted that you're all participating in this program. Essentially, as I come to talking about the government's work on the Southeast Asia economic strategy in particular, in the end, this is all about you and it’s all about us conceiving of our role, whether it's in business or in politics or in the non-government sector, or working for our various governments, conceiving of our national interest and the national interest of countries around the region, and working hard to deliver a better region.

For me, Australia's economic trade and investment relationships are the spine that knits us into the global economy. And as Lee said at the outset, for all of my professional life, I've been an advocate for Australian manufacturing. In fact, I've been a real nuisance for various governments at a national and state level around Australia for quite some years. And it's very odd to suddenly be part of one, I can tell you, and that does mean that I am immensely proud of the $23 million Future Made in Australia program, the $15 million National Reconstruction Fund. And the government has put very much at the heart of our economic agenda, the revival of Australian manufacturing as a centrepiece, both in terms of national resilience and the net zero opportunity. And alongside a vibrant and evolving Australian national manufacturing sector, the international trade investment that flows in and out of the country, as well as their advocacy and diplomacy that works to shape the rules of the global trade system in which we operate, centred on the World Trade Organization, and, of course, the network of preferential trade agreements that Australia has with our bilateral and plural lateral partners in the region and around the world.

Relative to the world's biggest economies, Australia has small domestic markets for our own goods and services. And our economy is globally significant because of the enormous amounts of key goods that we export to the world, to the world's markets, we’re a significant player in global investment terms, both as an investment destination for investors who recognize the strengths in our governance, regulatory and financial environment, and also as a source for investment in global and regional markets, although, as the Southeast Asia economic strategy may explain, we are underdone in terms of Australian financial institutions exposure to investment in regional markets. 

Of course, the key moment that we are living through today is imperative in Australia, in our region, and across the globe, for the net zero transformation of the global economy. The biggest industrial and economic transformation since the Industrial Revolution, the decarbonisation of processes here, around the region and around the world, the endless technological revolution that's reshaping production processes and economies and societies for us and our regional partners.

These are profound transitions, indeed. Taking place, as you no doubt, we spent some time talking about in this program, at a time of some geopolitical stress. Australia's challenge, at least one of the many challenges in what I describe as a challenge-rich environment for the Australian Government at the moment, is to remain relevant and influential in these world developments and continue to change and shape the regional architecture, particularly in Australia's interest.

We do that in a range of ways. We have to manage the energy transition effectively within Australia, we are a trading nation, so on one hand; building Australia's industrial capability and managing our own transition. But maintaining a commitment, on the other hand; to open markets and a free trade approach to international trade and investment. In order to provide for real economic stability that is a long term sustainable national economy, we have to lean into the energy and digital transitions taking place, while also working towards economic resilience in terms of developing our own capabilities here in Australia and working with regional partners on those questions into the 2030s and beyond.

As the Prime Minister has said, there is a new spirit of competition abroad. Future Made in Australia will position Australia competitively to seize those opportunities. It will reshape the Australian economy in years ahead, in the right direction, for the right reasons. The comprehensive package and accompanying legislation will stimulate both public and private investment in new industrial capabilities essential for navigating future challenges and opportunities.

What does this mean in practical terms? It means the establishment of new factories and advanced manufacturing facilities, clean mining and industrial regions. Attracting billions of dollars of investment from here and overseas. Creating quality engineering and trade jobs across the country, from Central Queensland and the Hunter Valley, from Western Australia to the industrial regions in Tasmania. Put simply, we will make more things here and there will be good, secure jobs in regional economies that have, over the course of the last three or four decades, seen investment disappear and good jobs disappear in those industrial heartlands. The emergence of those new jobs and opportunities will open doors for small and medium enterprises, offering them opportunities to integrate international and global supply chains.

Part of the rationale for this program is the deterioration of global and regional geopolitical environment over the past decade, and that requires substantial national effort and strategy. But of course, security is a much broader concept than just defence. As crucial as that is, it requires all the tools of statecraft to be engaged. Australia will advocate strongly to protect and keep global trade rules that work and that have served us so well while navigating new and emerging challenges to the rules-based order.

We will continue to invest deeply in a World Trade Organization to maximize predictability for our companies and our investors and ensure that we can enforce the rules, because there's a starting point for Australia, and indeed for many others in our region, the rules-based order has been central to our recent history of growth and will be central to our future economic security.

The government in this area, led by Trade Minister Don Farrell, has shifted our trade policy towards diversification in our markets and diversification in our products, enhancing our economic engagement in the Indo-Pacific more broadly, the Southeast Asia in particular.

Trade diversification is essential for national resilience in the face of a changing world where threats to impede trade have become grist to the mill of the regional and global geo economic competition. Shaping a region with a dense mesh of interconnected economic trade and investment relationships is one of the driving imperatives behind the Southeast Asia economic strategy. And I want to say a couple of things to you about that strategy.  I'm sure there's some excellent work done by Asialink that's produced material for Australian investors by market and jurisdiction that supports some of this work.

The Government's invested in deal teams in key markets and across the region to develop a pipeline of investments for Australian industry and in particular, for our financial sector, not least our $3 trillion dollar superannuation sector. There's a Southeast Asia Business Exchange program there for you and your colleagues to participate in. There is an extension of our capability in terms of the government special investment vehicles and the construction of additional financing facility for Southeast Asia. That work is continuing at pace and has been developed or implemented very carefully over the course of the last six to nine months since the announcement of the strategy.

I do want to say that there is the traditional approach to Australian investment and Australian trade has, of course, focused on deepening the commercial investment relationships that already exist; Austrade, our network of embassies, the network of Australian chambers that reflect the current state of play in terms of business engagement in each of these markets, supplemented by trade liberalization and preferential trade agreement strategy, advocacy in these markets to lower the risk profile for Australian businesses, a focus on deregulation in those markets. That's been our traditional, traditional approach, and we do have to deepen that work. There is enormous benefit for Australian workers and Australian advisors, trade exposed businesses, pay workers a significant amount. They are more productive, they have more opportunity than just face the domestic market.

But I just gently make the point that the business relationship that Australian firms have, the existing business relationship in each of these countries, doesn't necessarily mean that it's the same as the business arrangement of tomorrow. So that the business and investment relationship and the shape of that - put aside the size - the shape of it today, is not necessarily the business and investment relationship of tomorrow. And it's not necessarily the same as the business and trade relationship that is in the national interest, the bilateral interests of both Australia and the host country. And so we are going to considerable effort to deepen that work.

But the second point I want to make about the Southeast Asia economic strategy is we are going much further than that. Our government’s now in this context, and the aspiration of each of these countries really matters to the Australian Government. And that's why Nicholas Moore, in his report, went to considerable effort to map the bilateral priorities for Australia and each of these host countries in that work. And there is substantial commonality across the region in terms of the kinds of issues that each of the ASEAN countries nominated, as  their priority area for growth and investment, energy and the net zero transition, food security, health, higher education and vocational education. There's a list, but it's not a very long list. These are core parts of the aspiration that Australia has for our people and each of these economies has for theirs, and that careful mapping is the start of sending a very clear signal from the Australian Government to the investment community about where we were able to lean in and crowd-in private sector investment in these areas. And a shift from just that commercial focus of the business opportunities that organically arise, to meeting these needs in the fastest growing economy of the world in human history, is an important parallel activity to all the other arms of statecraft that go to Australia's national interest.

I've outlined some of our thinking in relation to the Future Made in Australia agenda, but you can see, can't you, when I go through that list of areas of priority and emphasis for each of these governments, that they look very much like the areas of priority and emphasis the National Reconstruction Fund and Future Made in Australia. This is a new kind of industry policy for Australia, supplemented by a new approach to industry policy from our regional and global partners. The old industry policy, the old world of tariffs and quotas and protectionism, was essentially a beggar-thy-neighbour approach, competition for scant investment resources to try and provide economic growth as the world industrialized.

Of course, competition is a key part of the Government's focus here, but I just say to you that collaboration is just as important an element of industrial policy as a competitive interest. You've seen the focus on governments, our friends in the United States initiating, for example, the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework Agreement that focuses on supply chain security. In these arrangements, a focus on supply chain collaboration, on meeting some of these technological, net-zero and other transition arguments, that things cannot be met by Australia alone. The global targets in terms of the Paris commitments and other agreements that we reach to deal with global climate change, well, those targets can't be met without collaboration, particularly in Southeast Asia, our region of the world.

So, of its own logic, the climate transition demands collaboration, but also our economic and our security environment demand a more collaborative approach. I said before that I was particularly struck, at the BOW forum 18 months or so ago, the then Prime Minister of Singapore said, very clearly, that the region's interest was not in hub and spoke supply chain arrangements with major economies in the region. The region's interest, the interest of each of the ASEAN countries, was best served by a dense mesh of interconnected investment relationships.

That's how the ASEAN countries construct their own national interests. That's how Australia sees its interest, in a more resilient, a more interconnected and a growing region. If you're a book enthusiast, as I know some of you are, it's worth having a look at my friend Liew Chin Tong, who is the Senior Minister in the Malaysian government.  This week he launched his book called Second Takeoff, which illustrates some of these things from Malaysia's perspective and go to the same sets of interests and the same opportunities that there are for Malaysia in their context.

So I just spent a little bit of time on this question, because I do think a focus on collaboration is important. I do think making sure that we understand that the Australian interest here is, in many respects, the same as our ASEAN partners. That a dense measure of interconnected relations is absolutely in the Australian interest.

As the region really goes through two big, overlapping, simultaneous transitions. One; the transition from high emissions economies to low emissions economies. But secondly, and just as importantly, the transition from low- and middle-income economies to middle- and high-income economies, these transitions demand collective effort, collaborative work, Australian leadership, Australian investment, Australian technology, and big opportunities for Australian firms, particularly coming back to, as Lee said, my previous role as a leader of a manufacturing union, I can see the size of the prize for Australian workers here. I can see the shape of the national interest. I can see that we have an opportunity where, if we continue to get the policy settings right, we will deliver a much bigger, fairer, safer Australia and a much more prosperous, low emissions, fairer and more equal region that is in all of our interests.

So, thank you for so passionately sitting through my monologue. I’d be delighted to take any questions.

ENDS.