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JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, what kind of message do you think it sends to China that we host their Foreign Minister for talks on Wednesday and then sign defence agreements with the UK related to the Pacific on Thursday?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, we cooperate with China where we can, but we engage in our national interest. It will be of no surprise, the AUKUS arrangements, I think they’d probably heard of it beforehand, we’re progressing. That’s important for us. That’s about our national interest and ensuring that our defence is as strong as it can be. But we want a peaceful, secure and prosperous Indo Pacific. That includes building up both our capacity but also our relationships. We’re building up our capacity in terms of our economic strength, our national resilience across a range of areas, including in national security. At the same time we’re building our relationships, whether that be our traditional allies, including the United States and the United Kingdom, or whether it be the important relationships that we have in our region. Whether that be the relationship with China, in hosting the Foreign Minister here this week, we had a very constructive dialogue. That’s a good thing. I look forward to hosting Premier Li, my counterpart, in our annual leaders’ talks in a few months time, later this year. So, we’ll make an announcement about that date at an appropriate time. But as well, just two weeks ago I hosted the ASEAN leaders in Melbourne. That was a great success, bringing the leaders of the Philippines, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Singapore, Indonesia and other nations to our country and hosting them in what was a very successful visit. So, we are engaging in our region. We see that is where Australia’s future lies in terms of our economic relationships. And I’m very pleased that over a period of time we’ve seen the economic relationships with China improve. We had impediments to our trade that were costing more than $20 billion a year. Wine alone, wine exports, and we’re not far and there’s some good wineries around this region, around this bloke’s electorate. You don’t get too many wineries around Grayndler, but you do get them around the electorate of Calare, and that’s a fantastic thing. Those exports are worth $1.1 billion a year when those impediments were put in place. We’ve had an interim report and I look forward to the opening up of that trade pretty soon. It’s due by the end of March, so it’s due by the end of next week.
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Source: Office of the Australian Prime Minister
Speaker: The Honorable Anthony Albanese MP
Format: Press Conference
China Policy Research 