 Welcome to the latest in the series of videos with our ambassadors around the world. Today we're speaking to Mr Paul Tai, who's Australia's Consul General to Hong Kong and Macau. Welcome Paul. Thanks John, good to see you again and be with you today. Paul, to start with, Hong Kong has a relatively small population, but it features quite large in Australia's international relations. Why is that? I think it's because we've got very long established and really close links. There's a lot of contact at people-to-people level between Hong Kong and Australia has been for many years in particular since the mid-1990s. So there's a very strong Hong Kong community in Australia, a very strong Australian community in Hong Kong. Trade relationship, as you mentioned, is significant. It's around about eight billion dollars in bilateral trade each year and for a market of only seven million people, that's pretty substantial. But what's even more important between Australia and Hong Kong is the investment relationship, which in two-way terms is up around about 70 billion dollars. It's quite large. Paul, can you tell us more about the large Australian presence in Hong Kong? Yeah, reflecting the size of the investment relationship, there is a very strong Australian presence up there. A lot of people in professional services, all of the big four Australian banks are represented in Hong Kong. A lot of people in professions like architecture, engineering, accountancy, legal firms, very, very strong presence. You find Australians in all walks of life in Hong Kong, quite interesting actually. My favourite example is the horse racing industry. And if anybody's been to Hong Kong, you'll know how iconic the Happy Valley racetrack is. When you go out there, you'll find that there are Australian horses, Australian jockeys, Australian trainers, Australian stewards, a lot of Australian technology. So it's a really nice sort of symbiotic relationship. And it reflects, I think, the fact too that Australia has a reputation in Hong Kong of providing very high quality products, high-end food and wine, beverages, all those sorts of things. It's a relationship that I think reflects very well on Australia and its capacity for meeting the demands of Asian countries. Paul, is it correct that the Consul General in Hong Kong is Australia's second largest overseas polling station for federal elections? Yeah, that's right. It's a bit hard to get an exact figure on the size of the Australian community, but the one thing we do know, or two things we do know, one is that we're the second largest passport issuing office anywhere in the world. The only place that issues more passports than we do at the Consulate in Hong Kong is the High Commission in London. Similarly, when there's a federal election, of course, Australians overseas can vote through our Consulates, our embassies, our High Commissions. And we know that the number of votes received through the Australian Consulate in Hong Kong is the second largest of any individual polling booth anywhere in the Australian electoral system, including in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, anywhere else. The only place that gets more votes than Hong Kong is the High Commission in London. So we know there's a very big community there, again, reflecting the depth and the strength of our trade and investment relationship with Hong Kong. And what about Hong Kong's involvement in Australia? Again, very significant. I mentioned before the substantial investment relationship. Hong Kong's about the fifth, sixth, seventh, depending on when you're measuring it, a source of foreign investment coming into Australia, investments throughout a number of sectors, but particularly strong in areas like utilities, infrastructure, again, some iconic things like the railway system part of it in Melbourne, electricity distribution in South Australia and Victoria, some of the port facilities in Sydney. So, again, a very positive relationship. And I think it's growing. One of the great things about Hong Kong, of course, is it has a very sophisticated and very credible international financial market. Australia uses that as a source of capital for investment into Australia, but it's also increasingly used by Chinese companies seeking access into the international markets. We estimate there's something like about 3,000 Chinese corporates represented in Hong Kong now, including listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. They do that because they get a great deal of comfort out of operating through the credible and sophisticated Hong Kong markets, which of course are backed up by having the rule of law, and in Hong Kong's case, it's common law, which is something which is familiar to most Australian investors and indeed other Western investors. So it really cements Hong Kong's role as an important international financial centre. And again, that's important for Australia's relationship with not only Hong Kong, but also with the other North Asian economies and China in particular. Paul, we've spoken about the strong personal and business connections between Australia and Hong Kong. What about ties at official level? At the official level, there's very strong relationship again. There are lots of bilateral visits between ministers in the Hong Kong administration and either ministers or senior officials in Australia. For example, the Deputy Prime Minister and Treasurer of Australia has been to Hong Kong twice in the last six months or so. He was there most recently in January for the Asian Financial Forum, which Hong Kong hosts every year. One of the important outcomes of his visit was the launching of a bilateral dialogue between Hong Kong and Australia on trade denominated in the Chinese currency, the renminbi. And in fact, just recently, we've had the visit of the Prime Minister to China, at which it was announced that there would now be direct convertibility, direct trade between the Australian dollar and the Chinese renminbi. So the relationship we've got with Hong Kong and in particular its financial centres, which has been developed by those strong government-to-government visits, including by the Deputy Prime Minister, will take that relationship further. And again, Australian companies are already heavily involved in renminbi denominated trade. Now, Paul, a consulate general in Hong Kong, I understand, is also accredited to Macau. What can you tell us about Australia's interest in Macau and our relations with Macau? Macau is, of course, a smaller economy than Hong Kong, but very significant for Australia, particularly in the gaming sector, where there's some substantial Australian investments through the Crown Group. But also Australia's got a good presence up there, again, in high-end quality sorts of products and services. For example, providing technology to support poker machines that are used extensively in the Macau gaming industry, but also very importantly in areas like food and beverages. As I mentioned before, Australia's trade with Hong Kong and its mirrored in Macau is very heavily focused in things like premium seafood, premium beef, premium wines. So we've got a great reputation up there of providing quality, safe products, which I think stands us in good stead in both those markets. Paul, in relation to Hong Kong specifically, what three words would you use to encapsulate the relationship between Australia and Hong Kong? Look, I think the first word I choose would be symbiotic. It's a relationship which is naturally reinforcing of itself and occurs quite naturally in many ways. It's a long-standing relationship and it's a very warm and positive relationship. It has been for a long time and I see that continuing for quite a while into the future. Thanks very much, Paul. Thanks, John. And that was Paul Tai, Australia's Consul General to Hong Kong and Macau.