 Good afternoon again ladies and gentlemen and welcome back to the third of our panel sessions This one will focus on policy and we have a group of five wonderful speakers They are going to be offering you their insights on Where Australia's been and perhaps where Australia will be going in the future our first speaker Each of our speakers will have around five minutes to offer some initial impressions is mr. William Fisher He is a very distinguished retired Australian diplomat He served in a large number of Australian missions abroad including as Ambassador to France ambassador to Thailand ambassador to Israel and also as high commissioner to Canada He perhaps doesn't remember but we in fact first met when I was a high school student in southern Thailand living in Surat Tani Province and The ambassador came to visit in the company of none other than Thailand's then communications minister Suthepta Subhan. I'm not sure Whether or not bill you recall the occasion, but for me it was I must say Pivotal simply because I had the chance to see up close and personal the activities of a serious Australian doing serious business in Southeast Asia and It made a very deep impression. So it's quite a pleasure to have this opportunity to introduce you this afternoon Bill of course is going to be speaking to the topic of diplomacy and institutions next up We have professor Brendan Taylor Brendan is the head of the strategic and defense studies Center Which is one of the components of our Coral Bell school of Asia Pacific Affairs? Brendan's strategic and defense studies Center celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, which is quite a monumental achievement it has been a powerhouse in the study of Australian regional and global security and defense issues now for three generations and Brendan has the great task of stewarding it into its next phase Brendan will of course be talking to us about his bread and butter, which is defense and security Next up is Dr. Frank Yotso who is the director of the Center for Climate Economics and Policy at the ANU's Crawford School of Public Policy Frank and I also go back quite a ways We were colleagues in previous positions at the ANU I must say every time I hear Frank on the radio I stop and I listen because if you want to hear Somebody in this particular political and economic context talking about climate change and making sense Then Frank's your man And so we're very pleased that he's been able to join us here this afternoon and give us some of his impressions Of course on the very big topic of environment and development our fourth speaker will be Mukund Narayan Muti Who is the chief executive officer of the Asia Link business which is a very large-scale cooperation between the Australian government and Australian businesses and the Asia Link operation which is based down in Melbourne You've been in this position. I understand now for about 18 months previously Mukund was the Director of the Asia business group at KPMG a position which he held for Five or six years and he also I think it's worth noting Has an MBA from the Sloan School at MIT in the United States He's going to be giving us his thoughts today on the big topic of trade and finance And then finally we have Dr. Cecilia Jacob one of our colleagues from the Coral Bell School She is a research fellow in our department of international relations Cecilia is going to be speaking today to a topic About which she knows a tremendous amount, which is the role of law Values and humanitarian concerns in policy debates Cecilia has spent a great deal of time looking at these issues from the ground up both in Southeast Asia and South Asia, and I'm sure we're going to learn a lot from her contributions. So With those introductions getting us up to speed I'd like to remind you that we do have a hashtag. So if you're on the tweet stream It is hashtag ANU Australia 360 check it out There was a fair bit of action in the previous sessions and I'd like to bring that forward Let's get some momentum all of your 130 140 character tweets of joy That's enough for me for the moment. I'm going to hand over the floor to William Fisher Who is going to speak from the lectern? And we will take five or six minutes from each of our speakers before we launch into our Q&A over to you Nicholas, thank you. Thank you very much and I have to say I don't remember that occasion but Today you actually have two ex-Ambassadors to Thailand and because Miles Cooper is here and he is Distinguished from me and that when he spoke to people in Thai they understood when I spoke to people in Thai They just look bewildered and So I'm glad that you probably only heard me in English Which is a good start now This is the difficult the difficult day a difficult time slot of the day isn't at the first speech after lunch So I'm just going to concentrate on being a provocative and so I hope that your hashtags will fly And as I only have five minutes, I'm not going to be able to cover the waterfront. You'll be relieved to hear And so I'm going to just deal with three major issues Which I think will determine how Australia fares in the years ahead and I'm not going to go into Other probably equally important perhaps more self-contained issues like climate change terrorism Preferential trade agreements all of which of course are of major importance, but I just don't have the time nor for that Matter am I going to go into the unknown unknowns of a Trump presidency? But I will note just in passing that Australia's membership of the G20, which is a relatively new thing for us It does give us a new standing in world affairs world economic affairs But not necessarily in world political affairs. So I just make those caveats Okay, I think we'd probably all agree that the the big underlying challenge that Australia is going to face in Both the immediate term and the long term is how we handle the emergence of China in East Asia and beyond East Asia it's increasing assertiveness and Especially of course its relationship with the US and Japan and all of that greatly complicated further By the whole North Korea problem, which every year gets more acute and never ever any easier to respond to I'd I'd be clear from the start Australia Australia cannot hope to play a definitive part in this big player Titan area Titans as I say maneuver and test their relative strengths and all that Australia can do is look after its own Interests and try its best not to get trampled under foot in the process So we have an issue here of trying to balance our various Relationships as we go forward Now that is not to say not to say that we have to be equidistant not putting in a plug for equidistance between the various players in the region we have At the end at the beginning an alliance relationship with the United States It is vital to us and it has strong political support at home No government in this country can back away from it, but I suggest that that does not mean Either that we have to slay slavishly follow the US in all its actions and its policies Balance it must be said is not Australia's forte We have always been an aligned country and sometimes perhaps rather mindlessly so Throughout our history. We've sought to find and follow faithfully our great and powerful friend We're often not really much interested in making independent judgments the decision to participate in the Iraq invasion Is perhaps a classic example? I use a football Analogy to describe our foreign policy instincts so often we choose our team and having chosen it We pretty well faithfully follow the team leader Even to the point of self-sacrifice for the team's greater good Conservative governments I think have tended to fall more enthusiastically into that pattern But they're not exclusive Remember Julie Gillard's speech to Congress, which I think many of us thought was a bit over the top We all knew in the bureaucracy going back some years that in John Howard's office The first question he ever posed when confronted with a foreign policy policy issue was What's Washington's view on this And that's just a fact My way of illustration It's always been the case that instructions sent to our UN delegations Almost invariably carry the overriding principle to vote in the company of our friends friends Usually means almost always means the US UK, Canada New Zealand Reporting back from Delegations in New York usually carries the same Report where we and our friends have voted doesn't matter. We've lost or one. It's the company which was important I just contrast this in passing with the approach taken say by France where I was posted The French have no trouble at all in being Isolated I recall one UN vote when I was there where France was the only country to vote against UN resolution and the K door say took that with great pride a matter of national National assertiveness had it happened here. Canberra would have gone into meltdown It would be completely Unthinkable for us to do to put ourselves out in a position of uniqueness like that Sometimes we've justified our observance of alliance solidarity as as just giving priority to alliance requirements, but often That's just a case of automatically following our great and powerful leader Howard and Abbott for example were happy enough to be in a voting minority of just three on Palestinian issues as long as one of those three was the United States This new government I have to say it seems to be doing better Ms. Bishop's engagement with Iran, which was contrary to US urgings is Encouraging in this regard But I guess we must not forget that that decision to engage Iran Was taken really not for foreign policy reasons, but for domestic overriding domestic issues in this case Fighting a solution to the people smuggling problem So looking at how we handle East Asia it quickly becomes or the emerging East Asia It quickly becomes clear that our interests will not always be identical with those of the United States Let alone with Japan's We have an alliance relationship with the US as I've said a very high priority But it cannot be allowed to trump all other aspects of our relationship with emerging China Australian policymakers will find this hard Instinctive echoing of Washington as I said it comes all too naturally Added to which is a rather regrettable tendency of prime ministers to gush When they are visiting the US leading them to make decisions and even commitments, which longer reflection would counsel against Tony Abbott's approach to his meeting with Obama mentioned this morning Not what you can do for us, but what we can do for you is a classic in the genre This will be for us an increasing danger in as East Asia rivalries spill over into more and more areas in the coming years We will need to be nimble to assess Where we can best place ourselves as the increasingly frequent challenges of East Asia present themselves It's certain that this rivalry between The three great powers of North Asia is not going to go away and For us clumsiness between the three powers directly involved could prove to be most Disadvantages to our interests There will be no template for us to follow and Prime ministers will need to keep their brains working in their traps shut from time to time Especially when overseas, please please no more of Tony Abbott's best friend in Asia type of remarks from Tokyo and Aide speaking of Tokyo I think we do need to be equally careful of pressures around now to adopt an over enthusiastic embrace of Japan as a security partner I say as a security partner Especially as concerns endorsing any Japanese security forces build up because China will react Allergically to such at any future China Japan military race is frankly out of our league So I said the current government seems to be doing quite well handling the various relationships with the three major powers It's acting often usually in a constructive but thoughtful way It has not sent Australian ships into China claimed areas in the South Sea in the South China Sea and still maintains a Principal position in support of maritime law We did in another manifestation of I think sensible decision-making we did join the AII be Against us urging although a cynic might say we only did so after the UK did it first Now let's turn to another area of unique importance to Australia's future The first is our immediate strategic neighborhood in the South Pacific Let's confess we have often handled the South Pacific appallingly With I think incompetent diplomacy and often woeful political leadership This has contributed to the decline of Australia's standing in the region and Again happily the current government seems to be doing a whole lot better than almost all of its predecessors in this regard a Low point was our handling of the Fiji coup This is the third the Bani Marama coup, but all of the Fiji coups we handled badly Dug ourselves a hole and had finally to dig ourselves out of it And off always for the same reason we applied a bullying approach to a smaller partner Insisting that Fiji come to its knees and implement reforms of our desiring something demands which we would never have made for example in regards to say Thailand which has gone through many of the same issues let alone Making demands like that of Saudi Arabia But we did so with Fiji and I think it was out of our hubris and a total lack of realism The result has been a hugely damaging has been hugely damaging for Australia since Fiji predictably enough reacted with fury and Has made it its business ever since to do whatever it can to harm Australia's interests in the Pacific Our prime vehicle in the whole region the Pacific Forum is now in danger of being bypassed Thankfully, Mrs. Bishop quickly stepped in when she became Minister to dig us out of our latest hole But much of the damage was already done and it is an object lesson of how Australia's behavior in this region is often careless at best and arrogant At worst China certainly noted our self-inflicted wound here and has moved quickly to expand itself into some of the gap created There was good news however from for Australia in the South Pacific the Ramsey development in the Solomon Islands and Ramsey Deployment sorry in the Solomon Islands was enormously well done in concept in development And in implementation John Howard deserves great credit for it Remember though that the whole enterprise was done by the PM over the head of the then foreign minister and his oddly Uninvolved department It took Hugh White from the ANU To get the whole thing going and he may need some time to do so again Successive governments lack of empathy and patience with PNG Could prove a major strategic setback for Australia that we don't do better PNG in the coming year or so will present us with serious policy challenges its own elections and the Boganville referendum for a start and For years and years our dismissiveness of Pacific Island nations worry over climate change our poor our poor handling of these Existential concerns on their part has crueled our standing across the region Finally, I'm just going to turn quickly to Australia's major bilateral relationship with Indonesia And I think by and large we have done this well given the difficulties We've invested an enormous effort in Indonesia We recognize the dangers and difficulties and we have been with certain exceptions Usually the ones outside government's control We have been largely successful in keeping bilateral relations if not smooth then at least on track But of course Indonesia could turn up a surprise at any moment even an extreme one We all recall the extreme extreme Change which so Hato's sudden arrival back in the 1960s posed a diplomatic effort in Indonesia has been We can all be proud of a very high standard and for many years We have managed even managed a largely productive relationship with the Indonesian security agents Agencies since the Bali bombing who would have thought we could have achieved that the AFP Has been particularly successful So far so good But this is always going to be a difficult one for us and it's going to fling up thorny problems of all sorts Witness for example the recent spying Accusations consular problems animal welfare issues and legal mini crises It will take all our skill to navigate through as the years progress Is Brendan Taylor Thanks very much Nick for that Kind introduction and thanks also Michael for the opportunity to say a few words I think Australia 360 has been just one amongst a whole range of initiatives that you've introduced since since taking over as director of the Balsakon fact creating the the Balsakon We've all been you know very much the beneficiaries of your driving your creativity and the initiative on there So thanks for the opportunity to be a part of this event today over the course of the past Year or so we've seen three major policy decisions in the defense and securities fair Where Canberra has simultaneously managed to put each of the major powers in Australia's region offside As some have discussed earlier today the decision in late 2015 to lease support of Darwin to a Chinese company for a period of 99 years Genuinely appears to have blindsided the Obama administration The Washington insider Andrew Kapenovich described the decision as a major Unforced error in what has become a long-term competition with China for position or advantage with major implications for regional stability President Obama reportedly chided his Australian counterpart Malcolm Turnbull noting that Washington should have given a heads up Should be given a heads up about these sorts of things While Washington was also likely disappointed with Australia's April 2016 decision to acquire its future submarines from France rather than Japan Any such disappointment would have paled in comparison to that felt in Tokyo As my colleague Paul Debrote at the time it is a fantasy to think that Tokyo is not deeply hurt and indeed insulted Beijing must be rubbing its hands with glee that we are not buying submarines from its adversary Japan And yet China's turn to experience Canberra's cold shoulder came only a matter of months later when in August 2016 the Turnbull government opted to block the sale of electricity distributor Osgrid to a Chinese state-owned company on national security grounds Cometary carried in the Chinese state-owned newspaper shinwa following the decision characterized it as absurd and almost comical and one with the potential to transform into a toxic mindset of China phobia How and why particularly within such a short period of time has Canberra ended up in an enviable position of so badly upsetting our region's three major players One possibility of course is that Australia's defense and security policies are a complete muddle ineffective at best and counterproductive at worst An alternative possibility and one that that William alluded to in his opening remarks is that our policy approach is a good dear more Sophisticated than this first interpretation suggests Reflecting what Headley bull famously characterized during the 1970s as Australia's interest in an equilibrium amongst all of the major powers Particularly during periods when Canberra is leaving losing confidence in the American security guarantee as it's arguably the case again today A third interpretation and the one I find most compelling is that these in cut these outcomes are instead a product of the fact that Australia's traditionally pragmatic approach to security and defense policy is becoming increasingly Impractical in an era where major competition major power competition is rapidly intensifying in our region Pragmatism as Michael Wesley observes in his work has long been a defining feature of Australian foreign and defense policy Decisions in these areas tend to be approached on a case-by-case basis They are generally made squarely on their merits and following a careful cost-benefit analysis of the issues at hand All indications are for instance that the future submarine decision was made precisely along such lines As the well-placed commentator Petty Jennings has it has observed The truth about the submarine program is that a careful evaluation process Conducted by experienced submariners led to a sensible outcome based on delivering what the Navy actually needs How boring is that end of quote? The problem for Canberra However, is that the major powers in our region are becoming less inclined to see defense and security choices that we make in complete isolation Instead as competition between them intensifies they each increasingly conceiving of our region as a strategic system and They are in the process during more and more linkages between what their potential adversaries and their allies for that matter are Doing in relation to one issue or part of this region and extrapolating from this emotives and intentions across the system as a whole Hence when Australia leases a port to a Chinese company with links to the People's Liberation Army That potentially leads Washington to question Canberra's commitment to defending the US lead Asian order Well, there are obviously things that white papers can and can't say the 2016 defense white paper failed to fully come to grips with this changing dynamic So too, I would argue that it's 2009 and 2013 predecessors The 2009 iteration recognized that strategic competition was intensifying in Asia But did not pick up on the fact that the major powers in Australia's region were increasingly viewing this part of the world in systemic terms and Fairness because that process hadn't really begun in earnest at the time The 2013 defense white paper tried to introduce the concept of an emerging Indo-Pacific strategic system But in my view it conceived of that system far too broadly in geographic terms and also seriously Underestimated the extent to which major power strategic interactions were intensifying within it In the 2016 version was equally guilty on both counts Coming up again with relatively comforting conclusions regarding the intensification of major power rivalry and emphasising the even more unhelpful construct of a rules-based global order which obscures rather than illuminates the nature and geographical focus of that rivalry The governments recently announced foreign affairs white paper process offers an opportunity to avoid and potentially address some of these shortcomings to be sure Shaking the deeply ingrained pragmatic tradition of Australian foreign and defense policy will not be without its challenges That said the Foreign Minister's aspiration that we seek a philosophical framework to guide Australia's engagement Regardless of international events seems at least a step in the right direction Thanks very much. How next speaker is Frank Yeah, so environment Paris okay Paris last December the Paris Agreement on climate change really did make a big change as to How many governments our most governments and our boardroom see the issue of climate change? So you had all nations of the world come together and sign up to a really quite very ambitious agenda To address climate change and to do so in a framework That is arguably more politically realistic than what had gone before And so you could take the cynical point of view and say well There are no binding commitments no binding commitments that any one country has to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to any one level But then you could equally say well What good is a binding commitment? In a world where where power really rests with sovereign states and so what you have is a very strong signal That the world is coming together and that every every country will do their bit And every country crucially includes all of the developing countries of the world so No longer can we say well we may have caused the mess in the rich countries, but we're not going to do anything about it Unless and until the developing countries were most of the economic growth and the the growth in resource use is Concentrated let's stay come on board because I've said they'll be on board. Okay now Behind all that of course sits an agreement between the two two of the major powers the US and China They had a joint announcement which really paved the way towards Paris and and Arguably that is the really big signal that each of the other nations have received and that is the US and China Announcing to everyone else that such as the new way of the world and a new way of the world if you extrapolate out a decade or two Is a fundamental revolution in global energy systems right? Away from fossil fuels and towards clean energy sources. That's the name of the game Emissions pledges that sit behind there China has pledged to reduce the emissions intensity of the economy by 60 to 65 percent Until 2030 to peak their greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 Most analysts who work in this field expect that this peaking will happen a lot earlier United States have pledged to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 26 to 28 percent by 2025 the same percentage numbers have been adopted by the Australian government but with a timeline until 2030 now collectively that falls far short of the ambition that has been spelled out in the Paris Agreement To keep global temperature rise to well below two degrees with a view to one and a half But it's certainly a lot better also than than business as usual which until recently we thought the world was on And the Paris Agreement provides a mechanism for ratcheting up national ambitions Now Australia's national target you could probably say the same factors apply a Significant commitment, but but not enough in light of the global ambitions Australia's greenhouse gas emissions have been flat for a very long time for decades and now we're saying over the next 10-15 years They're going to be reduced by a quarter or more probably more because the international community is going to expect us to do more than what's already on the table So that means a fundamental shift in energy systems in particular Australia has every opportunity to do so We're really in a situation where we're better placed in most countries to make that transition to clean energy Renewable energy in particular Our study that we co-led with colleagues at climate works Australia the Australian component to the global deep decarbonization Pathways studies shows we can do that and we can do that while maintaining prosperity a lot of opportunity In in such a transition and when you look at what the states are saying you look at what? Cremious and ministers of South Australia Victoria the ACT increasingly Queensland are saying they see a lot of opportunity in this they see investment opportunities for their states Ultimately don't however be the real big policy and reform agenda is at the federal level Okay, and I think it's fair to say that that the federal government has Has understood this and also is beginning to implement that And we see that very directly in a machinery of government change in bringing energy and Environment together in the one department under Minister Frydenberg So that's a very positive sign about the the integration of two policy agendas that really need to talk to each other It also gels very very well with the governments with the Prime Minister's innovation agenda, right? This is ultimately about innovation Now right now this week. We're expecting We know that these discussions are in play right now about funding for the Australian renewable energy agency and So it might well be the case that we have a sort of a tacit or explicit bipartisan agreement here to slash that funding Which would I guess you could say Go in the in the opposite way of what what you might need in order to to foster innovation in the energy energy space Couple of things I want to mention Before I close off firstly Climate change finance and aid right finance to developing countries So mr. Fisher pointed out the extreme vulnerability in the Pacific Pacific island states They are very large Expectations especially by least developed countries for financing for climate change action from the rich countries In part this is what made the Paris agreement possible. This will need to be reflected In actions this will need to be reflected in aid budget This will need to be reflected in particular in private financing For climate change purposes to flow to these countries And finally I think just about every speaker has mentioned China. I will finish on on the China note There's a really important strategic relationship here on energy in particular So the traditional model has been Australian resources to be shipped to China To be turned into into products in a very traditionally energy intensive and resource intensive way The new way if we do end up in the in the global low carbon economy Can very easily also have a very strong Australia-China trade component to it trade in clean energy to go from Australia to China and Flows of knowledge and innovation From Australia to China. So we saw that in fact in the context of the now abolished Policies around carbon pricing and other climate change relevant policies There has been very strong interest in China as to how we do things in Australia. How we How we design the policy settings around that how we affect market reform To get to new settings that facilitate this new type of cleaner economy And that is something that we can certainly build on in that bilateral relationship with China. Thanks To be part of this panel My name is Mukun Narayanamurthy and I'm the CEO of Asia link business, which is the National Center for Asia capability We were established by the Federal Department of Industry Innovation and Science to help create an Asia capable workforce in Australia So I thought I'd make three key comments To contextualize why our trade and finance relationship with Asia is so important and then make three key observations as a result of that context first, but we know in 2030 Asia is projected to account for about 67 trillion dollars of GDP which will be greater than all of the countries in the Americas and Europe combined second But we know in 2030 Asia is expected to count for about 70% of global capital stock Which means that countries like Australia will only grow increasingly reliant for both foreign direct investment and also portfolio floors into this country from Asia and Third even sooner by 2022 the middle classes of Asia Will outnumber the middle classes the rest of the world at about 3.2 billion So Australia is strategically really well positioned to cater to the private consumption needs of the consuming classes in Asia Which will vary by sector So having said that I'll make three key points about our trade and finance relationship at the region first Our trade relationship is strong six out of ten of our top ten trading partners are in the region however That relationship has been heavily concentrated in mining in resources in the agricultural sector and an international education and tourism when our last looked at ABS data for 2014-15 of 2.1 million registered businesses in Australia only 45,000 traded internationally and Off that 45,000 338 made up 85 percent of all international trade That's zero point zero zero Zero one six percent That's how far we are from 1% To be even statistically relevant and yet we like to overstate the relevance of our export relationship with the world Not just Asia. So while our trade relationships at one level appear to be strong They are very narrow by sector and highly concentrated in terms of the types and number of organizations That lead our export relationships of the world When we think of that our economy is predominantly a services driven economy when you look at data That's cut on a trade in value added approach Three quarters of our economic performance comes from the services sector nine out of ten jobs are in the services sector And our economic modeling at Asia link business is highlighted that but we now in 2030 if we can broaden our engagement with the region We could add a further million jobs just in our services sector meeting the private consumption needs of Asia Which leads to my second point for us to go from a strong trade relationship And if we're coming off the commodities boom potentially and we do need to rebase to a much broader Services type relationship with the region across healthcare and aged care professional services the creative industries Financial services so that it's not just iron ore and coal and international student recruitment Then we have to be willing to invest in the region and here which is my second point our Investment relationship with the region is extremely poor There is very sketchy Foreign direct investment data of Australian businesses investing across countries in the region But what we do know for instance from some research that's been undertaken for example by PWC approximately two years ago Is that only nine percent of Australian businesses are currently investing in the region? Only twelve percent have any history of having invested in the region 65% or two-third of all Australian executives have no interest whatsoever of changing their position Which is not to invest in the region? 23% of large businesses choose to fly in and fly out of the region Even where they do have some sort of business rather than establish a presence on the ground and the reason given by our very rational managers that run in particular our large businesses because of the pressures from their boards and Their large institutional investors is that? Asia accounts approximately for only about 12% of the bottom line of their businesses So in their short ten years and the pressures that they have from their boards and the institutional investors They don't believe that the long-term orientation that Asia demands for a business to be successful to be worth their time Because they'll never see the fruits of that success So there's this cycle that's playing itself out in Australia where management looks at boards and says You're not going to give us the leeway to invest in the long-term but say well We'd love to but we need to ensure that you're compliant with the needs of The cooperation's act and the demands of our institutional investors and our super funds are so powerful in this country say well That's all wonderful, but Months and dads actually won quarterly returns can't really see you investing into Asia and providing the returns in a time For him that's actually going to work for our investors So this isn't just someone else's problem. This is our problem because we're all Holders of a stake in superannuation funds and one way or another So we all have to change our preferences for return for there to be a cascading impact on boards and then management teams my third point is that No, we're standing the oscrate process recently which has been touched on our inbound investment Relationships with the region have actually been quite good If you look at the Japanese, it's often forgotten that Mitsui has been in this country since 1901 Mitsui has had has had for instance a longer presence in this country than many of our ASX 100 businesses Mitsubishi entered this country in 1956 the South Korean conglomerates and They're stayed on enterprises like Korea Resources Corporation Korea gas and then their big Entities like Posco Hyundai and others many of them have had a presence here for about 40 years and some of them have up to 30 to 35 separate investments across a range of sectors The Indians have been investing here as well over the last 15 years quite aggressively To some extent heavily focused on the mining sector for example and coal assets in Queensland But there are approximately 30 Indian information technology businesses with the likes of IBM and Accenture that are absolutely dominating the IT outsourcing market in this country and Then you've obviously got the Chinese who are very strong not just with the state on enterprises But we're also seeing a significant amount of listed entity investments from Hong Kong across a range of sectors in financial services and You're also seeing that now in health and well-being and in wellness businesses as well For example Swiss was acquired recently but by a time and we've got two other very large Vitamin-related businesses which are going through sale processes, which have been in the media recently where bidders are also from China So Chinese investments in this country are not just in sensitive areas like energy and mining and electricity and distribution assets But are extremely diversified which is often not picked up And the final point I want to make on the inbound investment relationship as well is that in any given year Especially if you look at the last three-year average Ferb looks at approximately a hundred thousand applications Only about 64 applications. I believe last year were rejected Again that is less than 0.01 percent of all applications to Ferb So when you look at the history of Japanese investment in this country Korean investments in this country Indian investments in this country and Chinese investments in this country This country is actually quite open and welcoming and compared to a lot of other countries in the world He's actually a really good place to do business So I just thought I'd paint that picture that is actually not a popular view to paint particularly the last point But the data when you actually look across a long period of time and actually work down and day out with businesses Many of them are actually quite happy with the experience of doing business here might just stop This is an opportune moment to remind you that we have a hashtag. It is hashtag a new Australia 360 Some of you are lighting it up. I think you'll like this Mukund. It says here. Wow Talk about putting us back in our place And it goes on anyway I'll leave you all to digest the insights from the tweet stream. It's now over to Cecilia Thanks a lot Nick and I like to echo what Brendan also said. Thanks to Michael Wesley for organizing this forum It's been very informative and very interesting and I have the pleasure of rounding off this Very fascinating panel with a quite a different take on Australia's contribution and I'm looking at laws values and Humanitarian concerns So I guess what I wanted to do was just step back a little bit up to the international level and come back down to the regional and local because I think Australia is positioned very uniquely in the world in terms of our reputation in terms of our ability to punch above our weight in terms of Influencing international norms and values and particularly in the area of human protection so a lot of what I look at is in the area of protection of civilians and atrocity of prevention and Australia has been very innovative and very influential in this space I do think that it's a shame that the debate the domestic debate in Australia has been very narrowed in the space of Australia's humanitarian assistance policy and that it focuses very much on Australia's offshore detention Which we touched on earlier this morning Which yes is a blight on our Reputation for humanitarian assistance So I'm not going to dwell on that because it has been touched on but rather to step back and look at other areas of Australia's influence. I thought would help kind of open up this discussion and this debate So Australia is one of the world's most generous contributors to humanitarian assistance. We currently ranked 17 in the world in terms of our humanitarian aid giving this is a decline. We were previously at 9th in the world. I think it was 2009 down to 13th in 2013. So we're down to number 17 But in terms of the kind of context that we're working in we're also in a global context where there is a Significant fragmentation of the international humanitarian system and international humanitarian order in terms of Many of the shifts. I'll have a look at the the broader international context But in terms of challenges to international law the changing character of armed conflicts the internalization of conflict most conflicts around the world are internalized Have challenged the laws of war international humanitarian law was designed In the wake of the First World War in terms of the Geneva Declaration but codified post World War two and updated in the late 1970s In in response to a different international order than we're in today and so much of the discussion and the debate around in human surrounding humanitarianism is how relevant the current laws of war are for responding to today's conflicts and The implementation of human rights within spaces as well So in thinking about Australia's contribution to humanitarianism, there's two ways that we can think about it we can think about Australia's contribution in terms of advocacy and changing the landscape of the Principles debates and values and then there's also the material contribution in terms of financial personnel and material in terms of response particularly to disaster relief So the context internationally the international humanitarian system is under enormous strain So there's currently 50 state-based armed conflicts going on around the world today There's 70 non-state Armed conflicts taking place around the world Fortunately our region has seen a significant decline in the number of conflicts We haven't had any major international or interstate conflicts in our region since into the Cold War We do have ongoing internal conflicts in southern Philippines southern Thailand parts of Myanmar We are seeing a rise in sectarian violence in our region in South Asia and Parts of Myanmar as well, which is quite concerning, but the international Spectrum is is quite vast the impact of natural disasters or so is significant So in 2015 a report by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and Pacific Estimates that over the past decade the Asia Pacific region experienced over 1,600 natural disasters which represents 40% of the global total In just our region this affected 1.4 billion people and cost the lives of over half a million people Which represents 80% of the world's population affected by natural disasters. So a disproportionate impact in terms of the humanitarian effect of natural disasters in terms of Global trends is 125 million people who are in need of humanitarian assistance according to the United Nations And this number has actually doubled in the past decade So this is driven by a major conflicts that have broken out in other parts of the world over the past few years So Syria Iraq South Sudan Libya Yemen are examples of major conflicts that have escalated over the past few years Major crises that also have regional implications and has also drawn Australia into these responses In terms of stateless persons There's an estimated 65.3 million forcibly displaced people worldwide Which is the highest number on record since the end of the second world war. So we are living in a very historically unprecedented situation in terms of the level of the crisis and the nature of the conflicts and In looking at those figures the UN coordinated appeals for humanitarian assistance for funding in 2016 have only been Met by only 33% of the contributions have been given so far So two-thirds of the funding for UN Coordinated appeals for humanitarian crisis remain unfunded So what we're seeing is even where there's an increase in funding for humanitarian assistance The scale and the rate of increase of the humanitarian crisis the international community is not keeping pace with it Politically there's still a high level of inconsistency and selectivity in international political responses. So still a Lot of political inflighting and disagreements at the highest levels of decision-making around the world now Australia's performance in this area is Quite unique and I wanted to look back at Australia's role in the UN Security Council in 2013 and 2014 Just to put my finger on some of the contributions that Australia made in during this period that I think are less a well-known So as the debate has contracted around humanitarian assistance in Australia some of the Contributions that Australia made in drafting UN Security Council resolutions Leading the negotiations and seeing the implementation of many first-time UN Security Council resolutions around protection of civilians and humanitarian access Gives us insight into the kinds of values that Australia has been able to project at the international system and also the Reputational benefits that Australia has gained from which they're leveraging at the moment within that space So through their work They were able to secure more robust mandates for a series of peacekeeping operations in Africa They were able to push through a political deadlock in the UN Security Council to open up By passing to UN Security Council resolutions on which they worked Opening up humanitarian assistance and access into Syria without government consent a first of its kind in the space of protection of civilians They bought North Korea the situation North Korea onto the agenda of the UN Security Council for the first time by drawing international attention to the human rights situation They led the Security Council in managing the transition in Afghanistan from the combat combat led mission to the Afghan security control They offered and led the negotiations on UN Security Council resolution 2166 that allowed for access to the crash site of MH-17 in Ukraine again the first of its kind in the only UN Security Council resolution since in Ukraine author And then other areas where they contributed were on authoring and leading resolutions in terms of countering terrorist violence Recognizing the significance of policing and peacekeeping operations to make sure that that's more consistent and mainstream and stemming the flow of small arms and illicit weapons in terms of Advocacy Australia has also been one of the leading international advocates on the responsibility to protect doctrine. We know that our former Foreign Minister Gareth Evans was One of the co-authors of the original 2001 report on responsibility to protect former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd played an important part lobbying for the application of R2P When the UN sanctioned intervention into Libya in 2011 so given this history in Australia's role Australia continues to use its reputation by undertaking a lot of informal advocacy work in the UN both in New York and Geneva So they've been rallying many like-minded middle power states states from the global south advocacy but also raising awareness among the the member states to not only promote these norms and to call for greater coherence accountability And consistency in the way that they're applied but to put conceptual underpinnings around them by creating a lot of information and capacity-building forums at within the UN so they've been leveraging off these reputational gains that they made through strong leadership on the UN Security Council and Has been taking this forward into their bid for a seat on the UN Human Rights Council and 2018 to 2020 So I'm getting the the time up. So in terms of an overall assessment I Would say that Australia has made a lot of significant contributions that need to be opened up into the international debate We are being watched by countries in the region So while we do have a lot of challenges and a lot of them have already been spoken about so I won't go over them within the region our Aid budget did drop by a billion again in the 2015 to 2016 budget our contributions to ODA is at the lowest it has been It's dropped down to point zero point two two percent Which is an all-time low coming at a time when international needs for funding is at an all-time high so a lot of Challenges ahead and I think just echoing in closing many of the comments today surrounding Uncertainty in the security and the defense space And the regional trends is to also consider Australia's need to articulate a clear vision for its humanitarian Operations and contributions around the world. They've obviously had a clear contribution in this space Our reputational gains can be undermined by some of our more localized responses to asylum seekers and Even to our indigenous populations, so I think it's important that we be articulate about how we carry these forward We've now got 14 minutes for questions What I propose that we do is that we take a big batch of questions And we just pepper our panelists with them our panelists will be encouraged to keep all of their Responses very brief so that we can get as many different people having their say as possible We're going to start right down here at the front. Thank you very much Ashley for running the microphone in reminder again hashtag a new Australia 360 if you're not on it already Thank you. Thanks. My name is Alex I had a question for Cecilia, which you touched on very briefly in your closing remarks Which is the current climate regarding policies around Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people We will take that and we will get the microphone. Hopefully over the back to retired ambassador to Thailand Miles Cooper Miles over to you. Thank you and thanks to Bill Fisher as well for the acknowledgement I'd like to direct this question to Bill relates to diplomacy and institutions notably our Department of Foreign Affairs and trade Major step in the evolution of that department has been the merger with Ozade Do you have a sense Bill of? How that's affected the effectiveness of our aid program and how it's affected the overall Effectiveness of the department. Thank you Thanks very much Alex. So we set miles. So we've got Alex's question queued up. We've got Miles's question We're going to dash back over here for one more please Ashley Thank you very much Terry Henderson Aid structures are changing in many countries in the world particularly in some parts of Asia for instance in Japan on the extreme with no immigration or virtually none the Age the great majority of the population is going to be over 65 and not very far in the future Australia is aging but not as rapidly because it allows immigration now and China is getting demographic problems And other countries do you see any opportunities for Australia to take advantage of the aging? Rapid aging of Asian populations in the country where it's countries where it's occurring Okay, and if there's one more I'd love to take it right now. So we've got a neat For some yes, thank you in the front here Hi, my name is Megan. I actually had a quick question for Cecilia, but perhaps also Mukund and Bill Given global sort of anti-Islamic sentiment and the recent Burkini ban in France What do you think of the implications for Australia's trade and relationships with? Muslim Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia and Brunei Wonderful, let's start with these Cecilia over to you Okay Thanks for picking up on that. Yeah, it's interesting for we can put our finger and there's a whole lot of other statistics I didn't talk about Australia being you know one of the most generous countries in the world of intakes of you know Resettling asylum seekers and so on that for all that we do contribute to What's looked at in terms of our contribution is often the negative side of of things You know how we treat asylum seekers and I think one of these areas again comes down to structural discrimination and cultural attitudes towards our own indigenous populations and I think that this you know the recent You know expose of the treatment of youth and detention centers is one illustration of how Reputed you know you can work very very hard to build a good reputation and Very quickly the leverage that you've just won can be underwritten by poor domestic Choices and practices and I think that we do need smart leadership on how we deal with these key issues because Externally, this is what countries in our region are looking at and it puts us in a very poor position to be able to comment on the Contracting human rights base in you know countries around our region when we struggle to get our act together in these Maybe I'll leave the come back to that. Yeah Bill Miles's question perhaps first Yeah, thank you. Thanks. Miles. I was just thinking about that I thought about it a lot because I'm I was involved in it from the start I mean the main change that's occurred Apart from the actual integration is the reduction so Ozade in its last year was geared up optimistically for an eight billion dollar program and that was cut Sort of overnight to a five billion dollar program. So that was a huge change and the second part of that change was to Concentrate the remaining five billion dollars into particular areas and to Southeast Asia and the Pacific so the the effect of the cut was greatly felt on those Areas which were cut so Africa other bits of Asia Southwest Asia and the multilateral Organizations so the the effect of the cut was you know very geographically Targeted if you like so that was that's I guess point one Point two is that The I think to be brutally frank the old Ozade had Over-invested in what it felt it needed to deliver eight billion dollars and frankly some of its over-investment was was quite unrealistic So that doubled the impact of the cut when cuts were made And that had a big effect of course on the staff involved because people who were employed often at very great salaries To do a job which was going to happen, but but which then never happened Really magnified the problem so so coming on to The effect on the building across the road here or now several buildings It is certainly been an enormous revolution Because Australia has chosen a pattern of integration between the old foreign affairs and the old Ozade a pattern of total integration Now many countries have integrated their aid programs into their foreign policy all the Scandinavians The Netherlands Canada Canada off and on I must say New Zealand sort of off and on a bit too And often their integration has just been to sort of move the two sides Into vague proximity and let them function as before that's certainly the Canadian model just to to leave sort of bring Them closer and call them integrated but in fact they're not actually mixed Whereas here in Australia we we did what we did with the train integration back in 1987 which was to entirely Throw that the two lots of people together and churn them up. So you now have this transitory situation where people Employee doing things. They really do not have a big background for and that's that has been a had an impact on Confidence and it's had an impact. I think on the broadening of perspectives But I think the main point which I'd want to make in all of this is that I Firmly believe and this is the government's view to that aid is part of foreign policy Now that is a very controversial view The old Oz aid did not operate on that Assumption operated on the assumption that aid was done for the good of the people getting the aid and that's the different model Which is the UK model and that is the model which we have rejected our view and the city my view and certainly the view of Julie Bishop in putting this Exercise forward was that a delivery should be and should be seen as and should be delivered as Part of foreign policy and that has been an enormous revolution Teres question Terry I see two dynamics at play in Asia if I were to generalize one is the aging population Issue which you mentioned so in a place like Japan the way in which Australia is Involved with what's happening in Japan aging population Stagman growth agenda negative interest rates we're actually seeing a lot of those Japanese trading houses and businesses investing overseas and We're seen as an attractive place for them to actually invest into a business We're not necessarily directly addressing the aging population issues as far as I can see But we are doing that in some other markets in the region for example in parts of China in Malaysia Australian health care and aged care providers in particular are setting up quite significant centers where there are seeing opportunities Where there is less and less stigma that's attached to elders being in retirement homes and aged care facilities Rather than with their children They're trying to find ways in which to reduce that stigma and enable that transition to happen But on the other hand in addition to this dynamic of aging populations. You've also got Places like India that have a demographic dividend as David Bloom would call it a median age population of about 25 and The big opportunity there that Australia is looking to seize is around Education and not just around international student recruitment But really looking at the vocational education opportunity where by 2022 the Indian government is looking to scale up 500 million Indians across 22 sectors and that is the single biggest opportunity actually for Australia with India And so Australia is very focused on that so it's health care and age care on the side of the aging populations in those markets Where there's an issue not necessarily with Japan, but in some other markets, and then you've got education with India final question That was all about our interactions with our Muslim neighbors So you asked the question as well in the context of our trade and investment relationships if I recall correctly So I actually don't see the fact that there are Muslim countries as the issue When I speak to people from Indonesia They actually make the point to me that they don't see themselves actually as a Muslim country And they actually don't like the fact that Australia looks at Indonesia as a Muslim country Which is actually quite startling because we think that That fact is being Indonesia one-on-one and yet we get that wrong because the Indonesians don't see themselves as a Muslim Country they're quick to point out that they have Catholic population of something like 15 to 20 percent So they're quick to make that point India on the other hand don't like being called a Hindu nation because they've got 150 Muslims in the country Doesn't affect our trade with that part of the world. So second most popular so Muslim country in the world So I actually see other issues I see language proficiency issues, which is a big issue for us in engaging with the region and on that Record our performance is getting worse by the day across Asian languages I see the issue of cross-cultural competency for business executives and those in In diplomatic circles. So if you haven't picked up an Asian language, for instance when you're in school early enough then It might be beyond time for executives But becoming cross-culturally competent being self-aware mindful picking up the skills to be able to relate to different cultures And when you're put in that position of having to engage with them is definitely attainable having the capacity to deal with government A lot of the countries in the region are not market-driven economies Really understanding the role of government and how to work effectively with government is another major issue So I don't see the whole the Muslim Islam Dynamic as the core issue that's affecting our trade and investment relationships I see a whole range of other individual and organizational Capabilities that are actually impeding our ability to engage effectively Great, we are almost out of time. I would love any final reflections perhaps Two words to that I don't really think there's a great flow on to for Australian interests from the The events in France because the the cultural Dis similarities are very great really between Australia and France France is an assimilationist country Anybody can be French, but you must become absolutely French in Australia we have a policy of multiculturalism you bring your culture with you and so things like bikini bands here would be in fact we invented the bikini someone here did not me and So, you know, we are not in that position of of trying to To enforce a cultural identity in the French are very much in that in that framework. So I don't think there's any particular Flow on for us from the French situation Any final comments from from Brendan or Frank Well, you know since you asked I Would mention the the Australia-China joint economic report that was released last week So Peter Brice del there of corporate school in charge and now just making the argument that we will know But that we forget sometimes that we need to engage right and there's every opportunity for Australia to engage in the region And is that imperative you mentioned Indonesia before and China's the other obvious place and many many other bilateral relationships that really need looking after and and it'll be enormously fruitful for for Australia to to engage deeply Thanks very much. Please join me once again in thanking Cecilia Mukun, Frank, Brendan and Bill