 Felly, rwy'n cael eu gweithio i'r ffordd. Fel ydych chi'n gweithio i'r ffordd o'r Gweithio Ffyrdd ynglynig yw'r leiw, i'r ysgolion Argyllewidol. Felly, rwy'n profesi Sallu Wheela. Felly, rwy'n cymdeithasol perthynasol ar gyfer y ffyrdd ynglynig, ymlaen i'r AMU a'r ddeunadau'r Llywodraeth. Felly, mae'n cymdeithasol i'r ffyrdd. Mae'n cymdeithasol i'r ffordd o'r gweithio ar gyfer y Ffyrdd ynglynig, ac yn y cydwyr yng ngyfyrdd yma ein bod yn ymgyrch yn ymgyrch yn ymgyrch yng ngyfyrdd yma. Fel ddod i'r ddweud, rwy'n ddweud. Rwy'n ddweud am y ddiwrnod amgylch yn ymgyrch ymgyrch, mae'r ddiwyddiadau ar gyfer ymarfer, dyma'r ddiweddol ar y cyflwymen ymgyrch yma. Rwy'n ddweud i'ch bodai'n bêl i'r tyn nhw i'r gweithio chi'n ddechrau. Tyron yn ysgrifennu honno'i Llyfrgell yn y Cambr-Region a ddweud am gyllid o ddyniant y cyfotoedd a'r gwestiwn – o'r llun o'r cyfotoedd a'r llun o'r bronte. Felly rydym yn gweithio jedi gylawn, dros Tyron Bell. Dynion o'r cyfotoedd, dros Tyron Bell, yn yllain o'r sydd mewn cyfotoedd a'r cyfotoedd ac yn eu gyfweld o'r cyfotoedd o'r rhwynt y maeg. Roedd yn dda o'r cyfyngion. I'n tudio eich bod run o'u wneud y cyfotoedd â'r llun o broteilio y Llywodraeth dobeithedd o'r cyfotoedd o'r cyfotoedd. a'r amser yn fawr i'r geniwyr. Mae'r rithwyl wrthdaf o bwysig ar y sylfaenol yw'r system yn bwysig, y dyfodol yw'n rhai fyddai'r cyfnodol wedi'u cyfle, a gyd-dyn nhw'n fyddai'r cyfnodol wedi'u cyfnodol a'r cyfnodol. Mae'r cyflym yw'r cyfrifwyr yn ddim yn 1000 o sgol, a os nid ydych yn gweithio'r cyfrifwyr o'r cyfnodol? Y cyfrifwyr ar gyfer y gallu cyfrifwyr yw'r cyfrifwyr yw'r cyfrifwyr. mynd i niwnol tryswyddiadau fel angen im blaeth Wasserhdedol oeddeidio i Body We call country the mother because as a mother cares for our children so does the land cares for us. This is why Aboriginal people have such close ties with the land. On behalf of myself and my people I stand a warm welcome to everyone here. I'm proud to be Aboriginal and one of the traditional carers of the sand, I want you to feel welcome while on our country. Firstly I would like to acknowledge those that have come to this area for the first time rydyn ni'n amdodwch yn fath na roedden nhw a, rydyn ni'n hoffi, dyna fydden nhw ychydig i'r hyffordd rwyr yn gymgyrchu a'r hyffordd. Rydyn ni'n bod chi nhw'n fath gennym nhw yw'r cyfrifio ddeud hynny, ac byddwn ni'n cael ei ddefnyddio llain arwaghpeth ar hyn o'i ghefn, yn gyfgrifio ar y 60000 yma. Yn hyffordd ar hwnnw'n cyfrifio ar dem go localsol i ddod y cyfrifor i Llywodraeth a'r cyfrifio i'r gefnodion, roedd yr hyn o'r unrhyw i'r bobl a'r ddignityniol i'r ddweud. A oherwydd, mae'r bwysig yw'r hyn o'r llyfrig yw'r hyn yw'r gwaith yn ei ddangos o'r ystafelio ar y Trinffol. Mae'r bwysig yw'r llyfrig yw'r llyfrig yw'r llyfrig a'r llyfrig yw'r llyfrig yw'r llyfrig yw'r llyfrig o'r llyfrig o'r llyfrig yw'r hyn o'r llyfrig yw'r llyfrig yw'r llyfrig, today, tomorrow and always. Once again, on behalf of the new normal people, I welcome you to our traditional country, Jaan Ymrba Nôrnion. Thank you and goodbye. Thank you very much, Tyrone. I, too, would like to acknowledge and celebrate the first Australians on whose traditional lands we meet and pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging. The Australian Studies Institute was established in July 2018 as a university-wide initiative to drive the Australia and World Strategy for ANU. The institute's mission is simple. It is to promote the study of Australia, share our research and bring an Australian perspective to comparative transnational and international projects, to facilitate national and global conversations about Australia and Australia's place in the world. The Australia and the World lecture series aims to promote a broader conversation about Australia's place in the world. It's one of the founding programmes of the Australia Studies Institute. Last year, the inaugural lecture was delivered by ANU Chancellor Professor of the Honourable Gareth Evans, ACQC. Today's lecture is the second in the series and a starting point for our conversations. Now, I'll leave the exciting task of starting that broader conversation to our speaker. It's my true, huge honour to introduce our speaker, the Treasurer of Australia, the Honourable Josh Frydenberg MP. Josh Frydenberg was elected to the Australian Parliament in 2010 as a member for Cuyol, which, as many of you will know, is in the inner east suburbs of Melbourne. He is the seventh person since Federation to hold this seat amongst his predecessors of Sir Robert Menzies. In 2018, he was appointed the Treasurer of Australia and Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party, having previously served as the Minister for Environment and Energy, as some of you might have gathered. The Minister for Resources, Energy and Northern Australia, Assistant Treasurer and Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister since the 2013 election. He's now going to present his lecture on navigating the global economy in challenging times. Please join me in welcoming the Treasurer of Australia, the Honourable Josh Frydenberg. Well, thank you very much. Can I, too, first acknowledge the traditional owners of the land and pay my respects to their elders past and present? Can I acknowledge members of the diplomatic corps who are present with us today? Can I acknowledge Professor Mike Colford, Professor Sally Wheeler, Mark Kenny, Paul Pickering, Fiona Preston and many others who are here today? It's a great pleasure for me to come back to the ANU. An institution that, since its foundation in 1946, has been at the forefront of academia, at the forefront of interpreting the trends in global affairs as well as domestic affairs and providing us a lens through which to do that. And it's been a bit of a hater since I was last here. In fact, I was invited as a freshly minted backbencher by Andrew McIntyre and Professor Peter Drysdale back a number of years ago to come and speak about China. And then, as I do now, I paid tribute to a great ANU academic and a man called Headley Bull, whose area was international relations who wrote a very famous book called Anarchical Society, which provided us with a better understanding of the contemporary world order and, in particular, the relationship between states. And his writings, while I was a student at Oxford, were important to me back then. And, again, I think his connection with the ANU is a way to acknowledge the important role that this institution plays. And I congratulate the Australian Studies Institute on the role that it has played in facilitating a discussion about these important topics. Well, today I want to speak about the transformation in the Australian and the global economies. And the new set of challenges that Australia and the world must confront. And by how we recapturing the spirit of what has underpinned our transformation, we can meet and secure ourselves and our prosperity in the face of the challenges to come. Since Federation, the transformation of the Australian economy has been profound. At the turn of the 20th century, Australia was a nation of 3.8 million people in a world of 1.7 billion people. The Australian economy looked very different to the one we have today. The bonds of our colonial history were tight. The United Kingdom was our largest trading partner with trade five times greater than with our second largest trading partner, the United States. The agricultural sector made up around 20% of our economy. Mining, which was mostly gold, accounted for 10% of the economy while manufacturing stood at around 12%. The majority of Australia's population, around two-thirds of people, lived outside of the capital cities. The median age in Australia was just 22 years of age. And men significantly outnumbered women. Schooling was only compulsory between the ages of 6 and 13. Life expectancy was 55 years for men and 59 years for women. And it wasn't until 1907 that Sydney and Melbourne became connected by telephone. Tensions between nations in Europe were building and they erupted in World War I in 1914. This upheaval, which we remembered just yesterday on Remembrance Day, saw Australia send more than 320,000 military personnel overseas to see 60,000 of them not return. One searing lesson from that time was that what happened in the world would have direct impacts on Australia. Even if we were geographically far from the main arena of action. Following the war, the mining boom at the turn of the century had collapsed with mining share of output falling from 10% to 3% in 2019-2020 and continuing to head down. The agricultural sector expanded to over one-fifth of our economy with Australia riding on the sheep's back for a number of decades. But Australia was also navigating dark clouds that were rolling across the globe. The post-World War I period was marked by great political and economic instability. Geostrategic rivalries, splinter trade relations and global trade collapsed. In the three years following 1929, trade volumes in industrial countries decreased by almost a third. In the face of such tensions, governments responded with high tariff barriers, competitive currency devaluations and discriminatory trading blocks. Economies around the world were struggling. Unemployment was on the rise and hyperinflation was prevalent in many nations. And here in Australia, at the height of the Great Depression in 1932, the unemployment rate reached a staggering 32%. We learnt that the wealth and jobs destroying pain of protectionism, we learnt that lesson the hard way. And for Australia to prosper, we would need to understand and engage with what was happening outside of our borders and to push against that pressure that was to look inwards. The great power rivalries and the economic tensions of this time as we all know spilled over into World War II. The series of events had a devastating impact on millions of people across the globe and profoundly reshaped the strategic alliances and the societies within them. In its resolution, the world laid the foundations for the decades of prosperity that would follow. After 30 years of geopolitical and economic turmoil, a conference at Bretton Woods in the United States set the stage for the next 75 years of global economic cooperation. The 44 nations who gathered Australia amongst them agreed on a series of new rules for the post World War II international monetary system. The lesson learnt from the interwar period was that free trade not only promoted international prosperity but also international peace. The conclusion of world leaders such as US President Roosevelt and the UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill at that time agreed that economic cooperation was the only way to achieve both peace and prosperity at home and abroad. The Bretton Woods process ultimately led to the formation of the institutions that remain important to this day. The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trading Organisation. The establishment of these institutions, new rules and with them new norms, allowed Australia and other nations to capitalise on the opening up of trade and the scientific transformation post-war as innovation moved from military to non-military use. Discoveries from wartime such as the humble bore point pen, the healing power of penicillin, the Turing machine that laid the foundation for modern computing and the ability to harness the atom for energy all shaped the world in new ways. The post World War II period up to the 1970s is often referred to as the golden age of economic growth. The world economy was two and a half times larger in 1970 than it was in 1950 adding a United Kingdom to itself in each year over this period. In 1945, Australia announced a substantial post-war immigration drive which would see our annual population grow averaged by around 2.2% over the next two decades. The Nationality and Citizenship Act was legislated in 1948 that created a path to Australian citizenship from 1949. In 1957, Australia signed an agreement with Japan our first such agreement in Asia. This trade agreement was both a tangible and a symbolic act that we were putting the terrible experiences of the Second World War behind us. We lifted the export restriction on iron ore in 1960 and provided the raw materials that saw the industrialisation of Japan who would become the second largest economy in the world by 1980. The shape of the Australian economy shifted from riding on the sheep's back to made in Australia. The manufacturing sector increased from under 20% of the economy in 1930 to be 26% by the 1960s. This created jobs for the large influx of workers particularly from Europe and particularly to our largest cities on the east coast of our country. By the early 1970s it was clear that the nations that had opened up their economies and that had learned to adapt to the forces shaping the world were reaping the benefits. Building walls to stand against the rising tides of international change is ultimately self-defeating. Steadily Australian governments from both sides of the political divide engaged in domestic economic reform from privatisation to tariff cuts, deregulation and changes to our sector tax system that would ultimately underpin our future economic growth and prosperity. With these reforms Australia has risen to become the 14th largest economy in the world and we are now enjoying our 29th consecutive year of economic growth having gone through the Asian dotcom boom and bust the dotcom boom and bust the Asian financial crisis the global financial crisis and it is a record of consecutive years of economic growth that is unmatched by any other developed nation. We have the fifth most traded currency in the world and we are one of only ten countries to hold a triple A credit rating by all three major rating agencies. These reforms have raised our productivity and our real incomes. Australia's per capita real gross national income is now 75% higher than it was in 1990 and more than three times what it was in 1960. Australia's real per capita income has increased from around $23,000 in the early 1960s to around $73,000 today. Since the early 1970s our life expectancy too has risen by around 12 years for male males to nearly 81 years of age and by 10 years for females to nearly 85 years of age. As we opened up our economy we also positioned ourselves to be part of the extraordinary developments happening in our region and this is something that political parties from both sides of the political divide can claim credit for. From Sir Robert Menzies early comments in 1939 what Great Britain calls the Far East is to us the near north. To Goff Whitlam's early visits as a leader of the opposition and then a prime minister in the 1970s to China. To the trade deals secured by John Howard to the free trade agreement secured in 2015 by Tony Abbott. These arrangements and these initiatives have situated Australia well to capitalise on the Asian century. The rise of Asia has been remarkable. As new markets opened up economies that were largely agricultural have turned into manufacturing hubs generating rapid export lead growth. The transformation started in Japan in the immediate post war period and then moved across North East Asia to South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and then China. More recently we have seen similar development paths occur in the ASEAN nations. Spurred on by a young population with improved access to education and healthcare. The economic tigers set upon a course focused on investment and the adoption of technology. Investment in infrastructure and reduced transportation costs opened up the ability to form interconnected supply chains across the globe. This allowed firms and the nations in which they resided in to focus on their comparative advantage. Enhanced specialisation created an export growth model which saw Asia nearly double its share of global merchandise trade between 1980 and 2010. Exports in Asia now account for more than a quarter of global GDP with exports as a share of GDP more than doubling since 1960. China, Japan and Korea now make up the top three in our list of top 10 export markets. Today the Indo-Pacific continues to supply around 60% of world's GDP. Behind these economic achievements is the human story of prosperity. In 1950 about 1.8 billion people or around two thirds of the global population lived in poverty. By 2015 that number had more than halved to 750 million people while the global population almost tripled to 7.7 billion people. Median incomes have risen dramatically with over 50% of people now classified as the middle class. The majority of this story has played out in Asia. Since the fall of Sahato in 1998 Indonesia has more than doubled real incomes and embraced democracy. Japan remains a wealthy economy and our second largest trading partner. India and Southeast Asia are growing rapidly while China is adding an economy the size of Spain to its own every single year. By 2030 the OECD estimates that more than 65% of the world's middle class will be living in Asia. Clearly the opportunities on our doorstep are immense and they have never been more accessible. We are today facing now a new global economy. The tyranny of distance is no longer what it was. From islands of isolation the continents of Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia have become plugged into each other interconnected like never before. With a few clicks on a keyboard you can order a shirt from London or a book from New York. The iPhone that may be in your pocket contains components from 43 different countries. And Boeing in Australia is making wind parts for planes assembled in the United States and then sold to the world. Services are following this path too. The apps on our phones demonstrate this. The first ride-sharing app Uber came from the United States but now we have OLA from India and Diddy from China. You can shop around for the best a most affordable ride and indeed people swap notes on which service is working best for them at any given time. As consumers we have more choice than ever before in services as well as goods and as exporters we have an opportunity to sell our products and our know-how to countries like we've never had before. But just as growing wealth, new technologies and improved access to health and education have lifted global living standards there are now a new set of challenges that if not addressed will put the progress that we have achieved at risk. These challenges are as diverse as demographics and debt, environmental sustainability and great power relations. Individually each challenge is enormous and no single country can deal with them alone. Firstly, the global population is aging. With average life expectancy now more than 30% longer than it was in 1960 it's estimated that we will move from one in 11 people in the world today aged over 65 to one in six by 2050. Shifts in the world's age structure will provide opportunities as the shape of the goods and services we consume change but will also give rise to challenges as workforces start to shrink in some nations. Asia is home to 60% of the world's population but it might be surprising to hear that Asia isn't just growing larger it's also growing older too. It's no secret the countries like Japan are at the forefront of this trend and they are working hard to increase the participation of women and older workers. They are also investing significantly in technology to ensure that they can maintain their prosperity as their workforce shrinks. China also illustrates this ageing trend very starkly. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences warned in January this year that China's population may begin to shrink as soon as 2027. According to some projections by 2050 there will be more women in China aged over the age of 84 than there are people in Australia today and I'll repeat that. By 2050 there will be more women in China who are over the age of 84 than there are people in Australia today. As this ageing demographic shift takes hold economies will come under pressure as the proportion of the working age population falls and the demand on health, ageing and pension systems increase. Here in Australia we are ageing more slowly but we are still ageing nonetheless. We too are seeing increases in our participation among women and older workers. This is in part supported by policy changes such as the childcare to childcare and our retirement income system. As this demographic shift takes hold economies will come under pressure as the proportion of their working age population falls and the pressures also increase on their welfare system. At the same time as more people save for retirement global savings will also increase. This is producing surplus savings which is driving down the price of funds and ultimately interest rates a contributing factor that in part explains the low interest rate environment that is evident in the world today. Through a surge in savings as more people save for their retirement there is also in part responsible for this a slow down in investment as aged investors become more risk averse and we have seen this despite global interest rates falling to historically low levels. This has implications for borrowers, investors and as a consequence the global economy. While interest rates remain low global debt levels are being managed. However with global debt levels up 15% in the last three years to be now at a record of high of $188 trillion or 230% of global output concerns are rising and it's at these levels that the ability to respond to future shocks is more constrained the impact of any future shock is more amplified and future generations will be left to deal with the consequences of such a shock. A third major trend that we're seeing in the global economy is the rapid urbanisation and the related pressures that this is placing on the environment. The rapid urbanisation of the global population particularly in Asia will continue and it will have profound implications for how we can sustainably improve our quality of life. Make no mistake urbanisation has transformed Asian societies. Urbanisation in Asia has involved around 44 million people or just under twice the size of Australia's population leaving rural areas in search of opportunities and being added to the population of cities every year. That's right more than 40 million people per year are moving from regional or rural areas into urban areas. On some estimates more than half of the world's population is now living in urban areas and this could rise to more than two thirds by 2050. Demand for raw materials ranging from copper through to zinc and from iron ore lead tin and more exotic but no less valuable resources such as magnonies, lithium and zircon has surged. Australia as of other resource supplying nations clearly benefited from these needs. The rise of commodity prices connected with this urbanisation contributed to Australia's sharp increase in the terms of trade in the year in the 2000s and accounted for 38% of our real per capita income growth during that period. With the world's population estimated to grow by another 2 billion people between now and 2050 as more people are lifted out of poverty the pressures on the environment will only increase. Indeed in Asia alone energy consumption has quadrupled over the past three decades. These challenges many of which have been positive have also contributed to the impact of human induced climate change. The challenge for the future will therefore be to use technology and our policy settings to ensure that continued urbanisation is sustainable in the medium and in the long term. A fourth major trend is great power competition is returning after the post cold war glow. History tells us that as economic weight shifts so too does strategic weight and as China continues to rise competition is likely to become fiercer. From the early 1900s strategic weight shifted from Europe towards the Atlantic as the United States economic and military might pulled away from Europe. Since the 1970s we have seen the economic weight of the world slowly but surely shift eastward and become both dispersed and more contested. This shift accelerated as the Chinese economy rapidly expanded in the post 2000 period. The more recent economic rise of India only adds to the weight of the Indo-Pacific region. In 1980 the United States and Europe accounted for around half of the world's GDP with China and India around 120th. By 2018 the United States and the European share of GDP had fallen to around one third with China and India increasing to over a quarter. The more dispersed and contested strategic environment has contributed to a lack of trust in the institutions that were created back in the mid 1940s. The primary players are the world's two biggest economies the United States and China although of course there are plenty of other countries that have an interest too. We've also seen a rise of protectionism and nationalism and with a repeat of the economic consequences we have seen previously. Indeed the current trade tensions between the United States and China alone are estimated to reduce global output by 0.8% of GDP or around 700 billion US dollars by 2020. This is not just harming the protagonists but also the bystanders as well. As a result the rules and the norms that have underpinned ours and the region's prosperity and security are now under pressure. So where do we go from here? In today's global environment characterised by changing demographics elevated debt levels environmental pressures and great power tensions it's critical that we continue to pursue reforms at home that retain our competitiveness our openness our fiscal discipline and globally we must continue to remain a strong advocate for an international rules-based trading system and this international rules-based trading system will have at its heart strong multilateral institutions. What is needed domestically is hard work good policies and the right set of values. Our values are key to our policies encouraging the individual and their enterprise upholding personal responsibility maximising choice rewarding effort and hard work upholding the rule of law and ensuring a safety net which is underpinned by a sense of decency and fairness. These are all values that go to the heart of what the coalition stands for and these values underpin our core beliefs that the invisible hand of capitalism is far more powerful than the dead hand of socialism that government is not the solution to every problem that fairness is achieved by the equality of opportunity not the equality of outcomes that government doesn't have money of its own it's the people's money and every dollar of tax is a dollar less in their pocket and that we should be optimistic and outward looking confident in the knowledge that our people are our greatest competitive advantage and when it comes to fiscal discipline intergenerational equity requires that future generations should not pick up the tab for the last. These values and the beliefs underpin our economic plan to make our economy more productive, competitive and resilient. This will enable us to prosper as we navigate the currents ahead and we need to continue to remain open and improve our productivity. As I've said before many times Australia is a trading nation. Trade supports and creates jobs creates jobs in Australia involving the sharing of technology in exchange of ideas. This is why as a government we've signed free trade agreements with our largest partners. This is why we now have 70% of our two-way trade in goods and services covered by free trade agreements up from 26% when we came to government in 2013. Indeed just last week the Prime Minister announced the agreement to finalise the regional comprehensive economic partnership with the members of ASEAN and countries including China and Japan who collectively make up around 40% of global GDP. Productivity and openness is not only about tariffs on goods or improving the efficiency of agriculture mining and manufacturing sectors. It's also about having a productive and competitive services sectors. Services account for three-quarters of our economy and four out of five Australian jobs but they make up a much smaller proportion of our exports. Ensuring our legislative settings are right in the services sector is vital. In financial services, education and health we are working to build domestic resilience and export opportunities. For example, legislative change such as enacting the consumer data right to give consumers control over their data and rules around the data transfer and the laying of foundations for firms to innovate both here and abroad. Agreements such as the Asia Region Funds Passport and the Australia UK FinTech Bridge open up cross-border opportunities for our financial sectors and building on our education system that supports human capital will allow us to continue to export to the region. As the nature of work changes we need to be able to train people in the services and the digital economies of the future and this has implications for our vocational training system and our university sector. We can leverage the existing strength of our health system into export opportunities too. Australia has been for example in the health sector recognised as an ideal location for global high quality clinical trials. And in this environment of global uncertainty an important way that the government can provide business is with the confidence to continue to invest here to show that we have a house in order. And that's why we're committed to responsible and disciplined fiscal and economic management to show that our nation's finances are sustainable and that we're ready for the future challenges ahead. Focusing abroad we need to turn our role towards shaping what happens beyond our borders while remaining strongly engaged with our trading partners and international communities. The compact of Bretton Woods which I referred to earlier was agreed 75 years ago and now it provides a framework which is based on cooperation and coordination as it has proven to be successful in underpinning our peace and prosperity. We now need to recapture that moment and the lessons that got us there. Conflict between nations aggressive currency devaluations and protectionism was the backdrop for that meeting in 1944 in that little town in New Hampshire. There was a recognition from all parties that they paid a price for that conduct. As a result those nations agreed at that meeting to the WTO, the IMF and the World Bank and those organisations continued to play a role to the amelioration of tensions between nations. As the then UN Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgan Fowell said of the nations that were present including Australia that they had not found any incompatibility between devotion to our countries and joint action. Indeed we have only found on the contrary that the only genuine safeguard for our national interest lies in international cooperation. It's a key message for us all today. Today Australia wants to see the WTO reinvigorated with a more effective dispute settling mechanism and a broader remit to deal with e-commerce and the opportunities created by the digital economy. So too with the International Monetary Fund we'd like to see a change in the governance rules so that they see a greater role played by emerging economies particularly in Asia. With these reforms these important institutions will be even more relevant to the task before them. As the world set out on a destructive path to World War II in 1939 Sir Robert Menzies espoused an important role for Australia on the world stage. He said it is true that we are not enumerous people but we have our vigour, our intelligence and our resource. His statement was as correct then as it is now. Given Australia's strong strategic political and economic ties with key partners both near and abroad we are as well placed as any nation to play an active and constructive role. That's why I'm engaging with my counterparts like Sri Mulyani Indonesia's Finance Minister and Bill Monogh from Canada and Heng Swee Keith from Singapore. Together we wrote a joint opinion piece in September to encourage cooperation on the global challenges we face including trade. Four voices was much stronger than one. Ladies and gentlemen, since Federation the transformation of the Australian economy has been profound. We are more urbanised. We live longer. We have a more diversified economy. We're no longer reliant on the United Kingdom nor on the sheep's back. In the early 1900s the life expectancy for an Australian was 55. Now it's 83. Two-thirds of Australians lived outside of our capital cities. Now it's the other way around. Agriculture with 20% of GDP now it's just 3%. And neither China, Japan nor Korea were listed in our top 10 export markets. Now they make up our top three. So just as Australia's economy has changed so too has the world. And working together and invoking the spirit of Bretton Woods we can meet the many challenges we face and help secure prosperity and peace for all. Thank you very much. Well thank you Treasurer for that very panoramic and I think in the end optimistic speech about where Australia is placed in the world economy and the challenges for that global economy. We're going to now, I'm Mark Kenny I should say from the Australian Studies Institute. Can I just before I go to questions acknowledge the fantastic leadership of professors Paul Pickering, Sally Wheeler and Shirley Leitch from the Australian Studies Institute for inaugurating this prestigious lecture series and we're very grateful to the Treasurer to come along here today and speak to us and give us his thoughts. I'm sure there are some questions around and we do have some microphones so if you'd like to put your hand up and we can do that. And there's one there. While you're thinking about that we'll bring that mic across there. I might just kick off Treasurer and ask you a question. You mentioned about the earlier on in the speech about the rate of growth in the decades after the Second World War. I think you said that the global economy was two and a half times larger. It's at 1970 compared to that. Yeah, it's at 1970 and it was adding the equivalent of the United Kingdom to its growth each year for that period. We see much more pallid growth internationally these days and we're experiencing fairly pallid growth in Australia as well. I mean, we are in the 29th year of continuous growth, as you say, but it's not at the levels that we've seen in the past and that is afflicting the entire global economy. So I guess my question is is that the new normal or will we ever see growth like we saw in that sort of expansive post-war period or should we get used to a much quieter level of growth? Well, Mark, the IMF have downgraded their economic growth forecast but they're still tracking around 3% or even higher in the coming years. So it's not slow growth but it's slower growth, if you know what I mean. I think that what we will see is challenging times remain particularly for Europe and we're seeing that play out in the German economy now and we saw the recent quarter numbers from the UK I think just yesterday which showed that they're not in recession but they've just marginally escaped it and obviously they're going through Brexit. Japan is still pretty challenging economically. China continues to grow at 5% to 6% and when it's growing at 5% to 6% it's actually growing faster than at 10% because it's growing more each year than 10% because 10% when it was growing at 10% was off a smaller base so it's now growing 5% to 6% off a bigger base hence it continues to grow pretty strongly. Indonesia is a good growth story so I think we're seeing different profiles of growth depending on the region. I think what is becoming a new normal globally economically speaking is this period of low interest rates because three quarters of advanced economies now have inflation rates below 2% about a third have inflation rates below 1% and the world really hasn't seen before really low unemployment. I mean the United States is having the lowest unemployment in 60 years and the United Kingdom the lowest unemployment in 40 years but also very low interest rates and inflation so if I'm going to opine about the global economy I'd say growth will continue to be healthy in a number of countries while challenging in others but the new norm is really around the interest rate environment that we're in and the inflation environment that we're in there's lots of reasons for it but that's what looks to be quite different to the past. Thank you and we'll go to the question where is the microphone? Do you got the microphone? Yeah, away you go. If you could just identify yourself perhaps. Thank you Mr Treasurer. My name is Michael Yee. I'm a second year undergrad here at ANU. So you mentioned the digital economy and all the apps that have made our lives a lot easier. I'm just wondering from the talks over at the United States where Chinese apps like TikTok have sparked national security investigations and also the scandals that we've had with Facebook and related entities and also you mentioned the fact that we need to promote a rule-based system. What kind of rules is the coalition and is Australia promoting for digital economy on the world station in regards to apps like TikTok and Facebook? Thank you. Well, it's a very timely question because we're now actively considering what was a landmark report from the ACCC into digital platforms. And they look particularly but not only at Facebook and Google and their complete dominance of both the social media platform but also the search engines. And what they found is that a huge amount of data was being collected on people without necessarily their consent or knowledge and that there was a series of very complex algorithms that were being used that were providing a commercial advantage and were to the disadvantage of some of the established media providers. So we are now considering that report and I know there's a lot of global interest in that because there hadn't been such a report into the social media platforms. So watch this space but that's something that we hope to announce our response before the end of the year but I think the rise of those platforms creates a number of issues. It creates issues around privacy. It creates issues around competition and sort of market concentration and market domination. There's issues around security as well and you know the ability for cyber threats to collect data that can be used against the public too. Thank you. Tresor, thank you for the wonderful presentation about the whole history about economics, the role in Australia and the rest of the world. Is Sam Wong from the... I took the term lecture literally so I... Thank you. Wonderful. Is Sam Wong from the SPS Chinese Cantonese programme? Canberra correspondent. Our listeners are very interested in the recent development between Australia and China regarding the improved relations particularly in trade. A recent time in Thailand there was a very good conversation between Prime Minister Morrison and also Li Ke-Chang, the Premier of China. I'm just wondering if I say is the frost or the hell finish, we will have a better trade relation even though we are politically disagreed. On the other hand the people of Australia and also particularly the Chinese diaspora are very welcoming, this improvement and we would like to have a better relations in trade in particular in culture and education to between China and Australia. For your comment please. Thank you. Well I think the relationship between Australia and China is absolutely critical indeed to both countries. Not just at an economic level but as you refer to also at a people-to-people links and we have many Australians of Chinese descent who are proud and active contributors to the local community. More than a third of our exports now goes to China so last year it was just over $215 billion of two-way trade and we have been a great beneficiary of China moving hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. And we have a set of interests with China that is not the same as America's set of interests with China or not the same as Japan's set of interests. I mean that's a statement of the obvious. And we will obviously take that relationship forward over time just as we've been doing so over many years and I referred in my speech that no side of the political equation has a monopoly on our relationships in Asia. Indeed both sides have contributed to that strength. I remember that landmark deal for the LNG contract that John Howard did I think back in 2002. It really opened up a new way of seeing the economic opportunities in China. I remember in October 2003 in successive days in the Australian Parliament you had Hu Jin Tao address the parliament. We first had George W Bush and then you had Hu Jin Tao and so you had the leaders of the United States and China both addressing our national parliament consecutive days. What better way to show how we manage that very delicate balancing act if you like on some issues. So I think we've shown a propensity and an ability to work closely with China at various levels. We won't say to eye to eye on every issue but we'll also be consistent in making that clear. And the other thing to understand about China is as it grows its economic size it's not happening for the first time. Henry Kissinger wrote that very interesting book called On China and he pointed out that in the last 2,000 years China has been the number one economy in the world for 1,800 of them and it was only with the Industrial Revolution that it started to be taken over as an economy. And so for the Chinese people they see themselves as becoming the largest economy in the world not for the first time but really recovering from where they were. And there have been some challenging issues in Chinese history as you know and the Opium Wars and what happened in Nanking and all of those things which I think has played a role in China's psyche. So I think our relationship with China will continue to grow and be absolutely critical for us and as a country will continue to work to ensure that is the case. Now we've got time for one more question. Let's take that one over there. Hello, hi, I'm Jacob. I'm a PhD student here. And thank you for doing a fine job of summarising such a broad array of challenges that we face both internationally and indeed domestically and as you touched on the importance of education in Australia with moving forward into the future. And the common education makes me think of the hundreds of schools that have closed due to escalated fire risk and I'm wondering that with national research and emergency service agencies warning that this could be the worst bushfire season to date what is the government's long-term strategy to increase firefighting capability and reduce the escalating risk of bushfires due to human induced climate change? Well of course we're very conscious of the need to ensure that our emergency response responders have all the necessary equipment and resource at their disposal and no doubt after every major disaster such as this one all the relevant parties, state and federal and local will be looking at ways to strengthen their response. So it is an absolute tragedy. What has happened, lives have been lost as you say hundreds of schools have closed, people have moved out of their homes and we're not through the worst of it. So our thoughts go out to the people who are impacted on it by what has occurred and we will after the worst of these fires have been responded to, there will no doubt be the relevant authorities that will come together to learn the lessons from it and how we can continue to ensure the safety and the security of our community. Treasurer, thank you for those comments and thank you for that very extensive and panoramic lecture. I think many of us in this room will have taken great comfort from your affirmation of multilateralism. We know there are strong nativist and isolationist forces in the world at the moment and it is good to see that the Australian government reinforcing that historical role of putting it in that historical context and projecting forward. At that point, therefore, I guess we will close this. This is bearing in mind, this is a lunchtime lecture so there are many people who have to get back to other things and of course you yourself have to be off to an important ERC meeting as I understand it. Could you please join me in thanking the Treasurer Australia, Josh Frydenberg?