 Ladies and gentlemen, good evening and welcome. My name is Andrew McIntyre. I'm dean here at the College of Asian Pacific. It's a great pleasure to welcome people from across the campus community, across the Canberra community, and especially to welcome many members of our alumni constituency group. Let me begin, as is our custom here at ANU, for major events by proudly acknowledging the traditional owners of this land from which we're meeting this evening and what a purpose it is for which we're meeting tonight. It's a great pleasure to be able to introduce Australia's Foreign Minister, Senator Bob Carr. I'll do a formal introduction in a minute, but let me first just say a word about the purpose of tonight's meeting. The ST Lee lecture is a quite special address for the university. It's an address that we're positioning as our premier lecture each year on major issues spread across the Asia Pacific region. It's an address that's made possible by the extraordinary generosity of Dr ST Lee and his family. Dr Lee's family has a magnificent history of commercial and philanthropic achievement. Beginning in Singapore, building a trading and banking reputation, and over time building an extraordinary global reputation for philanthropic focused on higher education. Many major universities around the world have been beneficiaries of the Lee Family Foundation's support, and so it's with special pleasure that I acknowledge on behalf of the college and the university as a whole the gift that the Lee Family Foundation has made to the ANU to make possible the ST Lee lecture. I'll say a bit more about the lecture and where it's heading later on, but for now let me just say watch this space. Watch this space. And to show you my seriousness and purpose in saying that, look who we have this evening. It's hard to think of a more appropriate speaker to be here with us tonight to deliver this ST Lee lecture. You all know the official reasons why Bob Carr is such a good individual to deliver the ST Lee lecture. Extraordinarily high profile foreign minister, his record of achievement over many years as Premier of New South Wales and the fresh determination he brings as foreign minister today to bring the most pressing issues in Australia's regional engagement into strong focus. For my part, I came to know Bob and his wife Helena through their involvement over many years with the Australian American Leadership Dialogue and it was through that forum that I got to see at close hand not just the range of Bob's international priorities and passions, but his extraordinary gift for advocacy, for purposeful communication. So I think he's just a wonderful person to have with us tonight. There are many things you could highlight from Bob's parliamentary career, from his professional and amateur career in old and new media, but let me just pull one thing out, one thing out particularly for this audience and that is his accomplishments as an author. Now just in case there's anyone here who's going for promotion this year colleagues, Senator Carr's written not one book, not two books, but three books. That would be a good basis for promotion if you were going up for it this year Bob. Titles of the books, thoughtliness, what Australia means to me and the one that I'm best acquainted with, my reading life. Now as it happens, just in getting myself organised for welcoming Bob, I went to get down from the bookshelf my copy of the last of those books, my reading life and I couldn't find it. So I looked at home, I couldn't find it at home and then I thought I know where it might be and I rang my oldest son, a typical university student, he'd knocked it off and I said now look Alex I need the book back as it happens Bob Carr's coming to the university and I'll be introducing and I just like to look back through the book and he said well I'm not giving it back and he said I haven't finished it and if I give it back to you I won't get it back myself. I kid you not. So Bob I haven't been able to refresh myself on my reading life. In the time that I've been Dean I've introduced all sorts of authors but I've never had one that I've introduced whose book I've been unable to get back. Ladies and gentlemen Bob Carr. Thank you for that introduction. Ladies and gentlemen I would have liked to have known Lee Sing Tee. I understand that he left University, left Singapore to attend the Wharton Business School of the University of Pennsylvania and Wharton Enlightened University had contained a 40% liberal arts component. So that satisfied his quest for a broad education. I'm told that he studied art history, landscape architecture and he set himself the task of learning what had happened in the world while he had lived in occupied Singapore and World War II. He spent many hours in that library. At 89 he today supports universities in Singapore and Harvard, Stanford, Oxford and the Australian National University. In addition his philanthropy, his generosity, has helped build or restore libraries at Cambridge, Oxford and Nanan in China. A great testament to philanthropy but in particular philanthropy directed at underpinning scholarship. There's no need to dwell on the way Asia has transformed itself in his lifetime. You're all familiar with the boring economic statistics that make the case. I want to tackle it in a different way. Just think of this. There's been no revolution in world history that's had the massive impact of Chinese industrialization and urbanization since Deng Xiaoping set it in train in 1979. If you look at the industrialization and urbanization of North America from the end of the Civil War in 1865 to the end of the 1920s and 1920s it saw car manufacturing and white goods and a great absorption of people into the big northern cities. It didn't involve as many people. It didn't happen as fast as what we've seen happen in China since 1980. In practice it's meant something like this but for every hundred urban households in China there are now 18 cars, 205 mobile phones, 82 computers and only in 2000, a little over a decade ago, there'd only been 19 mobile phones, only one car, only 10 computers and only a decade to see living standards loaded up like that is a measure. But the more humane measures are what has been happening in Asia in education, higher education and adult literacy and infant mortality and gender equality. I was at university in 1965 to 1968. If someone said, I've just read the future, by 2010 you'll be looking at these sorts of figures. I would have said my god there's been a socialist revolution, there's been a socialist revolution. Marx has been vindicated. The striking thing is that it was a capitalist revolution that produced outcomes like those I'm going to share with you. Around 1980 in Indonesia, two-thirds of children completed primary school today, every child completes primary school. It's a revolution in a short space of time. Historically around one in 20 students in Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, Hong Kong went to higher education, one in 20 now it's one in four. A revolution compressed into a tiny space of time. Asian students are studying abroad sure but listen to this. Korean, South Korean students, 73,000 of them studying in the US, 80,000 South Koreans were studying in China. And it's Asian universities that are being recognized more and more as they enter the top league. Adult literacy, take Indonesia, 67% of adults literate in 1988. 2008, 92%. That measures a revolution. My generation thought when we're at university that sort of thing would only happen under socialism. That happened under capitalism. Infant mortality. Look at these statistics. In 1990 in Vietnam, 67 children died for every 1,000 births. 2010 the number had been reduced to 23 deaths per 1,000 down from 67 to 23. Polio eradicated in Vietnam. Malaria dropped by 75%. Measles by 90%. A revolution in life expectancy. From 1960, hardly any time ago, in an historic perspective, to 2010, life expectancy went from a little over 40. It was as low as 40 to 73 in China, 75 in Vietnam, 69 in Indonesia, 65 in India, from a little over 40 years of age. This is more the economic statistics. A measurement of the revolution in Asia in our time become now a more challenging measure and that is gender equality. In 1999, 53 Cambodian girls went to secondary school for every 100 boys. Today, 82 girls attend secondary school for every 100 boys. In China, where only 75 girls went to secondary school for every 100 boys, as recently as 1991, there are now more girls at school than boys. And in China, the Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand, there are more women at university than men as of now. By the way, let me just avert completely and share one arresting statistic with you. We're doing a lot to support the abolition of avoidable blindness in Asia. A very big contribution by Australia and Cambodia. I visited the eye hospital in Siem Reap. I've seen the poorest of the poor queue up for operations, operations performed by Cambodians, trained by Australia at the Fred Holley's Foundation. It's a big part of our foreign aid. I learnt the statistics, speaking to Fred Holley's people recently. You know the statistic that follows operations on cataracts in a village? As soon as the cataracts are removed and the people with cataract blindness can see again, just like night following day, inevitably, the number of girls going to school spikes because with a blind grandmother or grandfather, it's the daughter, the granddaughter, is forced to stay behind in the home. You scrape the cataracts out of the eyes with a short visit to an eye hospital. The Fred Holley's approach. And the next day, a girl is turning up at school. Here's another perspective. Better educated, healthy populations are the ultimate measure and people living longer and opportunities for women and girls are increasing. This is a new way of approaching the rising living standards to our number. And it leads us to contemplate this question of whether the next century, whether this century, whether this century will belong to the region that has witnessed this revolution, the region in which the nation states have pulled off what have got to be seen as miraculous outcomes, outcomes that could hardly be dreamt of in 1960. But we've got to quickly qualify easy talk about this century being the Asian century. It could be, it may be, but it may be other people's century as well. It's realistic to acknowledge that all Asian economies will face serious challenges this century. There are potential downsides. There are risks. The President of the Asian Development Bank said last year, while an Asian century is plausible, it is far from preordained. The IMF has said there are tail risks of a hard landing in China and, quote, domestic imbalances in China continue to cast a shadow on its ability to act as a sustained source of demand. Feng Wang at the Brookings Institution has studied rising inequality in urban China. He points out that the drivers of China's economy, cheap labor and capital, will no longer be as plentiful. He argues that China's favorable demographics, demographics that boosted per capita GDP growth by 25% from 1980 to 2010, are now largely exhausted. In 2015, the working age population peaks. By 2030, the number of older Chinese will double to 229 million. Quote, China's demographic bullet train is racing into the unknown, unquote, he says. The World Bank report China 2030 prescribed more economic reforms as essential if China is to continue its success story. It gave credit to China's policy makers for their extraordinary success, their revolutionary success, but mandated a more open economy, better governance, more investment in research, more invest more attention to, to environmental protection, and an integration of the Chinese financial sector in the global financial system. China will need these reforms to transform itself from a middle income country to high income status. Outside China, warnings are being made that countries, these countries that have done so well by these indicators of human health and wellbeing and education, these countries can be trapped in middle income states. There's no inevitability about them following Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan on that trajectory to high income states. They could be trapped by infrastructure problems, by problems of governance, by shortcoming in governance. The transition to high income states, the sort of transition that Singapore and those other states can boast of can't be assumed. It is a possible outcome that countries can be trapped in the middle and able to build the robust governance and the legal systems, investment in infrastructure needed to propel higher economic growth. There's also another risk, and this brings me to the subject of the South China Sea and the possibility of that and other territorial disputes, reviving questions of geopolitical instability in the region. We've got to weigh them when we look at possible risks to Asia's continued growth trajectory. We're talking here about competing nationalisms and territorial disputes that flow from them. They're not unknown. The Taiwan Strait, the Korean Peninsula and the South China Sea have been with us on this agenda for many years. There have been times when security in Asia has caused a lot of angst. The Korean War, the Malayan emergency, war in Vietnam. But since the late fifties, for many, and from the 1980s for others, countries in this region have been able, implicitly with implicit wisdom, to set aside security concerns and territorial ambitions and anxieties and to vote themselves to economic development. It was in this spirit, after all, that Bung Xiaoping, Joe Enlai, shifted China's focus from reunification with Taiwan to the goal of economic growth. Japan's confidence in the post-war world was based on the country foregoing the old imperialist ambitions and reaching for stability above all else. South Korea and Singapore pull themselves out of poverty by fast-tracking economic growth. They and other countries in the region have benefited, of course, from free trade and adherence to a rules-based international order. For countries following their trajectory, Vietnam, the Philippines, and now at last Myanmar, the demonstration effect was overwhelming. An important factor behind the confidence that has underpinned the economic revolution and that revolution in health, well-being, education has been the presence, the commitment of the United States and the Asia Pacific. Not only its military presence, but its aid, its business investment, its willingness to transfer technology. On the question of our relationship with China and with the US, we've got to be resistant to the notion that there's a binary choice for Australia here. Bear in mind, first of all, that both the Chinese and the Americans tell us, sometimes seem to enjoy telling us that their relationship, one with the other, China and America, America and China, are in very good shape. And this was spectacularly confirmed when, during the economic and strategic dialogue in China, all the distraction involved in the claiming of asylum by dissident Chen failed to dislodge the talks. Every observer, every commentator said that in a previous age, maybe years earlier, a flashpoint like this would have led to the talks being abandoned. China and the United States saw clear self-interest in maintaining the economic and strategic dialogue they were embarked on, even when an embassy car went to pick up Chen and take him to the US embassy. Second, there's enormous economic self-interest involved in the interdependent relationship. There's a contrast between this and the Cold War relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union. There's no economic interdependence there. The prosperity of China and America would be undermined by a period of military conflict or a period of frozen relations. The third observation I'll make is this, the Australia-China relationship will continue to be robust because it's in the interest of both of us to enjoy a strong relationship. We've got an interest in more Chinese investment. That is a relationship being diversified beyond trade. That's why I can only find one example of Chinese investment being rejected. It's still very modest, I should point out. 1% foreign direct investment in Australia comes from China. 25% comes from the US. There should be no alarms about China buying the farm. The South China Sea, we support an international rules-based order. Asia has been at the centre of our diplomacy for six decades. We're at the forefront of creating and supporting regional institutions from APEC to the ASEAN Regional Forum and most recently been involved in the expansion of the membership of the East Asia Summit with Russia and the United States being admitted to membership. In this spirit, we look for opportunities to see a peaceful resolution of the territorial conflicts in the South China Sea. There are disputes, there are territorial claims. We don't take sides on those territorial disputes but we do call on to pursue their territorial claims and accompanying maritime rights in accordance with international law including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. We've got an interest in peace and stability and the rule of law in this territory. Over 60% of our exports go through the South China Sea. The South China Sea isn't the only place, however, where there have been complex and overlapping territorial and maritime claims. It can often be better for parties to agree to disagree about who owns what and to focus instead on a different question. How can both sides benefit? I want to mention two relevant models. The first is the Antarctic Treaty System. The treaty came into force in June 1961 after ratification by 12 countries. Its objectives are to de-militarise Antarctica, to establish it as a zone free of nuclear tests and the disposal of radioactive waste and to ensure that it's used for peaceful purposes only. To promote international scientific cooperation and to set aside disputes over territorial sovereignty. Under the Antarctic Treaty, countries have for more than 50 years put aside their differences over sovereignty and cooperated to promote peace and science. Members of the Antarctic Treaty System have worked together to conserve and manage the region's living marine resources, including through sustainable fisheries and by combat combating illegal fishing. The treaty works. Australia and initial signatory played a key role in the negotiation and development of this system and we hosted the 35th Antarctic Treaty Consultative meeting in Hobart and June. The second relevant model is that of joint development zones. They are designed to facilitate equitable and mutually beneficial development, a concept that's expressly provided for in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. The zones are operating successfully around the world including South East Asia, Africa, Northern Europe and the Caribbean. In our region Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam were early participants in joint development zones. Thailand and Malaysia entered into a memorandum of understanding on joint development of seabed resources in the Gulf of Thailand in February 1979. Cambodia and Vietnam concluded an agreement in July 1982 over disputed borders which placed a maritime area under quote, a joint utilisation regime, unquote. Before Thailand and Vietnam concluded an agreement on maritime boundaries in August 1997, they discussed the potential joint development of an overlapping area. In June 1992 Vietnam and Malaysia applied the same principles in their memorandum of understanding set in place to jointly exploit a quote defined area, unquote. In the Gulf of Thailand, in 1999 Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia also agreed on joint development of an 800 square kilometre zone. One, two, three, four, five. Five examples. Setting aside at a speed over territory agreeing to jointly develop. With our neighbours East Timor, we are jointly developing Timor Sea petroleum resources for the mutual benefit of both countries based on groundwork laid with Indonesia. Now I'm not saying the joint development zones are an Antarctic treaty style system will provide all the answers in the South China Sea but thinking creatively and constructively and examining models like these provide a path that deserves to be explored. Leasing tea's life embodies transformation, a revolution in Asia that can be measured in terms of longer life, literacy figures, participation by women and girls, a liberation of the region from pathologies that were part of life there, part of existence there for millennia. These gains are too great to be put at risk by an aggravated territorial dispute in the South China Sea that would create instability in the region, discourage investment, make people think twice before making a commitment in this area. There's too much to be gained to be put at risk. Australia will work with its neighbours to see that every option for a peaceful settlement in accordance with international law including the possibility of innovative solutions that draw on those I've quoted are given an option. Thank you very much. Colleagues, the ministers agreed to take questions. We don't have a lot of time so let's agree on the following rule. One question each, not two questions, three questions, your first best question and if people would just briefly say who they are and there's roving mics that will be passed in to people. Would like to open the batting. Got a question here and then we'll head up the back. Bob, why don't you come and position yourself here and I'll steer the traffic. I'm going to say John Vax, who is here in the AMU, thank you very much for this presentation. What strikes me as there is, as you say, a lot of recent optimism, that I was struck by your omission of reference to ASEAN and the failure recently of ASEAN to come into a joint deprivation and deal with this only issue themselves. We're great believers in ASEAN centrality and we were disappointed when ASEAN couldn't settle on a common position. Indonesia to its credit initiated some quick diplomacy and ASEAN made progress towards a common position. We believe agreement on a binding code of conduct is the way of dealing with these things and we believe in the various international fora as associated with ASEAN, with East Asian Summit, which ASEAN is central. No issue should be off the table and we ought to be able to, as a community, as an Asia-Pacific community, be able to talk about these things. Thanks, Jeff, John, I'm speaking on behalf of ASEAN, I want to be here. And my question is, how do we, with ASEAN's, without creating unnecessary conflicts, because in your excellent interpretation of ASEAN without how ASEAN is capable of catching all of these things that are now no people belong to ASEAN? But every day ASEAN will use these sorts of things? Yeah, it is pretty depressing these days. There's a lot of bad news around that. I speak of someone who was humbled speaking to refugees from Syria in a dusty camp in the north of Jordan. And these are people who talked about their homes having been entirely or partly destroyed, about artillery from a sports stadium in the centre of their town, firing on the suburbs and the outskirts. People who got over the border with nothing, they couldn't carry a backpack, it would flee the country and increase the chances of them being shot at and indeed all I spoke to had been shot at as they fled into Jordan. So things can be depressing, but just think about what has been accomplished in the Asian region. In South East Asia, think about the fact that there had been confrontation between Indonesia and Malaysia and Singapore. As recently as 1963 those states had been at war in North what was then North Borneo. That today in the context of the overreaching architecture of Asinghan and the network of cooperation is beyond belief. Think of the dictatorship that held million mark back for decades. The distorting effect of that dictatorship. And think of a leader of million mark today who says I'm leading a government, I'll allow free elections and if 43 out of 44 seats go to the opposition party that's fine. We adhere to democracy. That's very encouraging. I went and inspected some schools being staffed by Australian trained teachers, the Australian equipment in the Delta country just outside Rangoon and I'm very proud to be an Australian in those circumstances to see youngsters going into school in a country where only 50% of kids got to complete primary school. And there was in the crowd of proud parents there was a man with a t-shirt that identified him as a supporter of unsung su chi it was near her electorate. And the embassy official pointed this out and I said tell him I met unsung su chi yesterday and he told him that and back came and said yes, I saw it on TV. I thought this country has changed if foreign minister from Australia gets reported meeting the iconic figure of the opposition. There's the prospect of the liberation of million mark meaning we can have a zone of prosperity from Assam right through to Yunnan and to have people tie foreign minister talk to me about plans for a port in Myanmar. This is ASEAN connectivity is what the ASEAN foreign minister talk about all the time and a road system right through connection right through with Vietnam this is exciting and positive the region has been without wars without disputes for decades now regional cooperation after the Vietnam war has filled that gap and we've got to protect that and we're not allowed to be the games of peace outweigh the triumph of any territorial victory. That is a big challenge for a long way short. Here's one Australian aid project that is making a difference in getting things to change from the bottom up very few women have served in the parliament at Papua New Guinea we introduced a program to train women to serve as village magistrates in 10 years the number of village magistrates in Papua New Guinea who are women has gone from 10 to 700 10 years now it means women getting to make decisions getting to settle disputes family law disputes disputes about family violence custody disputes and people getting used to seeing women in that village leadership we hope it feeds through we stepped up recently with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and with the UK government to steeply increase our funding for women's health family planning contraception and in Indonesia but far more serious in Papua New Guinea and in Pacific Island states too many women haven't got access to family planning and we're going to make a big contribution we think working with our partners the Gates Foundation and the UK we can very quickly introduce another 140 women in the poor world to family planning advice now that is a big step forward and a lot of it will have to be seen in the Pacific Island states I was in Solomon's on the weekend inspecting Australian aid projects and the indicators are pretty sad there abolishing malaria which we think we can do in the next few years will be useful that enables youngsters to keep going to school and it keeps women participating in the workforce like all our health goals that has eradication of avoidable blindness in Cambodia it has a flow and effect with other social indicators like the participation of girls in schools is there a question on this? thank you next but after you first thank you for the switch following this up recently the Australian ambassador to Beijing requested a visit to and the response was from China's criticism rejected there was much circulation in China as to what Australia's motivation was for putting out a quest for a circulation such as Australia to go to the US etc would you want to do that what the what the department policies in that regard what Australia can do today to open China to get a dialogue on the issues well we have a human rights dialogue with China and indeed it was held with the attendance of a Chinese vice-minister for foreign affairs in Canberra a month ago that means they can put issues on the agenda and put on indigenous rights and status in Australia and we put issues on the agenda including human rights in Tibet I think there's a lot of value in having such an organised and systemic exchange with the Chinese on human rights including human rights in Tibet our view is that our ambassador ought to be able to travel to Tibet to talk to people about matters of mutual concern and to inspect Australian aid projects we disappointed that the Chinese said no we hope that when the tension and activity of the current leadership transition in China is complete there might be less nervousness about the Chinese committing such a visit I've also had the ambassador request an opportunity for an Australian parliamentary delegation to go to Tibet and again we haven't succeeded with with approval for that but it continues to be on our agenda you know our position on Tibet we recognise Chinese sovereignty we encourage talks between the Chinese and the Tibetan leaders about autonomy about the nature of autonomy we encourage a productive exchange by both sides over here, thank you Mr. Minister I have a high suggestion for any new and for questions related to Australian positions of the Chinese as far as traditions so standard positions on the one side Australia support the rule-based order but on the other side is the technical side on the nighttime terms given the change from nighttime to nighttime to night-dash transition and equally as equally as so I also can take non-victory measures to enforce the terms so in Australia if you have a country with positions on the tenants it's not like there's a chance of change to each other measures with some countries what do you think about the first position is that we don't take claims we don't take a position on the competing territorial claims I don't think there is any value that would be served by Australia saying we've looked at the maps of Scarborough Shoal considered the historic material we've had our best judges look at it and we're coming down on the side of the Philippines that would not be in Australia's interest and we're not required to do that but we are entitled to insist on freedom of navigation because 60% of our trade goes through South China Sea and it is reasonable for us to say it ought to be settled in accordance with international law including the UN Convention I think that's a reasonable position and we think it would be a more orderly process if ASEAN were involved and attention were given to a binding code of conduct I think that's a very reasonable position by Australia and we've done nothing to inflame the dispute we've done everything to to underliner the position I've described and I've come to the ANU to tentatively put forward worthy of the attention of all those with territorial claims the models of cooperation, the half dozen models of a cooperative approach that could well, and I say this with with modesty not in a tone of lecturing or lecturing, could well repay attention Hi Harry I'm just wondering if you think it's so good to be all to develop a scrutiser of the media and when you sit down I think the driver of Australian-Indonesian relations in 50 years will be the maturation of the Indonesian economy they've now got 6% economic growth a year if they avoid the middle income trap by making the appropriate decisions then the Australian economy will be drawn into integration just as our economy is now integrated with Singapore doing business in Singapore is like doing business in another Australian state doing business for Singaporeans in Australia is like unless you're a proponent of the stock exchange of information is like doing business in another corner of Singapore so too will we be looking at economic integration with Indonesia I think that would be the striking picture and I think we have the optimal level of cooperation with Indonesia on counter-terrorism I couldn't underline that more emphatically we 10 years since the Bali bombing and Indonesia's lay charges in over 700 cases and convicted over 400 for terrorist-related offences I've spoken to the people managing counter-terrorism in Indonesia and the level of coordination with Australia is optimum there's some point as to what the relationship might be and the level of comfort with it they like China have issues of territory that are core to them and within Indonesia of course and it's West Papua and in the Lombok Treaty we recognise that as being part of Indonesian sovereignty although we reserve our right to raise human rights concerns whenever we think they're justified I've got to say the Indonesians have been very very quick to respond to that Friends we've entered the last 5 minutes of our time for Q&A with balance between left and right as it were there's been some kind of all demographic spread but it's been solidly male are there any women whose hands I've been missing if not the next hand in the keep up Well the worst I can bring to mind is North Korea I I'd read that one day when the full story is told the world will be a astonished and mournful at revelations about the level of human rights deprivation in North Korea there may be a labour camp system that would warrant description, warrant comparison with the gulag of Stalin's Russia one day I suspect we'll hear from a North Korean Alexander Solzhenitsyn describing horrors we can only guess at now for example concentration camps underground people locked in mines never seeing the lighter day that could be that must be the worst example on the planet the worst example in the region and I'm not sure whether the transition of Myanmar from decrepit military dictatorship to tentative democracy, pluralist political system is going to be of much value to what we negotiate out of the inevitable wreckage of a North Korean dictatorship let's give the very last question there was a hand right up the back I should throw in that Indonesia was helpful in sharing its experience in moving beyond government with military weight with Myanmar I should acknowledge the Indonesian role in sharing the experience of its transition with Myanmar, Indonesia's chair of ASEAN was able to speak to the leadership in Myanmar about how the Indonesian military had returned to barracks about how Indonesia would reserve beyond a situation where there would reserve seats in the parliament for the military that's been one of the political transitions of our time the political reform post-Saharan in Indonesia that's a great success to it and it balances the depressing news that dominates so much of what dominates the headlines that you've seen in Indonesia make transition to where it's regarded by Freedom House as the 10 out of 10 robust democracy with an absolutely rigorously free media and contested elections and competing political parties thank you Mr and that is I mean the student of Krakow here I would like to start by saying Australia has got space in Afghanistan providing peace and also supporting the democratic process in the country my particular question is although the internal activities increase simply the NATO forces Australia has decided to withdraw from the country by 2015 what is your perception on the future democratization process in Afghanistan and with Afghanistan we can attract again the region thank you I think it's unlikely that Taliban would return to power but we want some ethnic regional balance in post-2014 Afghanistan that preserves the country's sovereignty what the question now is can we have a sovereign Afghanistan will it be in Afghanistan with the central government that can make decisions about the future of the country in the context of the under the shoulder of the constitution the government is free elections and the rights of women and civil liberties that's the question so we've made a commitment we've said we'll continue to be there after 2014 nurturing and mentoring their security forces their police and their army the transition is underway every day patrols are taking place in Nuruzgana province they had to be led by the international security force as part of the transition we've participated in so the state the sovereign Afghanistan state will have police and an army including special forces it can rely on and then we've made a commitment to see that Afghanistan gets $250 million a year for the four years after 2014 and that's carefully monitored there's going to be a big AusAid presence in Afghanistan and we've got monitoring procedures in place because the biggest challenge is corruption the biggest challenge is corruption and part of the post 2014 settlement desirably should be insurgent forces crossing over and seeking to reintegrate with the life of Afghanistan and this is not a whim of mine, the United States has said it General Petraeus said it Hillary Clinton has said it they want negotiations with the Taliban and other insurgent forces counterinsurgency seeks to carve off part of the insurgency and integrate it with the life of the country and that's a challenge because there's been no interest from the Taliban and other insurgency forces to date it's got to be said I was trying to think how we might say thank you to you as I noted at the beginning you're an author so it seemed like a book might be a good place to start this being a university there's books coming out of it every day more or less so I've picked a very recent one as you'll be aware one of the things the Australian Government has done is made a substantial investment in China's scholarship at this university in the centre on China in the world one of the early scholarly outcomes from centre in China in the world is the China story yearbook subtitle Red Rising, Red Eclipse came out just the other day I've been taking a look through this myself but much more interesting than the word yearbook might suggest to you not only does not only does this bring together the best Australian analysis the best global analysis the best Chinese analysis but pulls together the spectrum of commentary in all sorts of media across China pulling out examples of that on all sides of the debate and it's linked to what's now become almost overnight an extraordinarily hot website pulling in all the blog feeds from all sorts of places I think this is worth a look thank you