 Today on our Ambassador Series, I'm joined by Australia's High Commissioner to Bangladesh, Greg Wilcox. High Commissioner, thank you for your time. Thank you. Australia established its resident mission in Dhaka back in 1972. How would you describe the relationship and how has it evolved? Well, we established direct diplomatic relations in 1972. We actually had a mission there beforehand when Bangladesh was East Pakistan. We had a person there, so in a sense that carried over to Bangladesh's independence. Because we were one of the first countries to recognise Bangladesh and we were early on the ground there, we're old friends, we know each other pretty well, we've been on the ground for over 40 years. The Bangladeshis feel quite sentimental about that. There's that association going back for that long. But of course the relationship is much more than it was in 1972. We now have a billion dollar trade relationship. About 7000 Bangladeshis studying in Australia at any moment. We do a lot diplomatically together. We run a large aid program. The Bangladesh community in Australia is growing quite strongly. It's doubled in size just in the last few years. So in summary, there's just more going on. The relationship is an old one, but it's a much more sophisticated, broad based one than it used to be. How do you see that relationship growing and what are its best prospects for expansion? It was real prospect on trade. As I said, we're sitting at about a billion dollars of bilateral trade right now. That's a nice round figure, but it won't stay there. It'll grow. It'll continue to grow. We have highly complementary economies. We send Bangladesh a lot of food. We educate their people. We send them other commodities like cotton. And in return Bangladesh sends us more and more every year clothing, textiles. It has the world's second largest garment industry. That garment industry will overtake China's one day, probably fairly soon. And as Bangladesh grows and develops, it remains a poor country, but it's less poor by the day. Increasingly wealthy, has a growing middle class, and in a country of 160 million people, that's an increasing amount of purchasing power. So Bangladesh will continue to grow in its economic significance for Australia. That's where the real prospects are for us. That's where the real positive growth is. We're seeing companies like the Just Group, established their offices in Bangladesh. West Farmers through Kmart and Target have their presence in Bangladesh. We see our energy companies taking an interest in Bangladesh. And in fact, Santos has been there and has been there for a few years. Australia runs a significant aid program in Bangladesh. What have been some of the key projects and how successful have they been? Well, as I said before, Bangladesh is a fairly young country. It started from behind in 1971 after its independence war. A very traumatic experience for it. Forty years is not a long time in the life of a country. And it remains a poor country, but much less so than it was 40 years ago. Nonetheless, our aid program in Bangladesh is about pushing out, expanding the Bangladesh government's capacity to deliver basic services for its people. Principally on education, but also on health. Our assistance on education very simply translates into a widening of Bangladesh's primary education network. More boys and girls in primary school, more people being educated, in turn lifting the productive frontier for Bangladesh. That's one of our very large scale programs. But I should also talk about the Australia Awards. Bangladesh is a significant destination for the Australia Awards. We have a fairly large program in Bangladesh. Australia is very much known for its tertiary education, for its university sector. Thousands and thousands of Bangladeshis have studied in Australia return with qualifications to build their own country. The Australia Awards program reinforces that value. It reinforces our education brand in a country like that. That's very prospective. I also want to mention our Australian volunteers for international development. We have up to about 40 young Australians who come to Bangladesh under that scheme at any one time. These are young, dedicated, quite gritty professionals who are in Bangladesh because they recognise that there's a serious job of work to be done on development. They're health professionals, they're generalists. Whatever they're doing, whether they're working for the cholera hospital or for UNHCR or other NGOs, they're actually making a practical difference to how aid is delivered on the ground. This is your first posting as head of mission. How has this role differed from your previous postings? Well, for a start, you're in charge, so you have to be the leader. You're accountable for everything that goes on in the High Commission. So, as much as we've all been trained and developed to worry about policy and to think in those terms, the job is about substantially more than that. When you get around to policy, it's often the bonus. Your day-to-day work is significantly tied up in running the mission, in dealing with personnel matters, dealing with logistic matters and significantly over the course of the past year in Bangladesh about managing the mission's day-to-day security. It's been a difficult year on a security front in Bangladesh. And we've found ourselves almost making hour-to-hour judgments about who should be where when. Policy is something you'll always get to and something that's very important and it's what defines our relationship. But if something like security goes wrong for the mission, that's what you'll be remembered for. And these are the things you need to fuss over every day because it's about people's lives. But zooming out from that, being ahead of mission is, I think, to the extent I've tried to theorise about it, it's about having the self-confidence to make the decisions that matter, but also having the self-awareness to know what you don't know and where you need to seek help and counsel. And that's what your team in the High Commission is for and that's what Canberra is for as well. What's it been like living and working in Bangladesh? Bangladesh isn't high on most tourists' itinerary. It is an extremely crowded country of 160 million people living on mudflats two-thirds the size of Victoria and a substantial part of the year. Significant parts of Bangladesh are underwater. There's an intensity to life and activity in Bangladesh that few people have seen elsewhere, including veterans of South Asia. I've worked in Indonesia before. I've worked in East Timor before. I've never seen an intensity in life, in commercial activity, in traffic that I've seen in Dhaka. So that's confronting to start with, but you soon get used to it. And the wonderful thing about the country is that for all of its difficulty for the challenges of living in Dhaka, it's an extremely welcoming city. It's not dangerous in the sense of criminal violence. You can walk around in the old quarters of Dhaka, which are historically and archaeologically fascinating. And when you go down there looking as a stranger, looking like a stranger as you do, people are very interested in who you are and what you're thinking about. And they all want to give you a cup of tea and a decent feed. So it's a wonderfully hospitable place. Doors fly open. We will miss it very much when it's time to go, but that time hasn't come up yet. What advice would you give Australians who are wanting to travel to Bangladesh? Well, we recently upgraded our travel advice in Bangladesh due to the political difficulties of last year. We went from exercise a high degree of caution up to reconsider your need to travel. We did that because of the difficult political and security situation at the time on the basis that Australians who visit Bangladesh should expect their lives to be seriously interrupted by the political and security strife that we saw. In Bangladesh, our travel advice has largely always been about avoiding being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And that continues to apply. It's just that in recent history, there have been more wrong places, wrong times. How Australians take care of themselves in that environment is to pay attention to their surroundings. Very little happens in Bangladesh in a security sense without it being telegraphed first by the political parties, without some announcement being made. So Australians, whether they're travelling there or living there, very quickly discover the value of reading the news, of turning on the television set, of talking to Bangladeshis, be they co-workers or hotel managers or tour guides, or whatever, about where to be and when. And because most people are prudent in that sense, because most people who come to Bangladesh take a natural interest in the environment, take a natural interest in keeping themselves informed, the great majority of Australians and the great majority of travellers stop, avoid trouble and enjoy themselves. Lastly, what would you like to have achieved by the time your posting ends and you return to Australia? Well, as I said at the outset, it's a substantial and growing relationship. The trade relationship is growing. As governments, we discuss more to do with cooperation in the diplomatic sphere, immigration, people-to-people links, sport. A range of interests is very diverse. One of the things I'm working at doing and will have a chance to actually implement in practice is to establish some routine bilateral senior officials' talks to, metaphorically, to establish a framework around all of our bilateral interests. To ensure that foreign ministries, as the custodians, as the managers and coordinators of the bilateral relationship are fully informed about what's going on across the breadth of the relationship, be it in the government sector, be it in the private sector. So we know we're usefully to intervene and to make a difference, to add value. That's one thing I'm working on. We have more to do with each other in the security sense as both of us are developing a sense of what the Indo-Pacific means, what the opportunities are for cooperation there, the sorts of frameworks we should be building between ourselves but also as multilateral players in the region to establish habits of consultation, a framework for dealing constructively with security challenges. I'd like to be able to establish more on that front in practice before I go, including, I hope, by establishing a formal defence relationship between us. I'd also like to do much more with the alumni network. As I said before, education is one of our most powerful brands in Bangladesh. We have thousands of alumni in the community, many of them in very influential positions. We launched the alumni network about 18 months ago and now we're in the process of giving it practical things to do, of steering in the direction of diplomacy, public diplomacy, of proselytising the benefits in Bangladesh of an Australian education, of using our alumni to build our networks into the business community in Bangladesh. And that's something I would like to make much more tangible and active by the time I leave. High Commissioner, it's been great speaking with you. Thank you for your time today. Thanks for the opportunity. And that was Australia's High Commissioner to Bangladesh, Greg Wilcock, for our Ambassador Series.