 Today on the Our Ambassador series, we're joined by Pablo King, ambassador to the UAE. Thanks for your time, Pablo. Pleasure. The UAE is still a young country and the Australian Embassy only opened in 1999. How has the relationship developed over that very short period? We're quite right. The UAE is a country. It's only 41 years old. And our embassy, which was established in 1999, before then we had a consulate and a trade office in Dubai. It's just phenomenal the growth in the relationship over that very short period of time, the last 14 years or so. And I like to think it's really been driven by aviation. I mean, lots of Australians now travel through the UAE on their way to Europe or on their way to Africa or Central Asia or other parts of the Middle East, even before the agreement between Qantas and Emirates, which was signed in September 2012. In 1996, we had three direct flights a week between the UAE and Australia. As of 2013, there are 126 direct flights. That equates to one flight every 80 minutes. And so Australians have become very familiar with the UAE, either transiting or stopping over and having a look around Dubai or Abu Dhabi. And now we have 16,000 Australians who live and work in the UAE, which, if you look at it worldwide, is the 11th largest group of Australians working outside of Australia. I think also we have a very strong defence and security relationship. The headquarters of the Australian Defence Force for the Middle East region is based in the Emirate of Dubai, and it's through that headquarters that we service our work in Afghanistan. So it's a very important relationship. It's a great complement to the level of comfort that we have with the UAE that we are able to have a base there. There seems to be a lot of Australian businesses operating in the UAE. Can you tell us some more about the UAE economy and the trade relationship? Well, the UAE economy has traditionally been one based on oils. So prior to the discovery of oil in the 1950s, 1960s, it was a very poor place and a lot of reliance on subsistence fishing, basically. Obviously, with the discovery of oil, things have taken off and it's become a very affluent society. But there is a realisation that the oil is going to run out eventually and what do they do after that happens? So they've tried to diversify their economy more and more. They're looking at things such as renewable energy and nuclear energy, which I'll talk a bit about later, but also in terms of Dubai and Abu Dhabi, their role as hubs for travel obviously with the two airlines, Emirates and Etihad, also for commerce, for tourism obviously as well. You mentioned there that there are some complementarities between the two countries. What are some areas for further cooperation between the UAE and Australia? That's a good question. In terms of the existing complementarities, the trade relationship that we have, which I think, as I said before with aviation, it's really led to a huge growth in people links and in bilateral trade. So we now have a two-way trade relationship of about $6 billion a year, which makes the UAE our 14th or 15th largest trading partner in the world, which for a country like Australia, which is focused predominantly on the Asia Pacific region, is quite a statistic. And it's across a variety of sectors. So we have Illumina, which is our number one export to the UAE. We also export a lot of basic commodities like wheat, barley and other grains. Australian meat, especially lamb, is really popular. You see it on all the supermarket fridges and on the restaurant menus. And then we have passenger motor vehicles, which is quite an interesting one. Australian cars, Toyota Camrys, which comprise a lot of the taxi fleets for example in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, or built in Melbourne. And GM Holden does the Caprice exports, the Caprice in large quantities. So there's a really significant trading relationship there. There's over 350 Australian companies that are registered in the UAE. Most of those predominantly are, I guess, historically in the construction and engineering sectors. So companies like Layton's or GHD, Whirly Parsons, SMEC have been responsible for building a lot of the very iconic structures you see, particularly in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. But we have Australian companies heavily involved in the retail space. Just Jeans or Paspali Pearls. Or if you look at Food, Glory Jeans, Coffee, Jones the Grocer, Dome Coffee. So there's a significant Australian presence. In terms of future areas for cooperation, I'd like to see that we could do more on education. We already do quite a lot. There's over a thousand Emirati students, for example, studying in Australian universities, which is about 20% of all Emiratis who study overseas. We have two very reputable Australian universities with a presence in Dubai. The University of Wollongong in Dubai, which is one of the oldest universities in the UAE and has graduated 6,000 students in the 20 years of its existence. And Murdoch University. Plus a couple of Australian schools in the Emirate of Sharjah. I'd like to see maybe an Australian school in Dubai and an Australian school in Abu Dhabi as well because the demand is very strong and education is being high class in terms of quality of teaching and quality of curricula. I think in terms of renewable energy, that's a particularly important area of future cooperation. The Mazda Institute, which is based in Abu Dhabi, is a real hub for research and funding of renewable energy projects. And Abu Dhabi is also the home of the international renewable energy agents. Australia of course has a lot of great technology and companies in the renewable energy space. So I'd like to see more and more cooperation between us. And I think finally another form of energy, nuclear energy. This is a very significant development last year in 2012. Australia and the UAE signed a bilateral nuclear cooperation agreement. And this essentially paves the way for Australia the world's largest holder of known uranium reserves to begin exporting uranium to the UAE for use in the UAE's burgeoning civil nuclear energy program. Earlier you mentioned the large numbers of Australians either living in the UAE or passing through and visiting. What advice do you have for people thinking about a trip to the UAE? I definitely encourage them all to register on Smart Traveller and to read the travel advice that we have about the UAE and there's been a significant amount of work that's been put into that recently, particularly now that our national airline Qantas is flying through the UAE. But as I mentioned, 16,000 Australians who live in the UAE and probably about half a million who travel through there every year. So I think being cognisant and familiar with the travel advice and with the different cultural environment, the different legal environment, the things that you can expect when visiting a different country is very important. So if you could describe Australia's relationship with the UAE in just two words, what would they be? I'd say rapid and informal. When I say rapid, I'm essentially talking about the fact that our relationship has blossomed over the last 10 or 12 years in a very short period of time. In terms of informal, I think Australians have a general reputation in the UAE as not being stuffy or fixed on hierarchy or protocol and being very can-do people with a great work ethic. And I think the Emiratis really appreciate that and get on well with us as a result. So rapid and informal. Thanks very much. That was Australia's Ambassador to the UAE, Pablo King.