Alexander Downer (Mayo, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I want to thank members who participated in this debate on the Australia-Japan Foundation (Repeal and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2006. This is a very technical bill. It really boils down to bringing the Australia-Japan Foundation in line with much more modern practice, as was recommended by the Uhrig report. I appreciate the support there has been for this amendment. It means the Australia-Japan Foundation will be able to work more effectively in a way which is consistent with the government’s foreign policy and trade objectives. I appreciate that a debate like this is going to be somewhat broad ranging. I have heard members talking about Iran and the NPT and the issue of preferential trade agreements, which the member for Rankin spoke about. It has been interesting sitting here listening to those speeches, and I appreciate what honourable members have said.

The Australia-Japan relationship is without any doubt one of our most important but also one of our most successful relationships. To go back to the member for Rankin, he referred to the Australia-Japan Commerce Agreement of 1957. He may be interested to know that the Labor Party opposed that agreement in 1957 in an act of populist expediency, which appears to be one of the Labor Party’s constant companions.

But it was the beginning of a modern relationship between Australia and Japan. That relationship has really come to fruition in very recent times. The member for Rankin referred to the Australian troops working with the Japanese troops in Samawah in Al Muthanna province in Iraq. I was in Tokyo last week and held discussions with the Prime Minister, with the Chief Cabinet Secretary, Shinzo Abe, who is expected to become the next Prime Minister—I am not expressing a view about that; it is just that that is likely to happen without it being a certainty—and with the foreign minister, Taro Aso, as well as with other ministers, not least the defence minister. The Japanese expressed enormous appreciation for what Australia had done to provide a secure environment for their engineers and others to operate in in southern Iraq.

I would not want honourable members to underestimate the importance of that single act to our relationship with Japan. Japan was in Iraq to support the democracy project, the liberalisation of Iraq, as we have been. Japan was also there because it is a great ally of the United States of America. Yes, we are too. The fact that we were able to work together successfully without the loss of a single Japanese life, which is a very important consideration for them—obviously—and hand Al Muthanna province’s security back to the Iraqis with the withdrawal of foreign forces from that province has been a great achievement and it is recognised in Japan.

This has had a cathartic effect on the bilateral relationship with Japan. If we had run the sort of New Zealand-French-German style policy on Iraq, which the Labor Party wanted us to do, this element of our relationship, which has become so symbolic, never would have happened and I do not think we would have ever quite got to the point we are at now in our security relationship with Japan. We are talking about upgrading exercises and joint training in order to prepare to work together in emergency situations, such as we had in Aceh, and perhaps to work together again in a peacekeeping environment. We do not know where at this stage, but perhaps that will occur some time somewhere else in the world, as it has happened in East Timor as well as Iraq.

I think the Japanese see Australia now as a truly valued security partner. An illustration of that is the way over the last year we have elevated the trilateral security dialogue from officials level to ministerial level. On 18 March, Condoleezza Rice, Taro Aso and I met in Sydney for the first-ever meeting of the ministerial level trilateral security dialogue. We are planning at this stage to have a second meeting at the end of this year in the margins of the APEC meeting in Vietnam. I think this is very important and not just of practical value. We are three countries that share values, and values are very important in foreign policy. We share the values of democracy and freedom, liberal economics and liberal economies, and we are, if you like, linked to each other through our respective US alliances. So this has been also a very big step forward in our relationship with Japan.

When some members from the opposition side say we should be doing more with Japan, they show they are not even reading the newspapers—and that is just the newspapers. A lot more has been happening than would ever appear in a newspaper. This relationship has been catapulted forward over the last few years. The member for Rankin says that preferential trading arrangements cause world wars. I do not think the Pacific war was started because of preferential trading arrangements. We have a preferential trading arrangement with New Zealand, which was negotiated by the Fraser government. But it was one of those things that transcended party politics. The Hawke government finalised the details and signed off on it when they came to power. I do not think the preferential trading agreement between Australia and New Zealand has caused a war. It makes you think, doesn’t it? I think it has had the reverse effect. It has really brought our two countries much closer together. There has been an impressive integration of the Australian and New Zealand economies. It has been great for our GDP and it has probably been even greater for theirs. It has been great for both of us.

We have negotiated free trade agreements with a number of countries in Asia. We would see it as a logical extension of our broader diplomacy, a logical extension of our security policy and a logical extension of our long-running campaign for greater trade liberalisation and better market access for Australian businesses, including farmers. We would see it as logical that we should negotiate an FTA with Japan. I think we are reaching a point at which the Japanese will agree. We are doing a feasibility study at the moment and hope it will be completed in October. Once it is complete and, assuming it is positive, I think the Japanese may very well agree next year—which will be the 50th anniversary of that historic commerce agreement—to get into a negotiation over an FTA. There is a lot of support for that in many elements of the Japanese bureaucracy. I spoke last week to the ministers and the Prime Minister, and they are all very well disposed towards that, so I am pretty optimistic about that.

I am sorry to hear that the Labor Party are going to oppose that. They opposed the free trade agreement with the United States but they supported the one with Thailand and the one with Singapore. I would have thought that Labor would support free trade agreements with Asia as long as they have nothing to do with America. Of course, America for the Labor Party—

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