Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, Mr President, honourable members and honourable senators: today is only the fifth time in the 110-year history of this parliament that the two houses have met together to hear an address from a visiting head of state.

And today is the first time we have done so to hear an address from the President of the Republic of Indonesia.

In doing so, we symbolise the profound changes that have occurred in the relationship between our two countries.

Mr President, we welcome you as our neighbour.

Mr President, we welcome you as our friend.

And we welcome you now as a member of the family of democracies—a nation which now celebrates political freedom, a nation whose parliament is as loud, noisy and robust as the parliament in which we are now assembled and a nation where freedom of the press is now exercised without constraint, without restraint and without fear of repression.

Mr President, these are profound changes in which you have played no small part—and we are delighted to welcome you now as a fellow democracy.

The people of Indonesia enjoy a free media, an open society and religious tolerance.

They live in a multiparty democracy in which transitions to power take place according to law.

In Indonesia, democracy now has strong foundations.

And Indonesia’s economy continues to grow, disproving the argument of some that democracy somehow impedes development.

Indonesia now has the third-fastest-growing economy in the region and the third-fastest-growing economy of all those which make up the G20 of large economies around the world.

It has withstood the global economic crisis well.

This has been underpinned by a bold economic stimulus package of Indonesia’s and bold measures to underpin the stability of the Indonesian financial system.

Your national poverty reduction program is expected to benefit at least 35 million people.

Your nation of nearly 240 million spread across some 17,000 islands still faces many challenges—as do we in Australia with fewer millions and fewer islands.

But you have weathered the storm of the global financial crisis well through the strength of your leadership, and you have decided to exercise that leadership in order to avoid the alternative—mass unemployment—that would have brought great suffering to the people of Indonesia.

A strong friendship means standing shoulder to shoulder not only when times are good but also in the face of the greatest of adversities.

At the time of the devastating Victorian bushfires, President Yudhoyono and the people of Indonesia did not hesitate to send their assistance to us.

At the time, Mr President, you wrote me a letter of sympathy and support containing the following words:

In the spirit of the Australia-Indonesia partnership, Australia’s success is also Indonesia’s success, and its misery is also Indonesia’s misery.

These were eloquent words. No sentiment better encapsulates the 21st century relationship we seek between our two nations, between our two democracies.

Mr President, we are neighbours by circumstance, but we are friends because we have chosen to be friends.

Indonesia sent aid when bushfires struck Victoria.

Australia, too, sent aid workers, doctors and engineers to help the relief, recovery and reconstruction after the Padang earthquake in September of last year.

Australia sent police officers to work with their Indonesian counterparts in the aftermath of the terrorist bombings in Jakarta, as we did after the Bali bombings in which so many, many Australian lives were lost.

And we will never forget the unspeakable tragedy of the tsunami when, as nations, we stood shoulder to shoulder together in responding to the violence of nature and you wept with us as we mourned the loss of our own military personnel who were killed while helping in the recovery.

Challenges like these, whether natural disasters or man-made scourges, have brought our countries and our people closer together.

Mr President, our modern relationship has been forged in much adversity—adversity which has deepened rather than strained the bonds between us.

Mr President, we are now building a culture of cooperation between us across so many fields.

We are investing in a joint disaster reduction facility.

We are partnering with Indonesia in building its own natural disaster rapid response force.

Our law enforcement agencies are working closely together on a daily basis to deal with the continuing threat of terrorism and, Mr President, today we congratulate the government of Indonesia on its further extraordinary success in fighting terrorism within its own country.

As co-chairs of the Bali process, we are also pursuing a far-reaching regional response to people smuggling and to irregular migration and I would thank the government of Indonesia for their strong and continuing support.

Through bodies such as the Bali Democracy Forum and the Regional Interfaith Dialogue, we are working hand in hand to foster tolerance, pluralism and democracy across our wider region.

We are also working together in the institutions of our region—in the East Asia Summit and in APEC. In the future shape of our region’s architecture, together we are helping to build the habits of cooperation across our wider region.

Globally, we now work together intimately in the councils of the G20 on the great challenges which now lie ahead for the international economy.

We also work together on the great challenges that respect no international boundaries, such as the challenge of climate change, on which your own leadership at Bali just over two years ago was so important.

As neighbours with different histories, as neighbours with different cultures and as neighbours with different challenges of economic development, we now come together on the global stage to shape a common future together.

Mr President, historically, so much of our engagement has focused on managing the bilateral relationship between us.

Now, our relationship enters into a new phase, when together we work in the great institutions of our region and the world to build a better region and to build a better world.

As you and I have so often shared in private, we also have the potential to demonstrate to the world at large how two such vastly different nations—one an emerging economy, the other a developed economy; one Muslim, the other of Judeo-Christian origins; one a founding member of the non-aligned movement and the other, one of the oldest allies of the United States—can work comfortably, seamlessly and positively together and in partnership in the great councils of our region and the world.

Mr President, Australia’s relationship with Indonesia is comprehensive, it is dynamic, it is economic, it is in foreign policy and it is in security policy, and in all these domains, the potential is vast.

We are ambitious for the future of our relationship.

We are committed to a new partnership for a new century for Australia and for Indonesia.

Your visit and your address to the joint meeting of the Australian houses of parliament further strengthen the ties between our two nations and they reflect, Mr President, the esteem in which Australia holds our nations’ friendship and the esteem in which we hold you as President of the Indonesian Republic.

Mr President, you are a welcome guest in this parliament.

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