Natasha Griggs (Solomon, Country Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the foreign minister. Following the Prime Minister's meeting with Indonesian President Yudhoyono, will the minister inform the House of the government's efforts to deepen and strengthen its ties with Indonesia?

Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Solomon for her question. I know that she is deeply interested in the bilateral relationship with Indonesia and particularly the trade relationship that is so important to the Northern Territory. I can assure the member and the House that the relationship with Indonesia is a key priority of this government.

Indeed, the Prime Minister's first overseas visit was to Indonesia and yesterday he met with President Yudhoyono, again, at the President's invitation, and I am assured by the foreign minister Dr Natalegawa, who contacted me this morning, that the meeting went well. The Prime Minister has reported that it was positive and constructive and I think that it is quite evident that there is a warmth and a rapport between the two leaders, the President and our Prime Minister.

The Prime Minister and the President stressed the importance of the bilateral relationship and the need to broaden and deepen and diversify this relationship. Already there is a high level of engagement between Australia and Indonesia. Indeed, I have calculated that there are about 60 different areas of cooperation across 22 Australian government departments and agencies and our opposite number in Indonesia.

I have met the foreign minister, Dr Natalegawa, on nine separate occasions since taking this office, one-on-one constructive, positive meetings. Senator Johnston, the Minister for Defence, and I will be shortly holding our two-plus-two meetings with our Indonesian counterparts. Ambassador Najib has returned to Canberra and we are initiating more activities to strengthen the relationship—a $15 million grant for an Australia-Indonesia Centre at Monash University. Indeed, the New Colombo Plan is seeing students studying in Indonesia as we speak. In fact, 40 per cent of the applicants for the second phase of the New Colombo Plan were to Indonesia, and I think that augurs well for the relationship.

We are rebuilding confidence in the trade relationship with Indonesia and, as the Minister for Agriculture reminds me, about 230,000 head of cattle live have now been moved into Indonesia. We are reassuring Indonesia that we will not repeat Labor's ban because that went straight to the heart of food security.

We are also cleaning up the mess left by Labor in terms of the people-smuggling trade. The Prime Minister assured President Yudhoyono that we will dismantle the people-smuggling trade, and the President said that Indonesia too was a victim of the people-smuggler trade. I think that it is worth remembering what Labor's Bob Carr said about this in his published travel diary. He said, 'I told Abbott if he won he'd have to take drastic action on people smuggling or the numbers would keep rising and crowd out our regular immigration program.' Bob Carr said, 'I told him, because we'd lost control of our borders.' That is what Bob Carr said. I want to acknowledge the work of the Minister for Immigration, who has stopped the people-smuggling trade and who has stopped the deaths at sea, because that is not in the interests of Australia or Indonesia for a people-smuggling trade to flourish as it did under the former Labor government.