Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade
Business News ‘Politics & Business’ Breakfast
Acknowledgements omitted
I always enjoy the perspective of Western Australia and Perth which reflect your economic position and your geographic position, so close to Southeast Asia and so engaged with the regional economies.
I know the business community thinks deeply about what it means to protect and promote Australia’s interests in an increasingly uncertain world.
I know you think deeply about how we shore up Australia’s prosperity despite that uncertainty. I don,t need to tell this room, Western Australia is vital to that prosperity: when you succeed, the whole country prospers.
That success includes WA resources, metals, critical minerals and rare earths but it also includes WA manufacturers and workers, your universities, research and technology, which are all globally prized.
So what’s my role as Foreign Minister? Amongst other things and importantly, it is to help create opportunities, and promote and protect Australia’s interests as a reliable exporter of choice in an increasingly competitive international environment.
Our foreign policy helps build and maintain the strategic conditions that enable our stability and prosperity.
And you have to say that is a task that is not getting any easier.
Each day, our assumptions are being tested.
We live in a world of increasing strategic surprise. We live in a world that is ever more uncertain and unpredictable.
We see the devastating human toll of conflicts including in Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan.
Malign actors continue to engage in sabotage and terrorism.
Bullies threaten to use nuclear weapons, and authoritarianism is spreading.
Some countries are shifting alignment, high global inflation continues to put pressure on working people.
And institutions that we helped build are being eroded and rules that we helped write are being challenged.
These factors compound threats and risks in our own region from a changing climate, military buildup without transparency, and disruption of trade – as well as the risks inherent in great power competition.
I recently released the 2025 Snapshot of Australia in the World, a summary of our foreign policy strategy, priorities and policy achievements.
What it clearly shows is that even though we face a time of growing uncertainty, Australia is well-placed to protect our security, our stability and our prosperity.
But that is only if we continue to build our disciplined focus on our region, because it is here where our interests are most at stake; if we invest not only in traditional but also in more diverse relationships; and if we work with partners to uphold international rules that protect us all.
We have to apply ourselves to these tasks with ambition and calm, consistent and disciplined engagement.
This is the approach the Albanese Government is taking with the United States.
President Trump’s America First agenda envisages a very different role for America in the world, and that is what the American people have chosen.
President Trump campaigned on change and none of us should try to minimise the implications of this change.
And over the first seven weeks of the Trump Administration we have seen how broad those implications are around the world.
Mindful of the scale of this change involving our most important strategic partner, there has been extensive engagement across senior levels of the Albanese Government.
In addition to our relentless Ambassador in Washington, the Prime Minister has had two productive phone calls with the President.
I had the honour of being the first Australian Foreign Minister ever to be invited to attend a Presidential Inauguration, and I was able to put the case for Australia to the Secretary of State Marco Rubio on his first day in office.
The Deputy Prime Minister was Secretary Hegseth’s first international counterpart to meet with him following his confirmation.
The Treasurer has made an early connection with his counterpart, US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent.
And our Trade and Tourism Minister has also been engaging with his counterparts.
In those interactions we make the point that the US enjoys a two-to-one trade surplus with Australia and has since the Truman Presidency.
We make the point that US exports to Australia face no tariffs.
And that our trade and investment relationship is important for US industry and jobs. Half of Australia’s exports are inputs into US manufacturing and construction. And of course, we are a top 10 investor in the United States.
And given the pool of funds under management in Australia’s superannuation sector that can only grow.
Nevertheless, last week we saw that the second Trump administration has hardened its position in favour of tariffs as a centrepiece of its economic policy.
And whereas the first Trump administration exempted 36 countries from steel tariffs and 32 countries from aluminium tariffs, this time not one single country has been exempted.
Not Australia. Not Japan. Not anyone.
And the degree of a country’s engagement has not changed the outcome.
Indeed, the administration has been clear that the exemptions granted in its first term were a mistake.
Our response to the Trump administration’s imposition of tariffs on Australia has been firm and it has been clear.
As the Prime Minister has said, these measures are “entirely unjustified”.
And “it is against the spirit of our two nations, enduring friendship and fundamentally at odds with the benefits our economic partnership has delivered over more than 70 years.”
Steel and aluminium exports to the US represent 0.18 per cent of Australia’s total exports in 2023.
We will continue to press the case for all Australian exporters, including steel and aluminium.
We will continue to have advocate for the existing economy-wide access commitments under the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement. They should be maintained.
And we will also keep making the case for the many opportunities Australia has to offer.
After the US announced their position, Peter Dutton said he would “do a deal” and “there’s no question about that”.
Given not one leader of the 36 countries that got a deal last time got a deal this time, Australians are right to be incredulous about that claim.
And they,re rightly concerned Peter Dutton would do a deal at any cost.
Unlike Mr Dutton, we are not going to give away the farm – and we don,t have to.
We will always put the interests of Australian industries and workers first.
Remember, these tariffs do not necessarily mean that Americans won,t keep buying Australian products.
And many nations want our exports. This state understands that possibly more than any part of Australia.
We have a strong track record of supporting our exporters diversify their export markets, and regardless of what happens with US tariffs, that is a priority we will continue to pursue.
One of the priorities I have brought to this job has been a focus on Southeast Asia, in part because of where I,m from originally, but in part because of my firm belief that ASEAN and the countries of Southeast Asia are critical to our next generation’s stability and prosperity.
So just to our north, Indonesia stands as a major and growing power in our region and beyond.
The world’s third largest democracy, projected to become the world’s fifth largest economy.
So deepening our economic engagement with Indonesia is of enormous value to Australia, and part of our broader effort to diversify our economy, especially through Southeast Asia.
Now we have our work cut out. When we came to government, Australian direct investment in Southeast Asia was lower than it was in 2014.
Over this period, while international investment in the region had grown apace, Australia’s investment in it had gone backwards, both in relative and absolute terms.
And by 2040, Southeast Asia is predicted to be the world’s fourth-largest economy after the United States, China and India.
Australia’s trade and investment has simply not kept pace – and we need to turn this around.
Australia has been central to the north Asian economic growth story, so we must be to the Southeast Asian economic growth story.
That’s why we appointed Nicholas Moore AO as Australia’s Special Envoy to Southeast Asia and charged him with developing a Southeast Asia Economic Strategy to 2040.
In the almost 18 months since its launch, we have made tangible progress.
We have now implemented a number of initiatives responding to its recommendations, including new deal teams to identify and facilitate Australian investment in the region.
New landing pads in Jakarta and Ho Chi Minh City, in addition to the existing hub in Singapore, to help our tech companies scale up.
Business and investment missions, including three to Singapore, one of which was our largest ever outbound investment mission by value, representing a combined $2.5 trillion of assets under management.
Improved visa access for businesspeople from the region and the establishment of the ASEAN-Australia Centre because we have to continue to build Southeast Asia literacy and enhance business and cultural ties.
It’s no accident that Austrade had their best ever client results in Southeast Asia in 2024, with over $1 billion in commercial outcomes.
We all need to play our part in diversification.
Complacency, or business as usual, risks compromising our influence today and our prosperity tomorrow.
Nobody today could claim they don,t understand the risk of putting too many eggs in one market.
As you know, China’s growth has been a crucial driver of Australia’s prosperity and the world’s prosperity – and we know this has never been straightforward for business.
Especially during the last term of government, when China’s doors were closed to many of our exports.
Since the Albanese Government was elected you have seen a concerted effort to restore dialogue and stabilise the relationship with our largest trading partner.
We pressed China to lift impediments on more than $20 billion of Australian exports – barley, wine, coal, timber logs, cotton, beef, hay and copper ores, concentrates, and lobsters.
The final impediments on lobster were lifted in late December, and we have seen in just the first month of the crayfish trade resuming into China, sales have already reached $118 million.
We know how important that is to Western Australia. In 2023-24, China received 56 per cent of exports from this state. And what we want is grow opportunities for our great exporters – both into China and elsewhere across our region.
The China relationship will continue to face challenges.
You see, the term stabilisation has never meant there would be no problems.
It has always meant we should be able to engage directly with China in order to manage differences and problems that are inevitable – without these problems derailing our ability to talk to each other – as we saw in the past.
And that is what we will keep doing – and it is what the Australian people expect of us, your government – to engage confidently, calmly and consistently, protecting our sovereignty and advancing our interests.
We have seen in recent weeks that the same people who had no regard for the consequences for Australian exporters and jobs are at it again – trying to turn China into an election issue, with inflammatory language.
This country, as you all know, built our prosperity in great part because we are a trading nation.
A great trading nation has to grapple with a world where trade can be a vulnerability as well as an opportunity.
And the whole country, all of us, government, business, the workforce – we have to manage these risks together.
We can’t imagine the challenges away nor can we put other countries, interests ahead of ours.
What we can do is recognise our challenges in the world are growing.
That our interests are most at stake in our region.
And that we must not just invest in our traditional relationships but also in diversified relationships.
And if we do these things, we can be confident that together as Australians we can meet these challenges, and keep building a better future.
https://www.foreignminister.gov.au/minister/penny-wong/speech/business-news-politics-business-breakfast