Opening remarks Australia-Indonesia annual leaders’ meeting
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: Well, Mr President and your delegation, can I say what a privilege it is to host you here in my home city of Sydney and show the dynamism of modern Australia. And it is particularly nice to host you in this wonderful venue. I apologise that the weather isn’t perfect today, but we have done our best. My first bilateral visit as Prime Minister was to Indonesia, and that is because there is no more important relationship than the relationship between our two great nations. And in the first year of my prime ministership, this is the fourth meeting that we have had. One of which was, of course, when you hosted the G20 meeting. One which I think symbolised Indonesia’s rise and presence as one of the major economies and leaders of the world, and your personal leadership, it must be said, at that forum as well. And you have now, of course, gone from chairing the G20, you are now chairing ASEAN. And we are very much looking forward to attending the ASEAN Summit, and East Asia Summit in September.
We regard the centrality of ASEAN in our region as being absolutely critical. We recognise the importance of Indonesia’s territorial integrity and your sovereignty as a nation. And we respect that, and we work with you on a range of issues covering the difficult geopolitical circumstances of our time. Today, we have some important work to conclude and we’ve already agreed on a range of important measures for our two countries.
Strengthening our economic development, strengthening our people-to-people ties by some of the changes that we’re making to visa arrangements, helping to encourage investment which is two-way between our two countries so that we can have mutual benefit from that. Cooperating on regional security, looking towards the opportunities that are in our region with the changing economy. Including, of course, the discussions we’ve had about cooperating on areas such as climate change, lowering emissions and that includes the transition that the world is seeing towards greater use of electric vehicles and the opportunity that we have there on critical minerals and other areas. The important relationship that we have on education with the addition of two more Australian universities having a presence directly in Indonesia and seeing more Indonesians studying in Australia, but also more Australians studying in Indonesia is very much what we want to do.
In 2024, we will host the ASEAN Australia Special Summit here next March and that will be an important event for Australia. And so, to you and your delegation here, from all of my team here, the senior ministers who’ve joined us, I thank you for your friendship, I thank you for the relationship that we have where we are able to regularly talk with each other not just in meetings, but to have that personal interaction as well. And I regard it as being absolutely critical to our national interest that that occur. But on a personal level, I regard it as a great honour as well and something that the warmth between us is something that has given me a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction. And I look forward to that continuing.