Opening Remarks – Bilateral meeting with Prime Minister of Thailand
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: Firstly, can I say, Prime Minister, congratulations on your election. Australia and Thailand have a great friendship and we are working on our strategic partnership that we have in place between our two great countries. We have a good trading relationship as well and a trade agreement. We are important partners, as well. As members of ASEAN we’re certainly involved and 50 years, we will celebrate, next year, and I thank you for accepting our invitation to come to Melbourne in March. I very much look forward to welcoming you and you’ll be well received in Australia. There’s a large diaspora in Australia with the Thai community. It’s very big and a community that’s involved in businesses, involved in commerce and spread right around the entire nation. And of course, many Australians enjoy travel to Thailand and vice versa. But we have a lot we can work on. Through ASEAN, we’re very keen on the climate change transition as well and what’s occurring there. But we have launched our Southeast Asia Economic Strategy to 2040. We launched that at the ASEAN Summit in Jakarta a couple of months ago and that is really pointing towards how our complementary economies can work to create jobs in both of our jurisdictions and to make a positive result for our economies. I look forward to our discussion today.