HC Speech - Vancouver Consulate Opening - Australian High Commission

Australian High Commission

Canada

Address: Suite 710, 50 O'Connor Street, Ottawa, ON K1P 6L2 - Tel: 613-236-0841 - Fax: 613-236-4376

OPENING OF THE AUSTRALIAN CONSULATE IN VANCOUVER

Remarks by the High Commissioner

26 March 2009

It is a great pleasure to be in Vancouver and to have the opportunity to make some remarks to you today. This is my first visit to British Columbia since I arrived in Canada last November. Pacific Canada is of key importance to Australia because of our shared focus on the East Asian region. Our respective economic destinies are in many ways linked directly to the region and its ability to succeed politically and economically.

Vancouver is, of course, in many respects the birthplace of Australia-Canada economic relations. Much of the early push for establishing bilateral commercial linkages between the two countries came from the logging industry in and around Vancouver. That led to the appointment of Canada’s first trade commissioner to the colony of NSW in 1895.

Protectionism was the order of the day in the Australian colonies at that time – in fact, there was a considerable degree of hyperbole in the welcome from the Sydney press to the trade commissioner, warning its readers that expanded trade with Canada would be ‘suicidal folly’.

Thankfully, that attitude seems to have been a relic of the time, one that disappeared - albeit gradually over a period of time - after federation in 1901. Trade actually flourished in the inter war period, although official trade relations were not always quite so smooth as the two countries emerged from under the imperial skirts of the United Kingdom with rather different perspectives and objectives, reflecting our different geographic realities and economic circumstances.

It is not widely known that formal diplomatic relations between our two countries were only established in 1939, driven by the imminent outbreak of war. After the High Commission in Ottawa was established in 1940, Australia’s presence in Vancouver followed seven years later.

Today, the Consulate is the flagship of our official presence in western Canada, providing services to the estimated 25,000 Australians who live in or travel to the region, as well as the more than 3,000 working holiday visas holders in British Columbia.

As many of you will know, the Consulate is managed by the Australian Trade Commission – Austrade - the Government agency with responsibility for export facilitation and support for international business. That reflects a strong commitment to developing trade and investment opportunities.

Expanding our two way trade and economic linkages is particularly important at this time of economic crisis internationally. Compared to many other OECD countries, Canada and Australia are relatively well placed to weather the storm of the economic crisis.

In February the Australian Government introduced a $42 billion Economic Stimulus Plan that will provide a boost of around ½ per cent of GDP in 08-09 and between ¾ and 1 per cent of GDP in 09-10. More than 70 per cent of the funding is aimed at building prosperity for the future.

‘Shovel ready’ projects are an element of the Plan, but there has also been a strong focus on education and skills – including funding for new science labs and language centres for 500 schools; a major program of classroom modernisation; and an expansion of training programs across the board.

A key to global economic recovery will be concerted international action. The G20 is crucial to the interests of Australia and Canada in this respect. The forum has a key role to play in getting world growth back on track.

A major feature of our shared agenda for reviving growth must be to stand against any attempts to reintroduce trade and financial protectionism. Ministers in Australia and Canada have made robust public statements against protectionism and those statements need to be supported by business and other groups. As the experience of the 1930s demonstrated, erecting barriers to trade and investment is counter to efforts to restore growth and must be resisted.

I know that all of you here today recognise and appreciate that the Asia Pacific region will be crucial to the prospects for global economic recovery.

There is an inexorable shift in global economic and strategic influence to the Asia Pacific. The region has the world’s two most populous countries, China and India; two of the top three economies, Japan and China; the largest democracy in the world, India; and the country with the largest Muslim population in the world, Indonesia.

By 2020, Asia will account for around 45 per cent of global GDP, one-third of global trade, and more than half of the increase in global energy consumption. And by 2020, 56 per cent of the world’s nearly 8 billion people will live in Asia.
These rapid changes, however, are not just economic or demographic. The global strategic balance is changing. Two of the world’s largest military forces, China and India, are in Asia.

With this growing economic and strategic influence comes an expectation of, and the actual exercise of, greater political influence. Australia wants to see Canada and others in the region actively involved in a dialogue and practical action to safeguard the region’s security and its long term prosperity.

Free trade is a key part of that vision. Australia has concluded a range of FTAs with regional countries including Singapore and Thailand and most recently with the ASEAN FTA (jointly with New Zealand), and we are negotiating with China, Japan and Malaysia and about to launch with the Republic of Korea.

Our two countries have a shared interest in ensuring that regional integration in the Asia Pacific is pro trade and investment. We can do that by collaborating globally and regionally, for example I’ve already mentioned the G20. We are also both members of the WTO and of APEC.

I think we should also build our bilateral economic relations, developing models and approaches that set an example for others in the region. Our trade relationship is diverse and growing. Two-way trade is upwards of $3.5 billion annually and two-way investment is over $10 billion.

Australian products have been very successful in this market over the years. BC is Australia’s second largest market for wine in Canada; Australian food products such as Capilano Honey, SPC Ardmona and Darrel Lea Licorice are found in stores across BC – and even Aussie retailers such as COS Bread are well established in the market.

And the success goes beyond traditional sectors such as food and wine and mining and energy and now cuts across all industry sectors. One only needs to look around the room today to see representatives of some of the 30+ companies that have established a presence in Vancouver such as Aconex, Bark Busters, FSS, Macquarie, Navitas and Worley Parsons Westmar to name just a few. Education, cultural and tourism links are prospering. The Vancouver Olympics will provide a real boost for these links. In other words we have good foundations; we now should build on it, looking toward our region.

I want to conclude my remarks by saying that I’m delighted to be able to attend the reopening of the Consulate and delighted that Kevin Lamb remains at the helm as he has been for some time. He is an exceptional officer and I’m proud to work with him.

Thank you.