Government unveils $2b boost to trade and investment in southeast Asia
The Federal Government has unveiled plans for a new two-billion-dollar fund to boost Australian investment in southeast Asia. It comes as the Prime Minister meets a host of leaders at the ASEAN-Australia Summit in Melbourne
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TVTranscript
00:00 There's long been a view in Canberra that Australia's trade and investment links with
00:06 South East Asia aren't what they could be or what they need to be.
00:10 Now the trade side of things has been not too bad and trade has actually grown with
00:15 the region quite substantially but when you look at investment in particular from Australia
00:19 into South East Asia, that's been lagging.
00:22 Now that's a problem for two reasons.
00:24 One, there's potentially quite a bit of money that Australian businesses could be making
00:28 that they're not making at the moment and in the future that's an opportunity they probably
00:33 want to take.
00:34 Secondly, there's a strategic element to this as well.
00:37 Australia is keenly conscious that South East Asian nations are hungry for investment and
00:41 they want to see more Australian money in the region as a signal of Australia's intent
00:45 that it's serious about building a deeper relationship.
00:48 Now as a result the government's decided to press ahead with this idea of an investment
00:53 fund largely for things like infrastructure and clean energy.
00:56 It would be up to $2 billion that would be available through the EFA to plough into this.
01:01 Let's take a listen to what the Treasurer Jim Chalmers had to say explaining why the
01:05 government was pursuing this idea.
01:08 What this new investment facility is all about is making sure that we can turbocharge that
01:14 two way investment which is so important to the region but also to our country, its employers
01:19 and its workers as well.
01:22 And so what you'll hear from us today is really a big focus on investment, trying to get that
01:27 two way investment and trade as good as it can be because we recognise that when the
01:32 region is more secure and more prosperous our people here in Australia are more secure
01:36 and more prosperous as well.
01:39 Meanwhile the Prime Minister, Stephen, has just met with Singapore's Prime Minister.
01:42 What did the two leaders have to say in the wake of that meeting?
01:47 Yeah, Lee Hsien Loong is something of an elder statesman in South East Asia.
01:52 He's actually leaving office near the end of this year but he's one of those leaders
01:57 that Australian Prime Ministers, several of them in fact, have turned to pretty regularly
02:01 for advice.
02:03 No big surprises out of the meeting today.
02:05 A range of initiatives all note how very worthwhile in areas such as clean energy, green shipping,
02:10 the cross-border electricity trade.
02:12 Announce that as Australia and Singapore try to build an economic relationship that grapples
02:17 with the realities of decarbonisation.
02:20 But both leaders fielded quite a few questions on some more contentious subjects including
02:24 the South China Sea where there's an increasingly tense series of confrontations between Philippines
02:30 and China on some of those disputed territories.
02:34 Now both the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, and Lee Hsien Loong stressed similar points.
02:38 They want a region that's free of conflict.
02:41 The Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, saying that that was one of the main things they
02:45 wanted to discuss during this meeting.
02:47 There has been work towards a code of conduct but because different states within ASEAN
02:52 have vastly different attitudes about the best way to approach it and vastly different
02:56 appetites for risk when it comes to dealing with Beijing, those negotiations have been
03:03 very, very slow.
03:04 Now let's take a listen to what both Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, had to say as
03:08 well as Lee Hsien Loong from Singapore explaining why those negotiations have been so protracted.
03:15 ASEAN will continue to discuss the shared interests that we have in this region of maintaining
03:22 a stable, secure and prosperous region.
03:26 We are holding this summit in the context of the fact that we live in close proximity
03:37 to the fastest growing region of the world in human history.
03:40 That presents an enormous opportunity.
03:43 But it's an opportunity that relies upon international laws being respected, relies upon trade being
03:52 encouraged in a fair and transparent way.
03:57 The negotiations have been underway.
03:59 They are taking some time.
04:02 They have reached a point, I think, of a first complete read-through of the code of conduct.
04:08 But to negotiate and to settle the code, I believe, will take some time.
04:15 The issues are not easy to resolve.
04:17 And really, negotiating a code of conduct inevitably raises issues of what the ultimate
04:25 outcomes are going to be.
04:27 And therefore, because the ultimate answers are difficult, so too negotiating the code
04:33 will take quite some time.
04:37 So as you can hear from that, Ros, it's a fraught and complex subject.
04:41 But it will be interesting to see what ASEAN leaders have to say about the South China
04:45 Sea and about China's behaviour in it when they issue their final statement at the end
04:49 of the summit tomorrow.
04:51 [BLANK_AUDIO]