Your Excellencies and distinguished guests. It is an honour to welcome you all to Australia and to Melbourne this ASEAN-Australia Special Summit commemorating 50 years of Dialogue Relations.
I’m very pleased to welcome my co-chair, Prime Minister Sonexay.
I begin by acknowledging the Traditional Owners of the lands on which we meet – the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people – and I pay my respects to their Elders, past and present.
Thank you to Uncle Bill Nicholson, for his warm welcome on behalf of the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Traditional Owners.
We come together today to celebrate everything our citizens have achieved together over the past five decades.
Five decades of deepening our economic co-operation, broadening our two-way investment and strengthening the bonds of trust and friendship between our peoples and nations.
Five decades where the centrality of ASEAN has helped to underpin the stability, prosperity and security of the region we call home.
Five decades where each of us has helped build a strong and broad foundation.
But only a foundation.
And while we honour the vision and praise the legacy of the leaders who brought this forum together, half a century ago. What happens next is up to us.
That is the challenge confronting each of us – and it is the transformative set of opportunities in reach of all of us.
In 2021, ASEAN and Australia took the historic step of establishing a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership.
And with new co-operation between our governments, our businesses, our institutions and our peoples, we can see this partnership realise a new generation of peace, progress and prosperity.
Navigating the strategic challenges of our time – and finding new ways for our region to make this moment our own.
Australia’s two-way trade with ASEAN is worth around $180 billion a year.
Our investment totals nearly $300 billion.
That’s the level of engagement we bring to this forum – that’s the foundation we want to build on.
ASEAN is set to be the fourth-largest economy in the world by 2040.
And Australia wants to be a partner in this growth and prosperity, not an observer.
Not on the outside looking in, part of it – engaged and invested.
That’s why my Government’s Southeast Asia Economic Strategy is called: Invested.
It’s a plan to build on regional trade agreements – including the recently upgraded ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Area and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.
And to drive diversification in our trade, our economies and our two-way investment.
This is not a task for Governments alone – which is why so many respected business leaders and innovators and job creators from across the region are here with us today.
As well as representatives from civil society and the all-important education sector.
All here to share ideas on accelerating the transition to clean energy – and meeting the environmental challenge of climate change.
Expanding our maritime co-operation – for our shared security and our mutual prosperity.
And making sure that the big changes re-shaping the global and regional economy are harnessed in the interests of our people.
I look forward to convening with my fellow leaders tomorrow to continue our discussions.
To affirm our shared vision for the region.
And to agree on new ways we can support the ASEAN Outlook of the Indo-Pacific and achieve a more stable, peaceful, prosperous, and secure future.
Ladies and Gentlemen
The city we meet in for this summit has been witness to wave after wave of social and economic transformation.
The new wealth of the Gold Rush of the 1850s.
New rights for workers at the turn of last century.
A new home for people of every faith and tradition, leading Australia’s embrace of multiculturalism.
And yet we all know that the speed and scale of the change ahead of us will be more powerful and more profound than anything that has gone before.
Let us work together to embrace this change – and to shape it.
And as we commence the sixth decade of our co-operation – let us make it a decisive decade for our shared success.
