Wednesday 27 November 2024
Main Committee Room – Parliament House
8:30AM AEDT
It is a real honour and pleasure to be back with you again this year. Can I say how much you raise us up when we gather here at this now annual event. We find in that culture of Pacific love and Pacific kindness and Pacific harmony and spirit that you bring, as was just evidenced. That it raises our spirits, raises our hopes, and appropriately you bring raised expectations of us and our expectations that we take seriously and that we know it is so very important for us to listen to. Can I acknowledge my great friend, Australia’s former Deputy Prime Minister and our Shadow Minister for the Pacific and International Development, Michael McCormack. To Josh Wilson, thank you very much, as always, for your engagement and for hosting to all of the Micah family, to Matt and all of the team the Pacific Conference of Churches, Excellencies, DFAT team who work so hard across our region. Thank you so much for being here again and for bringing this spirit.
The opportunity for members and senators to hear firsthand from you about your priorities and challenges, and most importantly, your solutions and expectations. Is invaluable to us. That’s why we’re so grateful for you taking the time to come into this – Australia’s people’s house – but on a day like today, very much the Pacific people’s house too. The fact that you start your day here in Canberra with ministers and shadow ministers sharing our thoughts with you and listening as we do, and I certainly seek to do to many delegations that come from the Pacific, I hope, is a demonstration of cross-party commitment that exists in Australia to valuing our relationship with the Pacific, a commitment that transcends the cut and thrust of our day-to-day politics. The political battle that plays out in this building over the last few years as Australia’s Shadow Foreign Minister and indeed prior to that, in different roles, I’ve had the opportunity to visit many of the countries that the delegates assembled here have come from, and to do so with Michael, who is also had the chance to visit many others in addition to me.
These have been important opportunities to reassure our Pacific friends and family that regardless of who is in power in Australia, our commitment to the Pacific is unwavering. That is very important for me to reinforce to you today while in government. And of course, Australia is due for an election before you next assemble here. And I hope for a change, but that’s for us in this building to fight over. For you I want to be reassuring that that commitment to the Pacific is not one held by one party over another. From time to time we will have our discussions, our debates, our even arguments in this building. We’re politicians, after all. But when it comes to the Pacific, those debates are, by and large, driven by a shared desire. A shared desire to achieve the best outcomes we can by working together in partnership with our Pacific vuvale. We do so because the challenges are shared challenges. They are different challenges, but we share them and we understand the perspective of why we must share.
In meeting with representatives of Pacific island nations, particularly young leaders, I have been struck by the passion, the care, the concern, as I’ve been told directly about the importance of delivering practical assistance to lift education standards, to deliver improved health outcomes, to assist women and girls to achieve their full potential. All have spoken about the economic challenges they face, the social challenges that present themselves, and the most critical challenges of the Pacific. Most notably, of course, climate change. I’ve heard the heart wrenching stories, seen the shocking images, stood in the locations where king tides all too often take land, disrupt communities, families, businesses, livelihoods and threaten them. I reiterate Senator Wong’s words the importance of all countries in playing their role. Australia must play our role. You should have expectations of us, but so too must all countries and your leaders should be clear in their expectations of others, particularly those with even larger emissions profiles and impact than Australia, especially those with even larger emissions profiles that continue to grow, unlike those in Australia.
I was proud to be part of a government previously, which placed strong emphasis on how we deepen our ties with our Pacific friends and partners through what we called the Pacific Step Up. It included direct climate financing. It included how we focus our aid programs on the Pacific, how we built and delivered additional support during the Covid 19 pandemic, and indeed putting in place a multi-billion dollar infrastructure fund for the Pacific. The Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific.
Along with Minister Wong and other colleagues I saw the benefit of that fund when in Palau where we toured a solar farm. It was helping Palau to meet its own energy needs, delivering economic benefit, cheaper energy for the future, but also cleaner energy. Transitioning Palau from reliance on diesel fuelled carbon emitting generation to clean solar energy. It’s a powerful signal of how we can work together as our economy transitions and our energy generation transitions, but also to lead by example in the smallest of locations, as in the largest. It also through that AIFFP fund a powerful example of the continuity of that support provided by governments in Australia for the Pacific.
As we embark upon the next election in Australia, the key thing I urge people to understand on the debate that we will have here in this next election is that when it comes to achieving net zero, our debate will largely be one not about if, but about how. And that is such a critical change and step forward in relation to the debate here and the expectations that have been set and hopefully delivered in our country. In addition to those steps and the AIFFP financing, we drove in government, the strengthening of our diplomatic presence across the Pacific to ensure that we had representatives on the ground in all Pacific Island Forum nations so that we could more easily engage directly, hear directly and work directly with specific partners.
But I also want to acknowledge in driving home that message of continuity. The current government has built on the Pacific Step Up with their own commitment to the Pacific and partnership with those Pacific nations with other new investments. As the message of bipartisanship requires us to recognise the effort and commitment of one another, and to make sure that in doing so, we provide that reassurance of continuity and of commitment. That’s why being here is so important to hear firsthand your hopes, your aspirations for your nations and communities.
These are always challenging, that your gathering comes, such as today on the second last parliamentary sitting schedule of the program. Senator Wong and I hopefully hold some influence in our respective parties, but also our responsibilities as leaders in the Senate, do mean that perhaps we cannot always spend as much time with you on this particular day. But we each prioritise and together with colleagues like Michael and Josh, prioritise spending as much time learning, understanding when not in the depths of this Parliament, all that is happening and all that is important to your communities.
So, as you go about your program today and build upon the work of this week, I look forward to understanding further the tangible opportunities that you indicate to make a difference that can make us all better. Because when it comes to the challenges facing our region, our Pacific family, the best outcome for Pacific island nations is always the best outcome for Australia as well and they are attitudes that we will take forward whoever governs our country for years to come. Thanks so much for the chance to be here.