Thank you, Minister Downer

I’m glad to be here in the beautiful city of Sydney, with its friendly and charming people.

I would like to thank His Excellency Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and His Excellency Deputy Prime Minister and Trade Minister Mark Vail for their warm welcome and kind hospitality.  I would like to thank them particularly for their open and frank views and the spirit of dialogue that animated our meeting today.

I am also glad that Trade and Industry Secretary Peter Favila and his team are part of our discussions today and thank him for his excellent contributions.

We’ve just signed a Memorandum of Understanding that formalizes our bilateral ministerial consultations. We will hold one every two years, more often if necessary, and we will include the agencies that are directly involved in the issues.

This MOU is an important measure in building even closer relations between our two countries – relations that are firmly anchored on our shared values and interests and our recognition of the importance of working with others in addressing present and future challenges.

We’ve taken an important step in that direction by holding our first Philippines-Australia Ministerial Meeting today.

We’ve had very substantive discussions on a wide range of issues of mutual interest and concern to both our countries.  I believe that the Joint Ministerial statement and Action Agenda that we adopted today faithfully reflects our discussions, understanding and decisions.

We focused our discussions on the future integration of the region, our common regional security issues, and the central role being played by ASEAN in our region.

We also concentrated on cooperation on counterterrorism, working closely together on the promotion of interfaith dialogue as a means to build peace, tolerance and understanding, support for our efforts at building peace in the Philippines, particularly in providing development assistance to conflict and post-conflict areas.

We discussed the prospects of building the capacity of the Philippines in border management and security, maritime patrols and surveillance capabilities, in support of the continued and determined efforts of the Philippines to fight terror and transnational crimes, including, piracy and human trafficking.

To strengthen and better coordinate cooperation in addressing the pressing issue of terrorism, we announced our commitment to establish a bilateral mechanism that will harness the full potentials of inter-agency consultation and coordination on counter-terrorism.

Our two delegations also deftly tackled our common desire to increase trade and economic cooperation.  We received the assurances of the Australian delegation of the continued interest of Australian companies in investing in mining, infrastructure and information and communication technology in the Philippines, as well as providing technical assistance in these areas.  I particularly welcome Australia’s commitment to increase cooperation on the BIMP-EAGA.

We touched upon the global trading situation and market access for Philippine products into Australia.  We agreed to work towards achieving some progress in resolving existing disputes on market access and quarantine issues.

We discussed the trade in services, particularly opportunities for the Philippines in the information technology sector of Australia.

We agreed to boost cooperation in the education sector and Australia agreed to look into possible measures that would address our desire for Philippine educational qualifications to be properly recognized in Australia.  The proper recognition of the qualifications of our graduates would allow them to be properly employed and compensated and would help in preventing illegal recruitment and exploitation.

Increasing people-to-people interaction and dialogue are key elements in building greater trust and understanding between our two countries.  Towards this end, we agreed to establish a political exchange program that will focus initially on exchange of visits of our parliamentarian and young political and business leaders.

Our relations with Australia are already on firm footing.  As a result of today’s meeting, we are even more ready and determined to take further and bolder steps in continuing to strengthen these relations.

Thank you.  END