Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As members would be aware, on 5 and 6 March Australia will host the ASEAN summit to commemorate 50 years of relationships between Australia and ASEAN. That will be held in Melbourne and will be attended by ministers as well as the Leader of the Opposition and other members of parliament. It will be an important moment for us to signify the work that we have done in building a relationship over those 50 years across successive governments, and we look forward to welcoming the leaders of every single ASEAN nation; all have indicated that they will be attending.

In addition to that, before and afterwards there'll be a number of bilateral official visits. I have invited the President of the Philippines, President Marcos, to address the parliament on 29 February. He will be doing so following on from the very successful delivery to the joint sitting of parliament of Prime Minister Marape, which occurred less than a week ago. It's a reminder that our most important relationships are here in our neighbourhood, and the Philippines, of course, is an important nation for us. President Marcos is a great friend of Australia and a supporter of democratic systems, and we look forward to welcoming him here, and I'm sure the diaspora from the Philippines, which is very large, will look forward to that as well. In addition to that, on 4 March in Melbourne we will host the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Anwar Ibrahim, for an official state visit, and on 7 March we will host the Prime Minister of Vietnam, Pham Minh Chinh, for an official visit here in Canberra. I thank all those officials from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, as well as those from the parliament, who are working so hard to make these visits successful. I thank the Leader of the Opposition for the cooperation and the dialogue in ensuring the bipartisan nature of these visits as well.

We live in very uncertain times. We live in an era of strategic competition, including in our region, and our relationships with our neighbours, including those directly to our north, are so important. This week, of course, there is an election in Indonesia, which is a very important neighbour to our north as well. It is important that we engage in our region with ASEAN. This is in our domestic interests, not just our international interests. In today's globalised world, having economic relations is so important for our economy, where more than one in every four jobs is dependent upon our exports, much of those to the region. We know that there is a real opportunity to expand on our exports and those economic relations as well as to expand our cultural links and our defence and security ties. Last year, of course, we signed an upgraded defence security arrangement with the Philippines.

I look forward to the discussions that will include, for each of these visits, discussions with the opposition, because that's the way we do business here in Australia, working in our national interest. I thank the parliament and I thank you, Mr Speaker, and the President of the Senate for agreeing to the invitation to the President to address this chamber. I very much look forward to it being just as successful as the Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea's visit was. Mr Speaker, I convey to every member of the House—and, indeed, the Senate; I'm sure they're listening, as they do over there in the Senate, to the House of Reps!—the very warm gratitude that Prime Minister Marape has sent to us for the way that he was received here, for the respect that he was given, because that was also giving respect to the great nation of Papua New Guinea.