MEDIA RELEASE

KEVIN RUDD M.P.   Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs, Trade and  International Security

DOORSTOP INTERVIEW  - MORNINGSIDE STATE SCHOOL, BRISBANE.

2 APRIL 2006

E & OE - PROOF ONLY

Subjects:  Australia-Indonesia  relationship;  West  Papua;  developments  in  the   Cole Inquiry; visit by Wen Jiabao; uranium sales to China.



RUDD:    Today we are rightly commemorating the loss of the nine  young Australian lives in support of this humanitarian effort in Indonesia. All  Australians remember the tsunami. All Australians remember the hundreds of  thousands of Indonesians killed in that Tsunami and of the untold damage that  was done to Aceh.

Australia rallied to the cause. Australia put its hand in its pocket. Australia sent  our men and women in uniform to help and the result of that was nine young  Australians never came back. It is important that Australia commemorates their  loss today. It is important for the nation, it is important for their families and it is  important for their loved ones. And I hope that in Indonesia the respect that we  feel for them is reciprocated from within Indonesia itself.

The Prime Minister today has spoken about the Australia-Indonesia relationship.  He has also said that the current disagreements with Indonesia about West  Papua represents a small blip in the overall relationship.



I disagree with the Prime Minister. West Papua is a major challenge for the  Australia-Indonesia relationship. When it comes to the future, we have got to  make sure that we have got an effective autonomy package within West Papua  so that human rights are properly respected. The trap is that there have been  significant human rights abuses in West Papua. What we need to ensure is that  there is an effective autonomy package in West Papua in the future.

This is a major challenge for the Australia-Indonesia relationship that is going to  require all of the diplomatic talents and the strength of our Foreign Minister and  his Indonesian counterparts, the Foreign Minister and President Yudhoyono to

make sure that this problem, this human rights challenge in West Papua is  properly dealt with.

We also have today in Australia the arrival of the Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao.  Wen Jiabao is a welcome guest to our country. China is a big factor in Australia’s  economic and strategic future for the twenty-first century. That is why Premier  Wen Jiabao is a welcome guest in our country. There are major challenges in the  Australia-China relationship. There are major opportunities in the Australia-China relationship. Australia’s trading very much depends on the China market  and we want to expand and broaden that relationship in the future.

For Australia’s economic future with China, we don’t just want to be one big  quarry for the world. We want to broaden our economic relationship to ensure  that there is a role for Australia’s manufactures, as well as our services. That is  the challenge we face and we have ahead of us during this important visit by the

Chinese Premier. He is welcome in our country and myself and Kim Beazley  look forward to discussions with Premier Wen Jiabao in Canberra tomorrow.

Let me conclude on the Cole Inquiry and the terms of reference which Prime  Minister John Howard has given the Commissioner, Mr Cole. The Prime Minister  today was once again using cute political language to try and hide the fact that  Commissioner Cole has no powers whatsoever to determine whether Ministers  Downer and Vaile did their job. That is the core fact here. John Howard doesn’t  want to give Commissioner Cole those powers because he is frightened about  what determination would be made. These Ministers ignored 27 sets of warnings  to the Howard Government about what the AWB was up to and about what was  going on with the corruption of the UN Oil for Food Program. They ignored each  of those 27 warnings. So whatever cute political language, whatever word games  John Howard plays, the core single fact remains that Commissioner Cole has no  powers given to him by John Howard to determine whether these Ministers have  done their job.

John Howard has prepared the Cole Inquiry as an Inquiry entirely focused on the  AWB and not focused at all on the actions of his own Government. That is the  bottom line here. The AWB in this Inquiry have all of the energies of the  Commission directed at them. The Commission has one set of powers and one  set of powers alone and that is to determine whether the AWB breached criminal  law. Any evidence that Mr Downer and Mr Vaile present to the Inquiry are  relevant only so far as they shed light on whether criminal charges should be laid  against the AWB itself. Mr Cole, I repeat, has no powers whatsoever to  determine whether or not Howard Government Ministers did their job. This is an  unbalanced Inquiry because all of its guns are trained on the AWB and none of

the guns at all are trained on whether Howard Government Ministers did their  job. That is not fair.

REPORTER:  Just on the Australia-Indonesia relationship, what did you  think of Bill Leahy’s cartoon yesterday?

RUDD:  I think what we have got to avoid is some sort of tit for tat  cartoon war. This isn’t helpful in terms of the overall Indonesia-Australia  relationship. I think it is important that we respect sensitivities on both sides,  while recognising the fact that we have free press in both countries.

REPORTER:  There are going to be some rallies today in support of the  West Papuans. What is your opinion on those rallies?

RUDD:  When it comes to freedom to express political opinion, one  of the great things about Australia is that people can take to the streets and  express their political point of view. There have been human rights abuses within  West Papua. I have raised the human rights abuses with the Indonesian embassy  in Canberra and I will continue to raise them. The bottom line is the only  effective solution to this in the long term is to ensure that we have an effective  autonomy package for West Papua, with West Papua remaining part of the  Indonesian republic.

REPORTER:  Is it evident that not everyone agrees with John Howard that  Australia respects Indonesian sovereignty over West Papua?

RUDD:  Well, whatever the points of view within the Australian  community are on that subject, both the Liberal Party and the Labor Party have a  view that West Papua is part of the Indonesian republic but we want West Papua

to have effective autonomy. You can have West Papua as part of the Indonesian  republic, which we all support. But we also need to ensure that West Papua has  an effective autonomy arrangement with Jakarta.

REPORTER:  Do you think that these rallies could inflame tensions  between Australia and Indonesia?

RUDD:  There have long been protests in Australia from those in  support of the West Papuan cause. That is their democratic right in this country.  What we seek to do through the bilateral relationship with Jakarta is to ensure  that there is an effective autonomy package for the people of West Papua. That  has long been the policy of the government in Jakarta. What we want to make  sure is that this autonomy package is happening on the ground in West Papua  itself.

REPORTER:  Just on to China, do you think that Australia will sign a  uranium agreement with China?

RUDD:  The conditions for signing a uranium agreement with China  are that Australia has negotiated successfully a bilateral nuclear safeguards  agreement with the People’s Republic of China. If Australia signs a safeguards  agreement with China, just like with any other country with whom we have a  safeguards agreement, then Australia should sell also China uranium. There  should be no blocking of that.

Australia’s attitude to selling uranium to China should be the same as our  attitude to selling uranium to other countries. The condition for China is that we  have a bilateral safeguards agreement. If with China we have a bilateral  safeguards agreement, then China should be as able as any other country to  import Australian uranium.

REPORTER:  So you think that we could guarantee that the uranium  won’t go into China’s military program?

RUDD:  Well, for 20 years or more what we have done in Australia  when we sell uranium around the world is insist on countries who are  signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, accepting of the supervisory  arrangements of the International Atomic Energy Agency and on top of that have  a bilateral nuclear safeguards agreement. We have got that with some 19 other  countries around the world and China should be no exception. If with China we  have effective bilateral nuclear safeguard arrangements, then there should be no  impediment to Australia selling uranium there as well.

REPORTER:  So what do you say then about the Greens?

RUDD:  Well, the Greens say what the Greens want to say. The  bottom line is this: we have 19 countries throughout the world with whom we  have bilateral safeguard arrangements with to whom we sell uranium and China  should represent no exception.



Ends 2 April 2006.





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