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| Singapore PM Lee Hsien Loong hails warm ties in address to parliament – politics live | |
| (35 minutes later) | |
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| The house now does not sit until 1.30pm. The Senate comes back at 12pm. | |
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| Shorten also mentioned the 130,000 Singaporeans who had gained degrees in Australian universities (*cheers Dad*). And Shorten fondly remembers losing out to the Singaporean University team at intervarsity debating in the late 1980s. | |
| There are more than 20,000 Australian expatriates living and working in Singapore, including friends of mine who voted at the royal golf course in the last three weeks of June, a booth we targeted most heavily. These Australians return to their friends and family praising a place where they know they’re welcome. Singapore is a culture that is different enough to feel novel, familiar enough to feel at home. | |
| 1.30am BST | |
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| I promised more of Bill Shorten. He said Labor welcomed the comprehensive strategic partnership agreement. | |
| Labor welcomes the comprehensive strategic partnership that will see our 14,000 Singaporean troops train in Shoalwater Bay in Queensland per year. This is good news for the region and good news for our region. And both our nations are engaged in countering a new threat of extremism, the fight against Daesh, its agents and imitators. We also share a tradition of learning from each other, from your father’s famous warning, a rebuke that shook Australia out of its lethargy and certainly my own party has pursued of an outward-looking economy to engage with key markets of Asia. | |
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| at 1.44am BST | |
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| Lee goes through the benefits of the comprehensive strategic partnership concluded by the two leaders. | |
| In defence, the Singapore armed forces will have more training, space and opportunities in Australia. | |
| In the upgraded free trade agreement, professionals from both countries will be able to work in each country. | |
| In innovation and science, the two countries have identified some key challenges to tackle, including basic urban problems such as water supply and energy conservation and “we have much scope to cooperate more in R&D”. | |
| A new Australia-Singapore arts group will provide for exchanges between museums, art festivals, visual and performing arts. | |
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| Lee talks about the education exchanges and congratulates the foreign minister, Julie Bishop, on the new Colombo plan that provides for student exchanges. | |
| By the end of this year, Singapore universities will have welcomed some 800 Australian new Colombo plan students. They will continue the spirit of exchange and renew the connections and good will between our peoples into the next generation. Our people also visit each other frequently. Last year some 400,000 Singaporeans visitedAustralia and 1 million Australians visited Singapore. Some come for education or business, more come for holidays or to visit family and friends. We feel quite at home in each other’s countries. Singaporeans may not quaff quite as much beer as Australians but I have it on good authority that Victoria Bitter goes well with chilli crabs. | |
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| at 1.29am BST | |
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| Lee says more than 20,000 Australians live and work in Singapore, in all sorts of professions. | |
| He notes the Singapore-Australia free trade agreement signed in 2003 was Australia’s first FTA outside of New Zealand. | |
| It has helped make little Singapore your fifth-largest trading partner and investor. We have also worked together on regional economic integration, first with Apec and now with the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the TPP, and the regional comprehensive economic partnership, the RCEP. | |
| Our two countries cooperate closely on security issues and humanitarian missions. Our security agencies work closely and quietly together to fight terrorism, sharing intelligence and information, carrying out counter-terrorism operations, exchanging notes on religious rehabilitation and deradicalisation programs. It’s important always and is especially worth mentioning today on the anniversary of the Bali bombings. | |
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| Lee on his meeting with Tony Abbott last year: | |
| Our societies are both egalitarian. We don’t stand on ceremony and we frown on rigid social hierarchies. We are informal and can hang loose. Thus, when prime minister Abbott visited Singapore last year, I could invite him to join my constituents for an Aussie-style BBQ at a public park, only to find he was much better at barbecuing than I was. Afterwards, we went to dinner nearby. I made sure to choose some good Australian wine! But, alas, I neglected to check the steak. After dinner, prime minister Abbott asked the chef where the beef was from. The chef, with Singaporean directness and candour, replied: “From the US, sir.” I will have to do better when prime minister Turnbull visits us next year. | |
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| at 1.27am BST | |
| 1.12am BST | 1.12am BST |
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| Lee says Australia and Singapore are both open economies that rely heavily on international trade, on global markets. And Australia and Singapore both want to deepen ties between Australia and south-east Asia. | |
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| Lee: | Lee: |
| How is it that Australia and Singapore, two very different countries, as prime minister Turnbull said, a wide brown land and a little red dot, can forge such a deep bond? In land area, Australia is more than 10,000 times the size of Singapore! We are smaller than many sheep farms. The ACT alone is three times the size of Singapore. Australia has abundant natural resources, Singapore has none. We even have to import water from Malaysia. We are both Commonwealth countries, yes, but historically Australia has been Anglo-Saxon in composition and identity while Singapore is an Asian society, even though we speak English and we have the cosmopolitan outlook of a port city. Yet we are good friends because, fundamentally, we have similar strategic interests and perspectives. | |
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| Lee notes Australia’s contribution to Singapore in world war two. | |
| Singapore will never forget their sacrifice. During the Malayan emergency, Australian soldiers fought Communist guerrillas in the Malayan jungles. When Singapore joined Malaysia in 1963, the president of Indonesia launched Konfrontasi, a low-intensity conflict to undermine the new federation. Australian forces defended Malaysia in Malaya and Borneo. In 1965, Singapore separated from Malaysia to become an independent republic. You were one of the first countries to recognise our independence and the first to establish diplomatic relations with us. You played a key role in publishing the five-power defence relations in 1971. | |
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| Just having some tech issues here. Bill Shorten has just given a very warm and personal address to Lee, mentioning Australia-Singapore ties, his visits to Singapore, Lee’s renowned maths and sudoku skills and Singapore’s food. | |
| I will bring you more on Shorten in a minute but Lee has started now. | I will bring you more on Shorten in a minute but Lee has started now. |
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| at 1.23am BST | |
| 12.58am BST | 12.58am BST |
| 00:58 | 00:58 |
| Turnbull concludes: | Turnbull concludes: |
| We are countries with different histories and different cultural traditions yet we are countries familiar and comfortable with one another. We prize informality, we are suspicious of pretence, we speak plainly and with pragmatism, as friends should. We focus on outcomes and deliveries not pomp or protocol. Each of us can lay claim to be among the most successful multicultural societies in the world so our bright future is not just about complimentary interests and strengths, it is about common human qualities. To borrow from prime minister Lee, I and I’m sure all members of this parliament are immensely reassured that our relationship with Singapore springs from the heart as much as it does from the head. | |
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| 12.56am BST | 12.56am BST |
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| Turnbull says Singapore and Australia have similar world views on innovation, trade and rule of law. | Turnbull says Singapore and Australia have similar world views on innovation, trade and rule of law. |
| Singapore and Australia are at one in defending the rule of law and rejecting the proposition that might is right. Australia and Singapore are firm proponents of institutions that that support regional stability and prosperity such as Asean and the East Asian summit. I am delighted Singapore will be the chair when they host leaders for an historic summit here in 2018 … | |
| Last year, on the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations, prime minister Lee Hsien Loong and Tony Abbott signed a 10-year plan to expand the frontiers of our bilateral corporations across economic, strategic and people-to-people dimensions. Tomorrow governments will sign initiatives under our comprehensive strategic partnership. | |
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| at 1.16am BST | |
| 12.52am BST | 12.52am BST |
| 00:52 | 00:52 |
| Turnbull: | Turnbull: |
| Australia was the first country to establish diplomatic relations with Singapore but the relationship was forged even before that, in world war twI and the defence of Singapore in which over 1,700 Australians lost their lives, more than a thousand of them are buried in Singapore soil. | |
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| at 1.15am BST | |
| 12.51am BST | 12.51am BST |
| 00:51 | 00:51 |
| Turnbull on Lee Kuan Yew, Lee’s father: | Turnbull on Lee Kuan Yew, Lee’s father: |
| Prime minister, your father was one of the giants of the 20th century. He founded a nation whose only assets are its people and location and created what has become a 21st-century city state, one which embraces the rapid march of technology and science, just as it does the trade and open markets upon which success has been established. | Prime minister, your father was one of the giants of the 20th century. He founded a nation whose only assets are its people and location and created what has become a 21st-century city state, one which embraces the rapid march of technology and science, just as it does the trade and open markets upon which success has been established. |
| Updated | Updated |
| at 1.15am BST | at 1.15am BST |
| 12.49am BST | 12.49am BST |
| 00:49 | 00:49 |
| Applause. Lee shakes hands with the Speaker and the president. | Applause. Lee shakes hands with the Speaker and the president. |
| The Speaker, Tony Smith, welcomes Lee. | The Speaker, Tony Smith, welcomes Lee. |
| Malcolm Turnbull notes this will be the first time a Singaporean PM has addressed the Australian parliament. | Malcolm Turnbull notes this will be the first time a Singaporean PM has addressed the Australian parliament. |
| Updated | Updated |
| at 1.14am BST | at 1.14am BST |