Only way is up for Australian ties

This year marks 50 years of official relations between Australia and Vietnam. How do you evaluate this milestone, and what is your plan for more cooperation?

There’s been a wonderful relationship between Australia and Vietnam over the last 50 years. This is my third visit to Hanoi and every time I visit, it becomes more and more beautiful.

I’m deeply impressed with how Vietnam has grown its economy and lifted the living standards of its people. Australia wants to work with the Vietnamese to continue that growth in living standards so that you can meet your ambition by 2045 of being a fully developed economy.

There are lots of ways in which Australia and Vietnam can work together, whether it’s in the education sector, in tourism, in critical minerals, or in the hydrogen sector. We’ve done some wonderful things together, but in the future, we can do a whole lot more.

The trade between Australia and Vietnam has grown rapidly in recent years. What are the key drivers of the trade relationship?

Recently, I was very privileged to meet the Vietnamese prime minister and a number of other important ministers in the trade and tourism sector. We want to build on the relationship that we have already developed between Australia and Vietnam.

One of the ways that we’re going to do that is through our free trade agreements (FTAs). One of those agreements, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, is very important for both Australia and Vietnam. And for the first time, we’ve added the United Kingdom to that partnership.

We believe the very high standards that Vietnam has committed to will continue to ensure a strong, robust, and prosperous trading relationship between Australia and Vietnam. We’re also working very closely with Vietnam on the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, and that gives us an opportunity to jointly have an agreement with many other countries in this region, but also the US.

So, we think that there are many opportunities where Australia and Vietnam can build on the relationship that we’ve got already to improve the prosperity of both of our nations.

What can be done to increase investment in each country and reach the partnership’s potential?

Both of our prime ministers have agreed to move towards a comprehensive strategic partnership that’s going to improve the level of business opportunities between our two countries. It’s one thing to have words on a piece of paper. It’s another thing to actually translate those words into practical outcomes for businesses in Vietnam and businesses in Australia.

We think that the very strong ties that have grown up between our two countries, particularly over the last 12 months, mean that there will be lots of opportunities for Vietnamese companies to develop their businesses in Australia. We want to see that and we want to encourage that. They are good business operators, and we think we can do a lot together.

How can both nations work together to further promote and attract more travel between the two?

Pre-pandemic, something like 400,000 Australians used to travel to Vietnam for holidays. And about 120,000 Vietnamese came to Australia for holidays, and lots of those people visited their family and friends in Australia. We want to get back to those levels and exceed them.

The first thing we need to do is get more airlines flying between us, and that’s already happening. It hasn’t been easy to get people travelling again, but there’s a lot of pent-up demand. There’s a lot of demand by Vietnamese to come to Australia, particularly there’s a lot of demand by Australians to come to Vietnam. We’ve got to encourage that.

We’ve also got to push down the price of travel, which has been too expensive, and we’ve got to increase the number of flights between our two countries. I think we’re well on the way to doing that. And I’m very confident that within a very short space of time, our traveller numbers will be higher than they were before.

What would be the significance of upgrading the comprehensive strategic partnership between the two sides?

Regarding the Governor General visit to Vietnam, that was obviously an excellent sign of the high-level contact between our two countries. Both of us have committed to a net-zero policy by 2050. That’s ambitious for Australia and it’s especially ambitious for Vietnam.

But Australia is fortunate in that we have most of the world’s reserves of critical minerals and rare earths, and these are the products that we’re going to have to use to make that transformation from a fossil fuel economy to a renewable economy. I think this is a key area where Australia and Vietnam can work together to bring about that net-zero.

Australia has the ambition of becoming a renewable superpower. We think we can work in partnership with Vietnam to achieve that.

On March 8, Deputy Premier of Western Australia, Roger Hugh Cook, arrived on an official visit to Vietnam and announced the launch of a new Western Australian Investment and Trade Representative Office in Ho Chi Minh City.

Vietnam and Australia are set to elevate their existing ties to a comprehensive strategic partnership, with deeper investment and trade flows thanks to various free trade agreements already taking effect.

The third Vietnam-Australia Economic Partnership Meeting was held in Hanoi on April 17 under the co-chair of Minister of Planning and Investment Nguyen Chi Dung and Australian Minister for Trade and Tourism Don Farrell.

A Vietnam-Australia trade and tourism promotion conference was held by Vietnam Airlines, Thien Minh Group and Vinpearl JSC in Sydney on April 19, drawing a large number of Australian businesses and travel firms from different Australian localities.