Official reception at Australian High Commissioner's residence

Thank youHigh Commissioner for your very warm welcome, I do take this opportunity tothank Andrew Byrne for his service as High Commissioner here. This is in facthis last week. So the timing of this delegation is rather exquisite. We get tosee Andrew in his final week here in Honiara, so thank you Andrew and Dawn forthe work that you have done for our relationship with Solomon Islands.

Iacknowledge Minister Tozaka here this evening, and the other Ministers andSpeaker of the Solomon Islands Parliament. The senior business representatives,senior Government representatives, diplomats, friends of Australia, friends ofSolomon Islands.

I'm veryproud to be leading a delegation here with my three colleagues from theAustralian Parliament, my counterpart Penny Wong, who is Leader of the Oppositionin the Senate, and the Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs. Our Minister forInternational Development and the Pacific, Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells,and her counterpart from the Opposition, Senator Claire Moore, who is the ShadowMinister for International Development and the Pacific.

The natureof this visit is to underscore the bipartisan commitment there is in Australiato deepening and broadening the relationship there is between Solomon Islandsand Australia.

Ours is avery close relationship. We're friends, we're neighbours, we're partners in somany ways. We were there from the outset, when Solomon Islands became independentand our relationship goes back even further. Indeed, next year will be theseventy-fifth anniversary of the sinking of the HMAS Canberra off the coast ofSolomon Islands during the Second World War, 9th August 1942. We arehoping that we can bring the new HMAS Canberra to be part of those celebrationsin August 2017 and that will be a fitting reminder of the connections betweenour two countries.

Next year wewill see the drawdown of RAMSI, and that was one of the most successfuloperations certainly that I think we have seen, and is a model for otherregions around the world to follow.

I first cameto Solomon Islands in about 2003 at the beginning of the Regional AssistanceMission to Solomon Islands' operations here, and there were some mightychallenges ahead. But I'm pleased to see that thirteen years later, and acouple of billion dollars of investment from Australia, and fourteen othercountries, we have seen law and order restored in Solomon Islands, we have seenthe re-establishment of national institutions, the re-building of confidenceacross Solomon Islands, and now a police force that is one of the best trained,most professional, and most dedicated in the Pacific.

Thisafternoon we had the opportunity to visit the police headquarters, and meetwith the new recruits for Royal Solomon Islands Police Force, and I wasdelighted to see, that of the 2016 class, fifty per cent are women and thataugers well for the police force.

I want tothank the members of RAMSI that are here, and to place on record the othercountries, the fourteen other countries that became part of this Australian-ledmission here in Solomon Islands. It has been an enormous exercise, and weappreciate the efforts of each and every officer that was involved in RAMSI. Weof course will continue to support Solomon Islands post-RAMSI, and I'm lookingforward to a continuing close relationship between the Australian FederalPolice and the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force.

Of courseour defence force also has deep connections here, our Pacific Maritime SecurityProgram, which provides vessels for patrolling the waters around SolomonIslands. And we've taken part in Operation Render-safe, the effort to ridSolomon Islands of the explosive ordinance from World War Two.

We discussedwith the Prime Minister today, the relationship is also one of economicpartnership and we have been using our development assistance, our aid program,to underpin economic development here in Solomon Islands, for surely that isthe objective of foreign aid; development assistance to drive growth and jobopportunities, to make this economy sustainable and resilient.

Tonight I'mdelighted to announce that we have a new program, a $50 million commitment bythe Australian Government for a Growth Program, to drive economic growth, tofind those job opportunities, by partnering with the private sector, andensuring we can leverage private sector funds together with donor funds and themoney from the Government budget to ensure that economic growth here issustainable.

This moneywill be used to ensure that we can have more public-private partnerships, moreopportunities for the private sector to work with the public sector for thebenefit of Solomon Islanders.

There are anumber of examples of how this has worked so well in the past, and tonight wehave representatives from Kokonut Pacific, a great business, innovativebusiness, supported by the Australian Government. A partnership with KokonutPacific in Australia, with Kokonut Pacific here in Solomon Islands, workingwith ANZ, and a really innovative business that is extracting high-qualitycoconut oil, and doing all sorts of amazing things with it, and what a greatexport that has become for Solomon Islands.

We've alsobeen delighted to work with SolTuna, to see probably the second largestemployer in the private sector here in Solomon Islands, also find ways ofemploying more people, to produce high-quality export products. And I do wantto mention ANZ bank again. I really think that their mobile banking service,which has been rolled out across Solomon Islands is quite remarkable.

Last yearthey signed up 33,000 new customers to mobile banking, and about 69 per cent ofthose customers had never had a bank account before, and 57 per cent werewomen. So this gives an opportunity for small business, for enterprise, forentrepreneurs to take part in the formal economy here in Solomon Islands.

Another areaof great potential here is tourism, and the Australian Government, through theDepartment of Foreign Affairs and Trade, signed an MOU with Carnival Cruises.Australians love cruising and about 350,000 of them headed off to the Pacificaboard cruises last year. We're delighted that under the MOU with CarnivalCruises, Solomon Islands is a destination for cruise ships, and this year sevenarrived here in Solomon Islands, and we hope that will be even more next year,because they bring a lot of money and provide a lot of opportunities forbusinesses here in Solomon Islands.

We're alsoexpanding the Seasonal Workers Program, and we do hope that more SolomonIslanders take the opportunity to be in a program where there's unmet demand inAustralia for work in agriculture, horticulture, accommodation, hospitality andtourism. We can bring people from Solomon Islands for this Seasonal WorkersProgram, and we are really hoping we can see more Solomon Islanders involved init.

I'm alsodelighted to find out this evening that one of our New Colombo Plan scholars ishere, Wendy Xiao. The New Colombo Plan is a Government-supported scheme to giveyoung Australian undergraduates in our universities the opportunity to live andstudy and work in one of forty destinations in the Indo-Pacific region. By theend of next year over two hundred and seventy young Australians will havechosen Solomon Islands, and have lived and studied and worked here.

Some of themare short courses, but they're across the range of disciplines, but I'm just sodelighted that Wendy, who's spending twelve months here studying at the SolomonIslands National University and undertaking an internship at the Department ofAgriculture, is demonstrating how close our links can be. Of course we havemany Australian Alumni in Solomon Islands, studying in Australia and throughthe Australia Awards.

So thisvisit is designed to highlight the great relationship we have with SolomonIslands. We are friends, we are neighbours, we are partners, and this is arelationship that will endure.

Ladies andgentleman, I am really hoping that I get to pick a favourite song tonight fromthe High Commission Choir. There's one called Tropical Island, so after thespeeches are finished perhaps they will grace us with their presence once more.

Thank youall for being here. Thank you for supporting this most important relationshipand please continue to be friends of Australia, friends of Solomon Islands.