ウィスパリング同時通訳研究会コミュのRemarks by PM Lee Hsien Loong at the Joint Press Conference with Australia PM Scott Morrison on 10 June 2021.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison
Ladies and Gentlemen
Good evening to all

I bid a very warm welcome to Prime Minister Scott Morrison to Singapore. I am very happy that he decided to stop over here on the way to G7 in Cornwall, and that we have been able to meet in person after quite a long time.

Naturally, PM Morrison and I discussed the COVID-19 situation. Australia and Singapore have similar approaches to keep the virus out of our populations, and to keep our people safe.

We have strongly supported each other, especially to get through the early days of the pandemic. Our health authorities shared information on the virus. We helped to bring each other’s citizens home from abroad, especially early on when flights were getting cancelled. Singapore Airlines maintained passenger and cargo flights to and from Australia throughout the border closures.

Now, the world is moving into the next phase of the fight, with vaccinations becoming more prevalent, and countries beginning to open up their borders. We discussed how two-way travel between Singapore and Australia can eventually resume, in a safe and calibrated manner, when both sides are ready. Before COVID-19, many Singaporeans travelled to Australia for business, for holidays and to pursue their education, and vice versa. We need to resume these people-to-people flows to maintain our close and excellent bilateral relationship. We need to prepare the infrastructure and processes to get ready to do this. It starts with mutual recognition of health and vaccination certificates, possibly in the digital form. When all the preparations are ready, we can start small with an Air Travel Bubble to build confidence on both sides. Relatedly, our health ministries have signed an MOU to collaborate in healthcare and health technologies.

Our overall cooperation has been anchored by our ten-year Comprehensive Strategic Partnership (CSP), which is now at its halfway mark. Both sides have made progress on the five pillars of the CSP: economics and trade, defence and foreign affairs, science and innovation, people-to-people; and last year we added the digital economy as a fifth pillar of our comprehensive strategic partnership.

Last year, in December, our Treaty on Military Training and Training Area Development came into force. This was a milestone in our longstanding defence partnership. Singapore greatly appreciates Australia’s generous and sustained support for SAF’s training. Over many years, in many air bases and camps all over Australia.

On the digital economy, we had a bilateral Digital Economy Agreement which also came into force last year. This was the fruit of our forward looking, open and progressive attitudes towards trade and the future economy. Building on the Digital Economy Agreement, PM Morrison and I have agreed to commence discussions to develop a FinTech bridge between our two countries.

In science and innovation, we are exploring collaborations on low-emissions solutions to support our climate change efforts. This is another key domestic priority for both of us, and it includes a public-private partnership on low emissions fuels and technologies for shipping and port operations, based at Nanyang Technological University’s Eco Labs. We are also exploring a broader partnership on a green economy agreement. This will facilitate trade and investment in environmentally sustainable goods and services, and strengthen environmental governance and our capacity to address
climate change.

Once again, the Prime Minister and I are very happy that we are able to meet again and that our relations have continued to grow and prosper in these challenging times. I look forward to continue working with him and his government to take our relations even further forward and wish him a safe and productive trip to Cornwall in the UK for G7.
Prime Minister Morrison: Thank you, Prime Minister. I might, first of all, I mean, neither of us have identified a benchmark rate on vaccination when it comes to the decision that we’d be taking around a travel bubble. But this is something that I think will continually be informed by the medical evidence as time goes on. I think one of the reasons both Australia and Singapore have been successful to date, we should, I think, just take a moment to note that success, not just from a health perspective but from an economic perspective as well. Both of our economies, both of our economies have performed well, relatively, through this pandemic. In Australia's case, our economy is larger today than it was before the pandemic began. There are more employed Australians today than there was before the pandemic began. Our AAA credit rating from S&P has only just been upgraded further as we come continually through this pandemic.

So it is constantly, I think, a challenge to balance the economic and the health objectives that we have as leaders. And we've learnt a lot from Singapore in that process, and we will continue to. And I think one of the most helpful things throughout the pandemic has been whether it's been the exchange that Prime Minister Lee and I have had or I have had with many other leaders. Largely no country has a mortgage on what the answers are, but we all have the opportunity to share that experience. Prime Minister Lee and I joined a group of countries early on in the pandemic brought together by the Chancellor of Austria, and I continue to participate in that group. We would share our experiences, whether it's rolling out vaccinations, running contact tracing systems, how digital certificates work. All of these tools, as Prime Minister Lee says, are, they're not novel to one country, but they all need to be achieved successfully in each country.

So that will continue, I think, to be one of the great learnings of the pandemic, the need to share experience, technology, information, learnings about this, about any pandemic, and to be able to move quickly as possible. We both run similar quarantine systems. We both run similar tracing systems. And that is, I think, a lesson for how we will deal with this in the future.

When it comes to emissions reduction and issues of climate change, I'm very excited about this energy technology partnership that we're putting in place here in the maritime sector. In the same way that Singapore benefits greatly from the world's great maritime vessels making their way here and taking goods from here, being able to do that with hydrogen powered ships is extremely important for emissions reduction in the future. It is a practical, technological, commercial partnership that will change the world. In the same way we want to power large ships, we want to power large mining vehicles, mining trucks, ore trucks in Australia. And so what we are simply doing here again is demonstrating Australia's commitment to technological advancement to reduce emissions. Australia's carbon emissions have fallen by over 20 per cent since 2005. We have the highest rate of rooftop solar take-up anywhere in the world, and our rate of renewable development in our country strips that of most developed countries. Now, this will continue for one simple reason, and that is continued developments in technology. So this partnership demonstrates, and I'll be very pleased to share it with those attending the G7, that this is how you deal with climate change. You work on the technology. You work on the technological solutions and hydrogen in particular, and the partnership we have here to develop new hydrogen technologies will be critical to solving that problem.