Today I had the pleasure of welcoming the Japanese Government and senior industry representatives to Australia for the third meeting of the Australia-Japan Public Private Infrastructure Policy Dialogue.
The Dialogue provides an invaluable opportunity for our two country’s governments, industry and business to exchange ideas and leverage off each other’s core competencies in infrastructure for our mutual prosperity into the future.
This forum also provides an opportunity to explore mutual infrastructure investment opportunities and will further boost our strong bilateral economic relations.
Japan is Australia’s second largest export market and Japanese investment has helped to deliver some of the biggest infrastructure projects in this country – including the Sydney Harbour Tunnel and Melbourne’s CityLink toll road.
Japan and Australia share not just a friendship, but also an extremely productive business relationship.
Our relationship has never been stronger and fittingly, this year marks the 50^th anniversary of the AJBCC-JABCC.
The future looks bright for our nations as we continue to explore new ways to further the partnership between our governments and industry in both infrastructure investment and construction.
I congratulate Sir Rod Eddington, President of the Australia-Japan Business Cooperation Committee (AJBCC), and his counterpart Mr Akio Mimura, Chair of the Japan-Australia Business Cooperation Committee (JABCC) on convening the 2012 Australia-Japan Public Private Infrastructure Policy Dialogue.