Australia to host talks on poverty

from The Age

Australia will host a meeting of Asia Pacific ministers aimed at producing further economic reform and reducing poverty, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said.

Mr Downer's announcement followed an APEC ministerial meeting in Sydney.

He said discussions had focused on continuing economic growth and the need to reduce poverty.

"I'm pleased that APEC ministers share this view and they've welcomed the new emphasis in APEC on these issues," Mr Downer told reporters.

"To give momentum to this work, Australia will host a meeting at ministerial level, probably chaired by the treasurer of Australia, on structural reform in 2008."

Mr Downer said the meeting had agreed to a number of measures to reduce the impact of health and security-related incidents.

"We agreed on guidelines to help keep economies functioning in the event of pandemics and to facilitate trade recovery after a terrorist attack," he said.

"We've had a very productive discussion on food and product safety issues.

"We agreed to establish a food safety cooperation forum co-chaired by China and Australia to strengthen food safety practices and standards.

"We also endorsed a strong counter-terrorism program, including ways to counter terrorist financing and to protect our food supply, IT systems, energy infrastructure and mass transit from terrorist attacks."

Mr Downer said the meeting had also been an opportunity to brief ministers on preparations for the economic leaders meeting on Saturday and Sunday, including climate change.

"Ministers have welcomed the decision to make climate change and clean development a key focus for the leaders' discussion," Mr Downer said.

Mr Downer said he chaired a 90-minute breakfast with foreign ministers on Thursday morning "to discuss the climate change issue in preparation for the leaders meeting".

"We have certainly affirmed the importance of market-based solutions to address energy security and achieving sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions," he said.

The meeting has also decided to pour more resources into APEC as an institution, Mr Downer said, to "make it more effective than it already is for stakeholders".

Membership contributions would substantially increase from 2009 to help strengthen the secretariat, the first such increase since 1998.

"We have agreed to establish a policy support unit, that will be funded by voluntary contributions, to provide analytical capacity to APEC's trade investment and structural reform agenda," Mr Downer said.

"This policy support unit will be attached to the APEC secretariat in Singapore, and Australia will be providing ... $10 million over three years worth of key funding for this policy support unit."

Mr Downer said the economic and technical co-operation between APEC countries would also improve, through agreements to establish a health working group and mining taskforce.

Australia had made a contribution to this plan, and welcomed contributions from the United States and Russia.

Foreign and trade ministers at the APEC forum agreed to push for the successful conclusion of the Doha round of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

In a joint statement released at the conclusion of the two-day meeting, they urged APEC leaders, who will meet this weekend, to adopt a stand-alone statement aimed at providing momentum for the stalled Doha discussions.

Trade Minister Warren Truss said members agreed that liberalising world trade was the best way to "build a ladder out of poverty".

"(We reaffirmed) the urgency of doing what we can to bring Doha to a successful conclusion," he told reporters.

"There's a clear determination by all to achieve a successful outcome."

The meeting also examined the concept of a Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific, which will be pursued by leaders this weekend.

"We finalised and submitted to our leaders a comprehensive report on strengthening regional economic integration, including on a free trade area of the Asia-Pacific as a long-term prospect," the statement said.

Mr Downer dismissed suggestions Australia would alter its view on climate change after China's President Hu Jintao earlier on Thursday renewed China's commitment to the Kyoto Protocol.

"The question now for us as an international community ... is what will we do next," he said.

He said Kyoto targets, which kick in from next year until 2012, are not the focus of climate change discussions at the APEC leaders summit or at upcoming UN and other meetings.

The minister also clarified statements he made earlier this year that "aspirational targets" on greenhouse gas emissions was code for "political stunt".

He said it was not to be applied to the efforts of APEC but to federal Labor's policy to reduce Australia's greenhouse gas emissions by 60 per cent by 2050.

"That is a stunt, because how Australia would do that alone and what sort of cooperative mechanisms would Australia have with other countries and what the global approach would be and what proportion of the burden of addressing the global approach Australia would carry - none of those questions were answered," Mr Downer said.

"It was probably designed by a public relations firm for the Labor Party to be part of their grab bag of stunts for the election."

Mr Downer said the key challenge to climate change was balancing the act of reducing greenhouse gas emissions while not stifling economic growth and its ability to lift people out of poverty.

"That is a very difficult thing to reconcile - but reconcile those two things we must," he said.

Mr Downer closed the briefing by making a plea to international commentators on climate change to move away from an exchange of slogans, "some of which are incredibly abusive".

"Instead, do what I think we've been doing at breakfast this morning - working through the complexity of some of these issues and looking at opportunities and ways of taking forward the task of stabilising and reducing CO2 emissions. Then we'll probably get a lot further a lot faster."