• Video

• Contact Us
• |
• Search our Site

Book Launch:
"THAI AGRICULTURE: GOLDEN CRADLE OF MILENNIA"
- Prof Lindsay Falvey

Opening speech by The Hon Tim Fischer
Former Deputy Prime Minister & recently retired Minister for Trade

ASIALINK SEMINAR
MELBOURNE - 9 May 2001

Thank you Michael. To Professor Lindsay Falvey, congratulations on your great book on Thai agriculture. I will speak more about that later. Greetings to the Thai consul, Simon Wallis, to the friends of Thailand grouping, Derek, Tom and the Dunlop fellows with us this morning, to the representatives from DFAT, ladies and gentlemen, it is my honour to be speaking to you here this morning on matters relating to Thailand.

It was as long ago as 1984, when I was first elected to Federal Parliament, that I put forward Thailand as a country in great need of detailed attention and detailed study by Australia. Now, seventeen years later, even as I move beyond the Federal Parliament at the end of the current parliamentary term (it would help if I knew the exact dates when elections will be called…) to join Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, I continue to maintain that Thailand remains vital to Australia’s interests in the region.

Ladies and Gentleman, there is a small town called Sesarket, which lies northeast of Bangkok, out towards the Cambodian border. A tiny railway village, Sesarket is totally dominated by agriculture. For many years, my wife Judy and I have sponsored a Christian Children’s Foundation child there. The last time I personally went to Sesarket was in late 1997. At that time, I remember visiting a rice farm in the area and talking with this very proud rice farmer who had diversified his rice and vegetable production and fine-tuned his farm’s irrigation system, a faming adaptation steeped in a thousand years of history, something Lindsay points out in his book. Well, when I, through an interpreter queried this young, yet efficient and dynamic Thai new-age farmer, I said to him, “how do you feel about this huge collapse of things down in Bangkok? A lot of people are up and leaving Bangkok”. Remember this was during the June to October economic meltdown period of 1997. At this a little smile came across his face and he said, “serves them right, they were riding for a fall anyhow” or words to that effect, anyway. Well, it struck me that here he was, this farmer, not troubled in the slightest by what had happened to the Thai financial markers down in Bangkok, just getting on with this job of improving his nation’s agricultural output in a very dynamic way. So today, and especially so given the launch of this new book, I think it is important that we consider the Thai farmer’s response to my question and reflect for a moment on the extent of Australia’s relationship and connection with Thailand, and explore ways we can perhaps improve it. It is imperative that we look toward the future and I look forward to Professor Falvey’s comments on this in his more detailed examination of all aspects of Thai agriculture later on today.

Australia and Thailand were founding members of the Cairns Group of Agricultural Trading Nations, an organization which has been operating for over 15 years. Though some would argue that it has been a defective group, by degrees it has certainly put a punch into the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations and has succeeded in keeping agricultural issues in the radar screens of the big negotiating countries of the northern hemisphere. Now, with the World Trade Organisation heading to Qatar in the Middle East for its next ministerial level meeting, it is hoped that a combined effort by the Cairns Group and others may succeed in helping to unblock the launch of the Millennium Round of World Trade Negotiations.

Still, I think it is true that Australia and Thailand working so well together as members of the Cairns Group has to some extent camouflaged some of the difficulties the two countries have had on a range of specific trade issues, some of which the two countries have worked through, some of which remain. Cairns was never an Australian founded group, and has had to encompass the needs of all of its member nations on equal terms, Australia and Thailand included. But on the whole, Cairns has provided a source of goodwill among it member nations and this has flowed on into other areas.

One such area is defence. On the 20th of September 1999, the joint international UN force descended on the East Timorese capital Dili, led by Major-General Peter Cosgrove. This, of course, was not an exclusively Australian initiative, but a force committed at the behest of the UN, with the signed approval of the then President of Indonesia, Mr. Habibie. I was actually over there during and just prior to the controversial independence ballot and have already written and spoken at length about some of the issues surrounding East Timor in the past. It should be remembered that one of the first countries to come through in those first very critical days and say “we will be part of this international force”, was Thailand, who were prepared to work with the Australian military, along with nations like Singapore and the Philippines, in a very close and purposeful way. Thailand’s bold commitment helped remove any fears Interfet was going to be an Australian dominated force, and helped promote the idea that it was a genuine international peace keeping unit. At least partially credited here must be the very close connection built up over the years between the Australian and Thai militaries and our respective attaches and representatives. Indeed, Thailand’s and Australia’s successful and purposeful period during the crisis in East Timor continues to this day, as the two countries work towards assisting East Timor with its upcoming inaugural parliamentary elections on the 30th of August. This will no doubt prove to be another difficult period for the region, but one where we can again forge linkages and make progress in our relationships with nations such as Thailand.

Looking at Thailand’s agricultural development through the ages, I have often wondered what might have happened had Alexander the Great’s troops not rebelled when they passed through the Khyber Pass to the Indes and continued their advance eastward. What would have happened had they had a burst of energy and resolve to keep marching their way through to Bangkok and perhaps even on to Singapore (which was only a tiny fishing village at the time)? Well, history shows, of course that this wasn’t to be and that migration to Thailand did not originate from Greece, Europe or the Middle East as it might have, but from the north from China and around the edges of the Himalayas. It was to be these migrants, pouring down in their tens of thousands into the Delta country who would sow the initial seeds of Thai agriculture and provide the economic basis from which Thailand would advance toward nation-hood and state-hood. Today, despite the development of other areas of the Thai economy, Thailand’s agricultural sector still accounts for around 30 percent, 50 percent if you include agriculture related businesses, of the nations’ entire GDP activity.

Today, as an outgoing Trade Minister from Australia, and as an outgoing Member of Parliament who wants to see Thailand succeed in the international arena, I want to specifically focus on where Thailand goes from here. Internally, one can only be deeply concerned at the continuing growth in the gap between rich and poor people in Thailand, notwithstanding the period between 1997 and 1998 where there was an economic slowdown in Bangkok which, for a brief period closed the gap between rich and poor not only in Thailand, but throughout South East Asia. Today, however, the wealth gap is wider than ever before. It is a fact that there are villages in Northeast Thailand where people, despite the many Australian aid projects in the area, still have to carry water long distances to their villages and their homes. Subsistence living in agricultural communities remains further than ever before from the TV sets, Internet connections and other modern appurtenances which are taken for granted in places like Bangkok, Phuket, Changmai and Khon Kan.

This gap between rich and poor will always have, by degrees, a political dynamic something which was reflected in the recent elections in Thailand, where a blatantly populist proposal of putting money directly into village coffers became a major catch-cry and a major transfer of voters’ support for the party of new Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra. This is something I would like to comment on further.

It would seem on the internal front that Thailand is witnessing the emergence of very strong nationalistic tendencies as it moves through 2001. According to recent studies, academic research reports and monitoring from Canberra and elsewhere throughout the region, it would appear that there are very ugly emerging parallels between aspects of what the Thaksin Government is preaching rhetorically against multinational companies, against the Freehill’s against the KPMG’s and the Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu’s, and the kind of rhetoric Dr. Mahathir has engaged in over in Malaysia in recent years. What is developing is a populist “Thailand is best” mentality, which effectively kneecaps the political opposition in Thailand and derides foreign input into the economy. This may seem a somewhat harsh argument to put forward, but I think it is necessary to contend, quite accurately I think, that it is not in the short, medium or long tem interests of Thailand to have an internal political dynamic which may work briefly but may be detrimental in the long term.

What has underpinned the spectacular growth of Thailand since the end of World War Two? Globalisation, of course. Globalisation has been the inherent force in the raft of policies which have made Thailand, among other things, the world’s largest rice exporter, the world’s largest rubber exporter, and even the world’s largest exporter of black tiger prawns. How has it achieved this? By opening up to the world, by pursuing difficult and often unpopular policies, and by aggressively engaging its regional trading environment through its bilateral relationships and through multilateral trade associations such as the Cairns Group.

At the moment, Thailand is still treading the globalisation line, but is approaching it in a noticeably more direct, noticeably more populist way. I would contend that Thailand’s internalities should be of great interest to its near neighbours, and that they must carefully monitor events in Bangkok and make assessments about where the country is headed.

At the end of the day, Australia and Thailand are both, are both, absolutely wedded to a mutual economic future of sensible globalisation, sensible deregulation, and sensible privatization. To deviate from that path would ultimately be to whack the export industries of both countries and send them right back to their agricultural pasts.

This leads me to the external front and Thailand of course spearheads ASEAN, a grouping currently under the stewardship of Dr. Surin Pitsuwan, Thailand’s Minister of Foreign Affairs. Thailand has made a real effort and has shown great leadership in pushing the ASEAN group forward, notwithstanding the group’s ongoing economic difficulties. Dr. Pitsuwan has pushed for a more cohesive grouping and has taken bold steps in terms of ASEAN rethinking its blanket policy of non-interference in the internalities of ASEAN member countries. Remember that the great principal of the early days of ASEAN was, “we’ll take a whack at the rest of the world but we’ll never comment or take action on a particular issue relating to the internality of a fellow member of ASEAN”. This outlook has now changed in a way, particularly in light of the participation of several ASEAN member countries in the international force that went to East Timor as I mentioned before.

Bu the big question concerning ASEAN remains. How strong is the ASEAN free trade association going to be? How strong is the dynamic of the ASEAN grouping going to be economically, internationally and politically over the new few years. My worry is that if, in fact, the world heads away from the substantial progress to be derived from the Millennium Round of trade negotiations in Qatar, if China continues to be denied entry into the WTO and the world divides into regional trading blocs ­ a European Trading Bloc, an American Trading Bloc and a China ­ Northeast Trading Bloc, my concern is that both ASEAN and Australia will be in for a very difficult period.

So, it seems that the whole region is poised at a crossroads at the moment. Is the trading paradigm of the world in the twenty-first century in fact going to slip back into competition between a series of major blocs, or is it going to continue on its pathway of genuine opening up, a globalising pathway which gives ASEAN nations and Australia a much better chance at getting on with trade expansion and integration? Personally, I have not yet reached a conclusion on this matter. Certainly, I give ASEAN credit for making progress against difficult odds and for including free-trade as a fundamental principle among its member states. On this score, ASEAN has made a whole lot more progress than Asian nations such as India and Pakistan, nations which every time they are about to have a leaders meeting, got to war with each other on their borders. A similar kind of stoush occurred between India and Bangladesh over a small border area between those two countries. ASEAN has proved to be far more successful than the Indian Ocean Rim Association of Regional Cooperation (IORARC), which was established in 1996/1997. The problem with IORARC continues to be India’s blocking of Pakistan from becoming a member, notwithstanding the fact that Pakistan clearly lies geographically on the Indian Ocean Rim. But for all its success, it remains to be seen whether or not the ASEAN grouping will ever be able to push forward in the manner required of a significant trading bloc player. This is especially so given the possible development of mega trading blocs in the Northern Hemisphere. On this subject I will yield to Professor Falvey, who will provide a more detailed response than I am able to here. Ladies and gentlemen, to bring it all together, Thailand is exciting. Thailand has the capacity, the resources, the dynamism and the democratic impulse ­ all vestiges of continuity dating back to the Rama Dynasty ­ that have worked extremely well for its people over the past fifty years. But it would be my observation, as someone who wants to see Thailand and the Cairns Group succeed, and as someone who wants to see strength in the economies to Australia’s north, that there are danger signals as to where Thailand is heading. The red lights are flashing. They are pointing to the extreme difficulties which might have to be faced if there is a negative or even status-quo approach in Thailand towards globalisation. A negative approach to globalisation would put in real jeopardy the onward growth, the social growth and the cohesion of Thailand and in doing so impede the progress of the Thai people. There can be no complacency, be it here in Australia during this Federal election year, or in Thailand as it works through these problems of future direction. But to gain a better understanding of what is at stake, you can do no better than turn your attention to Thai agriculture, the subject of Professor Falvey’s book. It provides in rich detail an examination of the rural practices upon which Thailand’s economy and statehood have been built, providing handy summaries at the end of each chapter which delight the economic and political challenges Thailand faces in the future. I would like to personally congratulate Professor Falvey on his life-long interest and study in matters Thailand, particularly Thai agriculture, and on the range of literature he has produced on the cattle and sheep of Thailand (I didn’t realise there were any sheep in Northern Thailand, but more of that on another occasion). Professor Falvey’s work adds to the excellent range of works in Australia and Thailand examining the structure of these two nation’s agricultural sectors. I commend him on his efforts.

Finally, I would like to say that I am delighted at having been able to speak with you. And will be delighted to answer any questions in conjunction with Professor Falvey at the conclusion of his speech. Without further ado, I invite you to congratulate the author of this fine work, who will now speak for us.