2024 Bastille Day Business Breakfast

Member for Surfers Paradise, Mr John-Paul Langbroek MP; President, French-Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Queensland, Mr Michael Carreiras; Honorary Consul of France in Brisbane, Mr Alain Etchegaray; Paralympian, Ms Karni Liddell; Distinguished guests; Mesdames et Messieurs.

I begin by acknowledging the Traditional Owners of the lands around Brisbane, the Turrbal and Jagera people, and pay my respects to Elders past, present and emerging, and any First Nations people with us this morning.

It was the ancestors of today’s First Nations people who saw the first French ships reach this continent, and had it not been for the fact that the early French expeditions were more interested in science than in claiming new territory, Australia today might well have been ‘Australie’.

But while we did not become a French colony, the scientists on board those first ships nevertheless left us a priceless legacy: they named and described literally thousands of Australian species of flora and fauna and those specimens, returned to museums in France, became the basis of studies of Australian biology and ecology.

As one Australian zoologist has observed, “England may have colonised Australia, but it was France that understood it best”.

That understanding has continued now for more than 250 years and underpins the contemporary relationship between our two nations, aided in large part by the commonalities in our languages – English is said to be made up of 30% French words – our advanced economies, our forward-thinking societies, and our diplomatic savoir-faire.

Today, we have an agenda for bilateral cooperation – a roadmap that recognises the strategic challenges of the South Pacific region, identifies climate action as a priority, and continues to provide opportunities for collaboration in education and research.

Programs and projects such as the Australia-France Centre of Excellence for the Indo-Pacific, strategic dialogue on critical minerals, greater cooperation in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean, and enhanced information exchange in matters such as defence and space are all vital parts of this re-invigorated commitment to cooperation.

We also have a robust bilateral trade and investment relationship that is providing increasing opportunities for personal connections between the people of our two nations, supplemented by the more than 330 thousand French citizens who have come to Australia under working holiday arrangements in the past two decades, and more than 60 thousand who come here as tourists or students each year.

Of course, this year, the number of tourists travelling in the opposite direction is about to increase greatly with the Opening Ceremony of the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games just a fortnight away.

I am thrilled that Graeme and I will be among those thousands of Australians visiting Paris for this worldwide celebration of sporting excellence, friendship and, especially, diversity and inclusion.

I thank the Queensland chapter of the French-Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry for the invitation to join you this morning.

I am looking forward greatly to hearing from the inspirational Paralympian, Karni Liddell, and to the performance of a dance that many Australians might associate with fond memories of a visit to Paris, the cancan.

It may be 235 years since the storming of the Bastille, but the revolutionary spirit of liberty, equality and fraternity lives on as the national motto of France, and in that spirit, I wish you all a wonderful day of celebration on Sunday.

Long live the 14th of July! Or, vive le quatorze Juillet!