Good morning ladies and gentlemen.
I pay my respects to the traditional custodians of this land, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. I acknowledge and respect their continuing culture and the contribution they make to the life of this city and this region. I also pay my respects to the indigenous people here today.
It’s a great honour for me to speak at the first Quad Technology and Business Investment Forum — the first of many. I believe that in years to come, we’ll look back on today as a truly historic day.
It’s a privilege to address so many leading figures from Australia, India, Japan and the United States.
It’s incredible to think that the Quad countries account for about 34% of the world’s gross domestic product. Everyone here today plays a part in that. But we can do more. Together, we can seize the incredible opportunities that emerging technologies have to offer.
With our governments, industry, investors and academics all working together, our countries can lead the world in quantum, artificial intelligence, biotechnology and so much more. We have an opportunity to change the world for the better.
We want to ensure that emerging technologies make the lives of our citizens more secure, prosperous and rewarding. These technologies can help address some of the greatest shared challenges the world faces, now and in the future — including equitable and sustainable growth, climate change, energy security, and pandemics.
The Quad partners are four like-minded countries, with common values and a common vision for a stable, peaceful, resilient and prosperous Indo-Pacific. And we have to seize this chance to become the global leaders in the critical technology ecosystem.
Collaboration and partnership are at the heart of what the Australian Government does, and at the heart of the Quad.
It’s not just about our governments working together, although we certainly do that. It’s about getting business, investors, experts and academics involved and working together — across the Quad — to drive a new era of success and security.
The networks, partnerships and outcomes we achieve today will lay the foundation for truly transformative technology innovation in Quad countries, and around the world.
At the March 2021 virtual Quad Leaders’ meeting, our countries committed to ‘begin cooperation on the critical technologies of the future to ensure that innovation is consistent with a free, open, inclusive, and resilient Indo-Pacific’.
At the same meeting, the leaders agreed to establish the Quad Critical and Emerging Technology Working Group, which is all about ensuring that technology standards are governed by our shared interests and values.
Since then, the Working Group has mapped the supply chains of semi-conductors as a key step to identifying concrete areas where the Quad can take action to immediately bolster the resiliency of the supply of this critical technology.
At the Quad Leaders’ meeting in Tokyo in May this year our leaders recognised that to reap the benefits of emerging technologies, we have to have a true partnership between governments, businesses, investors and academia – and this technology, business and investment forum represents an important first step.
Australia is very proud to be hosting this inaugural event in what we hope will become an important fixture on the Quad events calendar.
We all have a role to play in fostering closer collaboration. Governments can provide the enabling environment for progress. Businesses can develop the commercial applications of emerging technologies, and investors can support the necessary research and development.
Academia can advance our understanding of the nature and the true potential of these technologies. And the trade relationships between the Quad countries can help bring stability to the supply chains for emerging technologies.
Working together, there’s amazing potential for all of us.
Though most of the technology we use is rightly developed by industry, there is open competition between states — either alone, or in partnership with allies — to dominate certain technologies because of their strategic value whether it is in terms of restricting access or shaping the growth trajectory for less than peaceful purposes.
This becomes a serious problem if the scales are tipped against us by countries with fundamentally different values to Australia and the Quad. Some of these other countries have self-serving objectives that disregard what keeps us safe.
Old distinctions between military and commercial technology have mostly disappeared. State projection of power is increasingly through domination of cutting-edge technologies which are owned and operated by private industry. Unfortunately, not all countries share a vision for technology that respects fundamental human rights.
Hostile and authoritarian states are using technological developments to gain the advantage and further their political agendas.
Careful and deliberate action is required now to manage how critical technology is developed and used over the long term.
Our countries can’t afford to sit on the sidelines and merely hope for a better future. We don’t want to be left with a choice between technology we can’t trust and not having access to the latest advancements.
We must work together on the basis of our common, liberal-democratic values to maintain and defend the existing international rules-based order.
As a grouping of like-minded countries, we have to collaborate and invest in each other’s efforts to promote research and development and commercialise our technological advances — and I must say, Australia’s emerging tech sector is a great place to invest.
Growth in the quantum sector will significantly contribute to our economies through transformations in areas including manufacturing, healthcare, and cyber security.
However, as our use of quantum technologies increases, new threats to our national interests also emerge, including potential sabotage of critical functions, systems and data sets and unwanted knowledge transfer.
These threats have the potential to inhibit Australia’s sovereign decision-making with respect to critical technologies.
Quad countries are renowned for their quantum technology research and capabilities, making us a valuable targets for foreign actors looking to carry out interference activities.
Artificial Intelligence holds great promise for our national economies, security and societies. This includes improved productivity through increased automation, enhanced cyber security, and increased worker productivity and fulfilment — by allowing workers to focus on more creative or high-value-add tasks.
Our capability in AI will ensure we are able to counter national security threats, and increase our defence capabilities through smarter military systems and operations.
With the opportunities AI promises, there are also significant risks. AI developed from poorly written or applied algorithms and biases can result in faulty decision-making that could harm people, machinery or critical infrastructure
AI can also be used to mount malicious cyber-attacks or erode social cohesion and trust in our democracies via the use of deepfakes and mis/dis-information at unprecedented scale.
Vulnerabilities in AI-based systems can also be exploited to undermine public confidence in AI-based tools and services.
Biotechnology is going through massive changes. It is on the cusp of unlocking commercially viable applications for synthetic biology and genomic sequencing, for example.
Synthetic biology offers a unique opportunity improve the lives of many millions or even billions of people. It can meet the increasing demand for energy and food; mitigate the effects of environmental degradation; and enhance human and veterinary health and well-being.
Leadership and ongoing innovation in biotechnology will give our countries economic, political, and strategic power, as well as the ability to shape the standards and values that characterise the broader global technology environment in line with favorable, democratic principles.
The Australian Government is working to identify how we can support security considerations in emerging applications of biotechnology.
And, through the Quad Critical and Emerging Technology Working Group, we are carrying out foresight analysis in this area.
Importantly, this includes working with our academic think-tank partnership, the Quad Tech Network — a key example of how our government and academia can work together to address critical technology challenges.
These capabilities offer tremendous opportunities across the ASEAN and Pacific Island nations that the Quad can use to help local market development, as well as continuing to promote a free and open Indo-Pacific.
With these and other emerging technologies, efforts to support and underpin development must be balanced with measures to protect these technologies from security risks.
We need to work alongside likeminded international partners, including the Quad, to implement appropriate security safeguards and export controls, and attract foreign talent in a way that does not undermine critical technology research
Governments need to do more to work with industry to ensure that the technology — and the sensitive data that enables it — is not misused by malign actors that seek to do us harm.
A ‘secure-by-design’ approach in emerging tech is imperative. This could avoid the scenario seen in other advanced tech of the 20th and 21st centuries, such as computing, where safety and security was not prioritised early enough, and hostile state actors and criminal organisations took advantage of loose governance, and poor security controls.
So there are incredible opportunities ahead of us in emerging technology, and some serious challenges.
Australia remains committed to making the most of these opportunities and confronting these challenges, inclusively, practically, and in partnership with the private sector, academia and our international partners at every opportunity.
Today we’ll hear from world-leading experts, and there’ll be a lot of amazing conversations. The Australian Government and our Quad partner governments are here to listen, and we’re here to help.
We’ll all have the chance to learn from each other and build new networks. I encourage everyone to make the most of it.
This is just the beginning of the journey for the Quad Technology and Business Investment Forum. So let’s get it off to a great start.
Together we can help shape a better future and a better world.
Thank you.
