The Australian Ambassador’s Lecture
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The Australian ambassador to Kuwait Warren Hauck held a talk in the
second event of the CEF’s Eminent Speakers Series on December 2, 2015.
The event took place as part of the training course on “Inclusive
Growth: Macroeconomic and Sectoral Policies” and was moderated by CEF
Director Oussama Kanaan. In his opening remarks, Kanaan explained the
importance of robust and inclusive growth for the Arab region. He
noted that Arab countries and particularly oil-exporters can learn a
great deal from the Australian experience. “Indeed, the country is a
large commodity exporter and yet it showed economic resilience and
over time was able to successfully diversity its exports”, Kanaan
said.
Ambassador Hauck presented the Australian experience and
highlighted how the country managed to achieve both strong economic
growth and inclusiveness. “We are now in the 25th year of
uninterrupted economic growth as a result of several reforms we
introduced since 1991. The country’s resilience has been sustained by
sound macroeconomic policies, strong institutions and continued demand
for hard and soft commodities from Asia” Ambassador Hauck noted. He
pointed out that Australia is the only developed economy to have no
annual recession during the past 23 years, placing it alongside
high-growth economies such as China and India. Ambassador Hauck cited
some factors that explain such an outstanding achievement including
the floating of the Australian dollar, the reduction of tariffs on
imports under five percent, the dismantling of the centralized wage
fixing and the creation of a more flexible labor market. “We reformed
inefficient government monopolies in telecommunications,
transportation and water. The reforms boosted productivity and reduced
the production costs. We also reformed the tax system, strengthened
social policies and provided more funding for universities”, Hauck
added.
Hauck noted that there are “five success factors for
reforms”: proper prioritization and sequencing; finding the “right
pace”; creating a broad recognition of the need for reform; giving a
voice to the winners from reforms; and finally, a healthy government
budget and readiness to overcome the downturns. “Australia continues
to invest in the education sector, training programs and
infrastructure. We will be strongly focusing on innovation as we live
in a globalized world. We might face challenges ahead but with 25
years of solid growth, I think we are in the right position”,
Ambassador Hauck concluded.
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