Opening of the Datec Technology Expo
11 October 2007; Crowne Plaza, Port Moresby, PNG
Australian Deputy High Commissioner to PNG, Ms Ann Harrap
It’s a great pleasure for me to be here tonight to mark the opening of the Datec Technology Expo. I’m sure you’d all join me in congratulating Datec on not only conceiving of the idea to get technology providers and customers together but also for actually pulling it off. Everything I’ve seen in relation to this expo – from the invitation cards to the display here tonight – gives us an indication of the sophistication and experience that Datec, as a long term player in PNG and the Pacific more broadly, brings to making business happen.
From the Australian Government’s perspective, we’re very happy, particularly through the Austrade office here in Port Moresby, to be associated with the Expo and we certainly look forward to working with Datec and others in future to ensure that the people of PNG are able to take advantage of all that new technology has to offer.
The next two days will provide delegates with a wonderful opportunity to share their experiences and expertise with ICT professionals from around the world. It will bring together business people, IT specialists and students to see the most recent developments in information and communication technology.
Human history has demonstrated time and again that the adoption of the latest technologies is vital to economic growth and prosperity.
In Australia, the development of the overland telegraph in the nineteenth century was crucial to cutting the tyranny of distance between Australia and the rest of the world.
In more recent times, Australia’s ongoing love affair with the latest in information and communication technologies has helped to bring the outside world even closer, and brought about extraordinary advances in the fields of health, education and the arts, to name just a few.
As a living example of the benefits technology can bring I wanted to tell you about an arrangement that exists between a hospital in Sydney and a second hospital in the Blue Mountains about four hours drive away. Patients at the Blue Mountains District Hospital are now benefiting from what’s known as a Virtual Critical Care Unit (ViCCU) – a broadband video linked system which means that a specialist at the Nepean Hospital in Sydney is able to remotely lead a critical care team in the district hospital in the Blue Mountains.
This long distance care has been made possible by new technology that transmits high quality audio, video and vital signs and data and enables the specialist in Sydney to control multiple cameras and interact with emergency staff during life saving procedures in the Blue Mountains. Think of the money, time, stress, and in some cases lives, that are saved by that kind of arrangement.
The ICT sector makes an enormous contribution to the Australian economy.
It contributes around 4.5 per cent of Australia’s GDP, and innovations in computing and communication technologies have accounted for somewhere between 50 and 80 per cent of Australia’s productivity gains over the last two decades. ICT industries in Australia earn around $100 billion a year; they export around $2 billion worth of goods each year, and employ 371,000 people.
In a country such as Papua New Guinea, information and communication technologies are – if anything – even more important than they are in Australia. Just as Australia has, in some ways, been dealt a difficult hand by its geographic isolation, so too does PNG face enormous challenges in connecting people from different parts of the country because of its rugged, mountainous terrain and widely dispersed population.
And this is where events such as the Expo come in. By exposing them to the latest ICT developments, the Expo will present delegates with new and exciting ideas for tackling the challenges they may be facing, due to geography, distance or poor infrastructure.
This will benefit not just individual companies but the PNG economy as a whole. Technology allows people to work smarter. It makes them more productive and less wasteful. It can give a coffee grower in a remote village in the Highlands access to the latest weather reports and world prices. It can open up a world of knowledge to students in a fishing village in New Ireland, New Britain or Manus. It can help mining companies find new deposits and give the government accurate information about the state of the country’s forests. It lets airline passengers book their tickets on-line, and allows bank customers to withdraw their money quickly and easily from ATMs.
You might recall the recent visit to PNG by Tim Flannery, one of Australia’s leading climate change scientists and of course a long-time friend of PNG. One of the issues that Tim was discussing was an internet based carbon trading scheme that would have the potential to deliver real financial benefit to landowners who actively preserved forest areas and then traded the carbon benefit that derived from that.
The Expo is also important for what it symbolises about the economic and business relationship between Australia and Papua New Guinea.
I understand that several Australian-based companies will be represented at the Expo. They are just some of the many hundreds of Australian companies that are doing business or exploring opportunities in PNG, and helping to build the commercial relationship between our two countries.
Many of you will already be aware of the crucial role Australia plays in the PNG economy – we provide around 55 per cent of PNG’s merchandise imports and we buy around 30 per cent of its exports. Australia is - by a significant margin – PNG’s number one trading partner.
But what’s often overlooked is the important role PNG plays as a trading partner for Australia. In 2006 we imported $2.3 billion worth of goods from PNG, making it our 17th largest source of merchandise imports, and we exported $1.5 billion worth, making it our 20th largest export market.
While the trading relationship is in good shape, the Australian government – particularly through the work of Austrade – is always looking at ways to expand it even further.
Australia exported only around $6 million of ICT services to PNG last financial year. Hopefully the next two days will provide Australian service providers and PNG customers with the opportunity to discuss ways to do even more business together.
Once again, I’d like to thank Tony Westaway, the General Manager of Datec (PNG), for the invitation to speak here tonight. I know you’ve put in an enormous amount of work and I’m sure the Expo will be a huge success.
Thank you.