Chinese Premier Li Qiang in Perth on final day of tour

Chinese Premier Li Chung has met with Australian and Chinese business leaders at the Australia-China CEO roundtable in Perth's Kings Park.

Transcript

00:00Well, there's been a massive security operation here in King's Park in the centre of Perth.

00:07Premier Lee arrived in a motorcade, accompanied by a police helicopter, which included a sniper,

00:14which circled quite close to the waiting pack.

00:18Now he was greeted by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

00:22The two took a little walk, a tour around the park to one of the lookouts.

00:27The press were corralled away from the leaders and Premier Lee ignored questions about former

00:34Australian journalist, sorry, formerly detained Australian journalist Chung Lei.

00:38There were reports yesterday that Chinese officials had tried to block cameras from

00:44viewing her.

00:46Premier Lee is here to meet with both Australian and Chinese business leaders.

00:51It's the CEO Business Roundtable and it's the first time since 2017 that such an event

00:57has taken place, since relations soured between the two nations.

01:02Now there's been representatives, about 12 companies each from Australia and China, and

01:08as you can imagine, mining has featured very heavily on that line-up.

01:12Now we've seen representatives from BHP, Fortescue, Woodside, and from China there's been representatives

01:19from CITIC, which is a big operator here in Western Australia, as well as Beijing Energy

01:24Group.

01:25There's a number of people representing renewable energies as well.

01:29Now it isn't surprising that the mining industry is at the top of the table given Western Australia's

01:35reliance on sales of iron ore to China.

01:39In fact, in this financial year, we're forecast to generate $9.8 billion in government revenue

01:44just out of those iron ore sales alone.

01:47So Western Australia is, of course, quite reliant on China and the welcome here has

01:54been, I understand, warm.

01:58It's also not hard to imagine that when the Prime Minister said, we must cooperate where

02:02we can, that these kinds of meetings were what he was expecting.

02:06Now we've also heard an address from the head of that organisation, who also chose to focus

02:13on business opportunities for dialogue.

02:16While there have been challenging times in the bilateral relationship between the two

02:20nations, I think it's fair to say that this is another positive point of progress.

02:25More engagement is, of course, always a positive thing and that's what's so important about

02:30an event such as this and, of course, the business dialogue that I referenced earlier.

02:35It shows that whilst the parameters of a bilateral relationship are set by governments, they

02:40will always be sustained by the quality of the personal relationships and especially

02:44those personal relationships that subsist on a business-to-business level.

02:51Now Premier Li is in the roundtable at the moment.

02:54He's expected to emphasise the need for a reliable source of commodities out of Australia.

03:00He's also just toured a lithium plant and that's a commodity obviously crucial to China's

03:05ambitions of a clean energy future, as well as its burgeoning electric vehicle manufacturing

03:12sector.