2 October 2024
オーストラリア大使館へようこそ。オーストラリア大使のジャスティン・ヘイハーストと申します。
As the Australian Ambassador, I'm really pleased to welcome you to the Australian Embassy for this very important event. I want to acknowledge Dig Howitt, the CEO of Cochlear, other distinguished guests from Australia and Assistant Minister for Global Health and Welfare, MHLW (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare) Inoue Hajime, and all of our Japanese friends and colleagues.
Australia and Japan have a very close partnership in many areas. We have a big economic relationship and a big political and security relationship. I think, increasingly, we're about helping resolve or make progress on each other's national priorities. For Australia, hearing health, healthy aging, public health in general, they are very big priorities. And I know that's the case in Japan as well.
For any national priority, we need to apply innovation, the best thinking and systemic support and reform to enable the dissemination of new technology to respond to challenges. We have a company in Australia, Cochlear, that we're very proud of because it's a great innovator. It's a global leader. And it fixes problems that we share.
The Australian Embassy and the Australian Government strongly support Cochlear and its technology, just as we support engagement between governments on the public policy challenges we face.
In Australia, we're very proud of the progress we've made on hearing health for older Australians, but also very proud of our screening systems for newborn Australians. We want to share with our Japanese partners the things we've learned. We also want to listen and learn from Japan about all the things that this country is doing on similar challenges.
This is another example of a great partnership. I think your discussions today are very important, and I just want to underscore again how strongly we want to be a facilitator and an enabler of that dialog and further progress between us.
Thank you very much. I'm very pleased to kick off your round table, and I wish you very productive discussions.