14 May 2025
皆様、おはようございます。
Welcome to the Australian embassy, it's an honour to have you all here.
We've got many distinguished guests and I'm very pleased to open this Australia and Japan Quantum Technology Summit. I thank especially Q-STAR, which has helped the Embassy deliver the Summit today, of course I want to acknowledge the delegation of Australian quantum companies that has travelled to Japan to explore opportunities for partnership. I also want to welcome our many distinguished Japanese guests, including a very distinguished figure in the field of quantum, the President of Keio University, Itoh Kohei. Welcome everyone.
This Summit is one of several activities that the embassy has supported to enable the partnership between Australia and Japan in critical technologies, a partnership between companies, researchers and innovators in many ways more than between governments.
We focused a lot on cyber security, we focused on data centres, we focused on defence and space industries, and now much more specifically today on quantum technology, which is relevant, of course, to many of those other fields.
There is a big opportunity here because Australia and Japan share more than economic complementarity, our security and strategic interests are converging.
So, at a time of disruption and uncertainty in the world, real partnership building is going to require that strategic alignment and a bedrock of trust, I think, between companies operating in different governmental and regulatory systems.
What's happening outside in the world is pushing our two countries closer together and our institutions closer together. And that's the background to the event today.
Australia and Japan, we're becoming closer to each other and more important to each other in fields as diverse as the energy transition, food security, national defence, cyber security, and in economic security more broadly.
Through Australia's new national quantum strategy, we obviously want to build a strong quantum industry that will drive opportunities in critical technologies and make Australia a more capable country, with more capable companies and institutions.
And, in Japan, we know we have a partner that we trust. A partner that's a leader in precision engineering, a leader in material sciences, a leader in quantum computing and a great compliment to Australia's own strengths.
The Australian Embassy will continue to support this important agenda.
So I want to wish you well for the Summit and more broadly, but also for making the connections that are important to really deliver on the enormous potential we share.
Thank you very much and I look forward to a very interesting and insightful summit.
Thank you.