Press Release
Sydney, January 29, 2007 | Sydney, November 20, 2007 | Sydney, August 15, 2006
Sydney, August 9, 2006 | Sydney, May 9, 2006
Sydney, August 9, 2006
The Australia Japan Business Association (AJBA) held its eagerly anticipated second breakfast meeting this morning in Sydney 's CBD , and is happy to record that attendance at the event significantly surpassed that at the highly successful inaugural event held in May.
Over one hundred attendees from Japanese and Australian private and government interests spent an hour networking amid the panorama afforded by the MLC Centre before proceedings officially got underway.
In his keynote address, the president of the AJBA, Mr. Mel J. Pach, noted that it was an opportune time to be speaking about Australia-Japan relations with the forthcoming resignation of Japan's longest serving prime minister, Mr. Koizumi, in September. Mr. Pach briefly discussed how Mr. Koizumi would have performed had he come to power ten years earlier, suggesting that Mr. Koizumi was as much a product of the new Japan as a creator of it.
The first of the guest speakers was Professor Peter Drysdale, Emeritus Professor of Economics and Visiting Fellow in Policy and Governance in the Asia Pacific School of Economics and Government at ANU. He is a former Executive Director of the Australia-Japan Research Centre. He is a renowned author and is widely regarded as our preeminent expert on Japan and East Asia . In his presentation entitled "Where is Japan headed and What's in It for Australia," he pointed to a range of positive economic indicators coming out of Japan, including GDP growth, household spending and exports,
and spoke of Japan's political future beyond Prime Minister Koizumi as well as Japan's future strategy in East Asia and Australia's strategic interests in relation to it.
The second guest speaker was Mr. Rick Asquini, Partner-in-Charge, Taxation, at KPMG, who gave a detailed comparison of the tax regimes in Australia and Japan , focusing on the acquisition of assets and shares as well as foreign investment, tax rates and funding.
Speaking after the breakfast, Mr. Pach expressed confidence that the Association would continue to increase in size due to the interest that Australian and Japanese business people have for each other's cultures and genuine desire to do business with each other, observing that there is no other society of its kind that offers people engaged in business with Australia and Japan with the opportunities for networking and exchange.
The Association is an official part of the 2006 Year of Exchange program between Australia and Japan. It also has the support of Austrade, the Australian Institute of Export and other organizations.
During the Association's early stages, it is being sponsored by Lexxicorp Pty., Ltd., a languages services and IT company with offices in North Sydney and Tokyo.
A copy of Professor Drysdale's presentation can be downloaded here.