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