Asean Now the Place to Grow - lets go W.A.

Austrade - Seminar Perth Oct 28, 2009

ASEAN Now! The Place to Grow
Your journey into one of Australia’s largest markets begins here.

Image via Wikipedia

The Duxton’s Seminar facilities were at full capacity attendance from local Industry in Perth West Australia.


Patronage was widespread with sectors of Industry from Technology, Mining, Transport, Importers and exporters.

There is no doubt W.A. has serious trading links with our Asian Neighbour and the announcements by the presenters provide significant opportunities for W.A. business to develop these markets.






With Australia’s largest free trade agreement, the ASEAN*-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement, expected to enter into force on 1 January 2010, now is the time to look to ASEAN countries for opportunities to grow your business.



Business confidence in ASEAN is improving, with the major ASEAN economies forecast to grow strongly over the coming years as the global economic recovery takes place.

The message was made loud and clear by the heavyweights of the Asian Trade connection and WA Government


Speakers left to right

Michael Mugliston,

Rod Morehouse,

Adam Denniss,

Steve Arnott.

Titles of office displayed with the speaker topic notes

Speakers and Topics


Introduction:
Adam Denniss, Manager – Export Advisers, Austrade Perth

Introduce speakers, some housekeeping and official launch with via dvd from The Hon. Simon Crean Minister for Trade


Better Business Linkages
Rod Morehouse, Regional Senior Trade and Investment Commission – Asean South, Austrade.


through AANZFTA and Asean Industry team


A footnote – Khun Rod background has roots to Thailand. Educated predominately overseas in Thailand and Canada and later in
Australia at the Universities of Newcastle.





AANZFTA overview and key outcomes
Michael Mugliston, Negotiator , Goods, Asia Trade Task Force, DAFT
Mr Mugliston has lead Australia's free trade agreement negotiations with ASEAN-New Zealand for over four years. Prior to that he served overseas as Deputy Head of Australia's Mission to the EU in Brussels (2001-04) and was Counsellor to Australia's Mission to the GATT in Geneva during the Uruguay Round (1991-94).


Footnote: Michael is a product of UWA

a complex topic: Key tariff reductions/eliminations in sections, rules and Origin.

The information presented by Mr Mugliston was very diverse and complex; consider the achievement of the Australian Government creating a bilateral trade environment between 12 countries. The establishment of a history marking agreement to pave the way for Bilateral Trade Laws, simplifying the way to do business with laws to support the conduct.

Obviously there is going to be some teething problems however it was clear from the confidence and commitment by Mr. Mugliston that this will be done and will be driven by our Government.

I hasten to caution you about website resources, there is now a major legacy of transition of various countries, including Australia to sunset and update their website data; tariffs and the like so if you are serious about your Business then DO contact the appropriate dept., to ratify the validity of the information and ask the next question, what is changing.
For the latest news and presentation media from the Seminars visit this website

Picture right: .. chat after the Seminar

Spiro Politis, Phill Smith (AusWaThai) and Michael Mugliston

Pixel Focus – Spiro Politis
Testimonial to success into the Asian market with acknowledgement of vicarious connections from Austrade.

Spiro delivered practical knowledge about his experience “real time” and identified features that makes the difference - Austrade was and continues to be a key feature of his success. You can read more about Spiro’s success in google – click here


WA Government programs
Mr Steve Arnott, Director Dept., of State Development – WA Government Programs

Image via Wikipedia

Steve acknowledge the enormity of DAFT achievements and the strong Alliance between Austrade and WA.Gov

Quite frankly I never know this entity existed.

During my export endeavours I tended to “D.I.Y” with the admission that when it comes to business enterprise my experience with Government is "cannot see the wood for the trees and cannot see the forest for the trees"

Prov. Cannot perceive the overview or important things because of concentrating too much on details. The information presented in this textbook is so disorganized that I can't see the wood for the trees. The politician's opponents claimed that she couldn't see the forest for the trees, because she spent so much time trying to solve minor problems.

I also acknowledge that my experience shows the opposite with our Government in terms of doing business outside Australia, the likes of:-

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

DFAT Austrade have been quite extraordinary in terms of their achievement and enthusiasm to support enterprise.

Conversely it continues to be my experience with Tourism and trade into W.A. Government is entombed in a manifestation of rules and regulations and of course the mere mention of this will further blacken my path…. Some Ministers need to read and circulate the training module “A complaint is a gift” and get a reframe on the word “Territorial.

I’m not sure how we are suppose to Trade with some Countries when they are not welcomed.

I will now visit the website of the Dept of State Development and update the Directories and

Image via Wikipedia

Networking links on our website http://www.austhai.biz/ – please note: our website has been “in cobwebs” for the past 6 months while we updated our Travel Thailand website.

We then switched our focus to our Travel WA website WITH DISASTERIOUS RESULTS in terms of synergy with Tourism Australia.


Our experience over the last 6 months is Tourism Australia don’t talk, the only TELL (if you get a reply).... it's not good .... so we have moved on to our next medium to help our Community "Business export".

Sadly some workers don't know their employer's "Mission Statement", perhaps they are lazy or bad Management, it's not meant to be a facade. The easy test for this is ask them a few questions or challenge a process and oh boy... so many we have approached about Tourism Australia and I feel like I'm on a certain Aussie airline that show an intolerant view toward customers and Service... oops I say no more

Our Business website – WA and Thailand is now our focus, our monthly visits to Thailand are adding Icons support our Mission statement. The most recent addition, a “Joint Venture” project with SME Bangkok is a website for Aussie Business Execs tours to Bangkok. A draft is on display at http://www.tours.thaibis.com/ .. how does it support our Mission statement ... simple make it easy and attractive for business people to visit, they either see Business Opportunities or that bring back benefits be it business or social. This si what we wanted to do with Tourim for WA but our perception is you can't get in.

Key Points from Seminar
Austrade are absolutely an innovative and entrepreneurial (and very enthusiastic) agency – do

not under estimate their capacity to guide and connect you to markets. The advisers are available for contact to determine viability of your product/service, they have branches in most countries.

Image via Wikipedia

DAFT through their Task Force have creating History, you should be part of it.

Handout Literature – The documentation comprised about 30 pages broken into about 6 sections with diagrams and recital, each is relevant to different markets. It’s very useful information, I’m not sure if it is on any website but simply if you are serious you will and should contact the department. If the energy of the speakers is anything to go by then you will be served well by their workforce.

Rules and Regulations – Transitional – check with the depts. Before you bind your decisions based on the web page data

Image by thaigov via Flickr

Two-way trade between Australia and ASEAN countries reached $88.9 billion in 2008, more than our trade with either Japan or China. Opportunities for business engagement are set to increase when the ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement (AANZFTA) comes into effect. As Australia’s most comprehensive FTA, this milestone agreement will give you greater access to a market of 600 million consumers, with a combined GDP of A$3.1 trillion. It will significantly raise Australia’s profile throughout ASEAN member countries, create direct economic benefits through tariff reductions and greater investment opportunities and provide greater certainty for business. More details on AANZFTA can be found at www.dfat.gov.au/trade/fta/asean/aanzfta.


AANZFTA, together with the resilience of the ASEAN economies, their geographic proximity and our strong business and cultural links, will further enhance opportunities for your business in one of Australia’s most prospective trading markets.
Find out why ASEAN is now the place to grow.

Go to www.austrade.gov.au/asean or call 13 28 78


Please note - we only populate and support news Australia and Thailand




*The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) comprises Brunei Darussalam, Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, The Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

For all the latest news about Business W.A. and Thailand visit AusWaThai Media

Tourism Australia downunder is Under and down

JOHN McCarthy from the Courier Mail gives his opinion on why Australia is failing as a tourist destination:

Image via Wikipedia

TOURISM officials are wondering what has happened to Australia that has caused a slump in overseas and domestic tourists.
Easy. We're boring, expensive, distant and difficult.

Image via Wikipedia

The number of Australians heading overseas for holidays has almost doubled in the past decade.
For some reason, the tourism industry feels this is an abandonment but it really comes down to the fact that . . . well, why would anyone holiday here?

One-time ambassador for Australian tourism Paul Hogan summed it up by saying that despite how we thought about ourselves, the rest of the world didn't really believe we were that special.

We had become so five-minutes-ago.
"Everyone has nice beaches and waterfalls and museums and things like that," Hogan said.

The lovable larrikin commented that when Americans thought of Australia, it was now in terms of our actors rather than our beaches. I doubt that, considering most of them adopt an American accent in the movies, but it's a reasonable point.

Now they want to throw away $20 million of taxpayers' money coming up with a slogan to lure tourists to Australia when what they really need is a reason to come here.

We haven't helped matters by giving China a black eye and then developing a perception in India that we were a bunch of racist rednecks by beating up some Indian students in Melbourne.

Chinese tourist visa applications to Australia have in the past three months plummeted as much as 80 per cent because of political tensions.

Adding further insult is that the two most recent tourism campaigns - using Lara Bingle and then the ill-fated and hideously expensive spin-off from the Australia movie - have not reaped the expected rewards.

When Bingle asked, "where the bloody hell are you?" Britain and Europe replied: "In nice and interesting places like Spain, Italy and France, thanks for asking." Tourism experts said the Lara Bingle-in-a-bikini commercial put women off, and they were predominantly the ones who made the family travel decisions.

When the Australia movie spin-off tried to lure them, those who had seen the film were paralysed by boredom. Those who hadn't seen the movie thought the ad was a Lux commercial.

Australia managed to poke its head above the pack for a while because we were safe, English-speaking, warm and cheap.

But cheap doesn't work when the local currency is above US80 and, let's face it, nowhere is safe any more. Just ask those Indian students or read about the terrorism plans that were being plotted for our army barracks.

Image by In Veritas Lux via Flickr

That leaves warm and English-speaking to counteract the boring, expensive, distant and difficult.

After the novelty value of kangaroos and koalas wore off, Europeans saw us for what we were: England with better weather and less whingeing.
My family recently booked a two-week holiday to Bali but I asked myself: "Why not somewhere in Australia?"
Why am I not supporting our local tourism industry by holidaying locally?
Why not holiday on the Great Barrier Reef, for example? Well, have you seen the prices? We've been there and seen the bleached coral. The reefs on the Sinai Peninsula and Fiji were superior, more fun, less crowded and had a big point of difference: there was a sense of discovery.

Sydney? Spent 12 years there. It's just a bigger Gold Coast.

Image via Wikipedia

Melbourne? Hate shopping and art galleries and I look washed out in black.
Adelaide? Ummm.
Perth? Are you kidding?
Regional Australia? See Adelaide.
Kakadu? My annual income remains below seven figures.
Uluru (Ayers Rock)? Let's see. Fly to Alice Springs, drive for a day to marvel at a rock. Fly home again. Hold me back!
Tasmania? Love to, but have to keep something to do in retirement or possible brain-injury rehabilitation.
Face it, if we don't want to holiday here, why would anyone else?

If you consider that the buying power of the Australian dollar has escalated so much in the past year and that airfares, particularly to the US, have plummeted, why wouldn't you take the opportunity to holiday overseas?

Image by Medusa's Lover via Flickr

Hogan suggested that we should use Hugh Jackman to sell Australia in much the same way as Hogan did with his "throw another shrimp on the barbie" campaign 30 years ago. It's a good idea except Hogan's acting roles were as a laidback, laconic Aussie.

Jackman, who is apparently a top bloke, recently used knives springing from his fist to dismember half the cast in the latest X-men film. Maybe not the image we're looking for.
Hogan said his campaign worked because he invited people to have a good time, to meet some Aussies and feel welcome, but that was a product of its time.

"It'd be a terrible dried-out, burnt-out shrimp on the barbie if we were still waving it about after 30 years."


RELATED ARTICLE

GOVERNMENT PROPOSES 20MILLION TO PROMOTE

===================================================================

Australia’s inbound tourism market is international education

Image via Wikipedia

Since 2000, 46 percent of the total growth of Australia’s inbound tourism market has been derived from international education visitors.

Over the same period, international holiday makers have delivered just 14 percent of the total growth.

Often scorned for having limited practical experience and business savvy, it is the academics that are exceling in today’s extremely challenging business environment and are continuing to attract strong visitation to Australia.

Image by Gattou/Lucie Mostly there in weekend via Flickr

Tourism industry identity and convenor of the Tourism Futures conference, Mr. Tony Charters is highlighting the success of the education sector in the lead up to the prestigious national conference sponsored by Tourism Queensland and Tourism Australia.

“Academics are easily stereotyped as being cosseted away from the cut and thrust of the business world, but when everyone else is reeling, it is the education sector providing a guiding light for the tourism industry,” said Mr. Charters.

“Tourism Futures is renowned for taking a forward looking agenda - casting an eye into the next decade - and while the industry and policy makers at all levels of government have some critical tactics to decide upon, it is refreshing to see one sector getting very impressive results.”

The ironic success of universities and the education sector could provide a footprint for marketing to k

Image by 333junction via Flickr

ey markets such as India and China.

“They obviously have very effective marketing strategies with good networks and communications channels,” said Mr. Charters. “We should be prepared to closely examine their methods and strategies to look for a way forward for the broader industry.”

While education tourism represents just 6 percent of the incoming international tourism numbers it delivers 22 percent of the total revenue from inbound tourism. Key countries responsible for this growth include India and China. Those nations, together with many south-east Asian countries, greatly value and invest heavily in western education for their children.

Image by Flying Cloud via Flickr

“Not only do academic institutions attract the students for their studies, but the students will almost always do some form of travel while they are here, as well as often attracting their families for visits and holidays. “Once links are established with our country, there will be a natural affinity between the students and Australia that will stimulate visits again in the future. So there is an ongoing return from the success of the educational institutions,” said Mr. Charters.

Image by greenhem via Flickr

Thai seeking Education in West Australia - visit www.twa.auswathai.com and see the list of education agents.

Phaptawan Suwannakudt: Compelling art of the self

Phaptawan Suwannakudt: Courtesy of Arc One Gallery, Melbourne



Layered texts, distant houses, plants and elephants: All these reveal the compelling life story of Thai artist Phaptawan Suwannakudt.

Phaptawan’s seventh solo exhibition, which opened July 28 at Arc One Gallery in Melbourne, shows how the painter, renowned for her Buddhist murals, is now focusing on the self, offering a personal perspective while drawing on Thai Buddhist belief.
Phaptawan is a unique artist, not only because for more than a decade she led a large team of mostly male painters to work on massive public projects for temples and hotels throughout Thailand and became the first woman to break the male hierarchy in the temple domain.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

She is also remarkable for having the courage to retain her self amid the hustle and bustle of the contemporary art scene in Australia where she settled after her marriage to an Australian in 1996.
The tile of this exhibition is “Traiphum Phra Ruang” (Three Worlds according to King Ruang), the narrative of cosmic structure in Thai belief.
The description of the three worlds, says Phaptawan, is the fundamental lead to Buddhist practice, which will ultimately get you out of Samsara and attain enlightenment.
Thai Buddhism is a way of life, and Phaptawan’s oeuvre is about her way of life.
Phaptawan, who spent her childhood in the temples where her father, the famed Paiboon Suwannakudt or Tan Kudt, worked, was his unofficial apprentice for more than a decade. She retains the skills she acquired in the medium, narrative and detail of temple murals.
She says of her paintings that they are stories and interpretations that are mostly concerned with what she has made of herself, including her childhood memories and dreams.
For all the inspiration she draws from her past, however, Phaptawan stays clear of appropriating it. Rather, she has developed a very personal style to tell her personal story. In the “Three Worlds” series, scribbles form the texture of the canvas.

In fact, they are text written on other text, involving masking and peeling off, adding and erasing. The process appears to be a metaphor of her changing situations narrated as one follows after another.

Three Worlds #1 (2008) by Phaptawan Suwannakudt Courtesy of Arc One Gallery, Melbourne
In the sequence, one can see buildings placed on the canvas as if the artist were seeking to define her home amid the native Australian flora or in a desolate urban scene.
Phaptawan explains how the scribbles came about. “I instinctively scribbled down in my sketchbook the Thai names of plants found in the street in the days after I first arrived as I migrated to Sydney. This was probably an urge to try to co

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

mmunicate with the environment and create a mental space of my own.”

Although executed in a realist mode, her paintings usually have a metaphorical context. The blossoming lotus flowers on top of a house in Three Worlds #1, for instance, may well mean a new awakening, a rebirth in her new living environment.
The image of the elephant, which appears as her self-portrait, is seen in many of her canvases. This works to lay bare her own experiences, such as in Three Worlds # 2 where two boatmen carry the elephant in their barge across the waters, or in The Elephant in the Bush denoting her confusion, and perhaps her happiness among the herd of elephants in Traveling.
But in Three Worlds #9, an atmospheric landscape overpowers the elephant, which appears as a vaguely painted image between the contours of the tree trunks.
Phaptawan travels a lot not only physically between Thailand and Australia, both of which she considers as her home countries, but also in the imagined spaces where memories and Buddhist stories come together with current experiences.
An artist whose large murals of Thai Buddhist cycles are used to revisit traditional Buddhist stories from a woman’s perspective, she co-founded, with artists Nitaya Ueareeworakul and Mink Nopparat, the Womanifesto in 1996.
The biannual women’s initiative eventually developed into a five-week artists’ residency at the fifth Womanifesto, which she co-organized with Nataya Uaereeworakul and Varsha Nair last year at Rai Boonbandarn Farm in Srisaket, Thailand.
There, she reconnected with her ties to her ancestral home and the legacy of her father and teacher, the painter, writer, poet and choreographer Paiboon Suwannakudt.
The experience inspired her to make her monumental “sculptures”, a series of fabric constructions titled Casting off Memory.
Unlike her paintings, which apply the realist mode to imagined spaces, the “sculptures” are abstract and even more intense and personal than her paintings.
Phaptawan Suwannakudt (b. 1959) graduated from Silpakorn University, Thailand, with a degree in English and German and completed a Master of Visual Arts at Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney.
Since 1999, she has held seven solo shows in Sydney, Bangkok and Melbourne. She lives and works in Sydney, but keeps a studio in Bangkok.Phaptawan travels in the imagined spaces where memories and Buddhist stories come together with current experiences.

Three WorldsSolo exhibition by Phaptawan Suwannakudt
Until August 22, 2009Arc One Gallery45 Flinders Lane,
Melbourne Victoria 3000 AustraliaTel: +61 3 9650 0589Fax: +61 3 9650 0591Email: mail@arc1gallery.com