: Mr Albanese, thank you for your time. You've had a busy week in Malaysia and now South Korea. You've often talked about the uncertainty, the geostrategic uncertainty in the region. Given the past week that you've had, speaking with a number of leaders, are you more or less concerned about the outlook?
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: It's really positive that President Trump and President Xi had a meeting this week and that they're going to visit each other's respective countries. We do live in an uncertain world, and that's why Australia's reliability is so important to cut through in the relationships that we build. I've met with more than 20 leaders in the last week. I've had eight bilateral meetings, formal meetings, including with the new Prime Minister of Japan and the new Prime Minister of Thailand. These are important relationships. It's important for me to have the opportunity to sit down and have dinner with President Trump and to have informal discussions with President Xi here as well.
STEPHANIE BORYS: On those relationships, talking specifically about China, Australia has a very strong trading relationship, but we are seeing ongoing tensions in the South China Sea. Is that sustainable to have two very different types of relationships with the one country?
PRIME MINISTER: We have a relationship where we cooperate where we can, we disagree where we must, but we engage in our national interests and we have straight talks with each other. We have different political systems, so it's not surprising that there would be differences arise. What's important is how you deal with them, that you don't allow relationship to be defined just by difference, and that is what we have done as the Australian Government. And that is in Australia's interest. It's in China's interest, but it's also of course in the interest of regional peace and security.
STEPHANIE BORYS: But are you worried about those rising tensions in the South China Sea?
PRIME MINISTER: Look, we deal with these issues. The South China Sea is an important thoroughfare for our trade, and that's why we engage in freedom of navigation exercises. That's understood. There's nothing new about that, and it's important that we continue to engage constructively. I certainly do that with President Xi, who I had a number of informal discussions with over the last couple of days, but also I had, of course, a formal bilateral meeting with Premier Li, my counterpart, when we were in Kuala Lumpur.
STEPHANIE BORYS: With all of those conversations on, let's talk about critical minerals, specifically Australia. Has that deal with the US - would you do a deal with China, for example, or other countries?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, what we're doing, China, of course, has considerable access to critical minerals and rare earths. One of the issues is their market dominance which is there. But the framework that Australia has established with the United States is also used, if you look at the framework that came out of the US-Japan meeting, it's very similar. We support trade. What we don't support is dominance by any one nation because that can cause disruption in the way that markets operate. And what Australia's doing is seizing the opportunity that's there. We have the minerals under our great continent that will help to power the globe in this century. What we can do as well is to value add, create more jobs, by making sure that we don't just dig things up and export them, wait for value to be added and jobs created overseas. I want to see jobs and new industries created in Australia. That's been my focus over the last week, creating economic activity for what Australia, what's in our national interest.
STEPHANIE BORYS: Mr Albanese, thank you for your time here in South Korea.
PRIME MINISTER: Thanks very much, Steph.
