Thank you, Ambassador.
Mr Jean-Noël Barrot, Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs. Thank you for the warm welcome to France.
Mr Olivier Poivre d'Arvor, Ambassador for the Poles and Oceans.
Ms Lynette Wood, Australian Ambassador to France.
Dr Clara Péron.
Distinguished guests - it's a pleasure to be here in Paris today.
Almost three years ago, Australia and France signed a new Roadmap.
It marked a reset of our relationship - and reflected a deliberate choice by our two nations to emerge stronger together after a difficult period.
The Roadmap we signed was a new agenda for bilateral co-operation.
It set out ways that our nations could work together to advance shared national and international interests around security, climate action, and education.
And it began with a clear understanding of France's place in our region. France is a Pacific power, a European power, and a multilateral power.
I'd like to take a moment to thank and acknowledge Minister Barrot for his leadership in deploying and amplifying France's power to help shape the world for the better including France's work to advance a two-state solution.
France's interests intersect with our own across the challenges that will most shape this century.
And over the past three years, we have been delivering on the ambition we set out in the Roadmap.
Co-operation in the Pacific on climate and the environment - including through our work with Pacific states - listening to the priorities they set, and responding in the Pacific way.
Co-operation between our defence forces; a strategic dialogue on critical minerals; closer ties between our arts and cultural institutions; and new initiatives in our shared histories.
Now, three years on, our nations are working on an upgraded Roadmap taking our cooperation to higher levels, as the times require.
It creates a new framework for greater strategic engagement.
It includes co-operation across defence, security, policing, and hybrid threats; economic and climate resilience; and education, culture, and science.
All of it serves an overriding, shared objective: a peaceful, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific.
I am pleased, as part of the upgraded Roadmap, to announce that Australia will provide $3.27 million of continued funding for the Franco-Australian Centre for Energy Transition.
FACET was a flagship success under the original Roadmap and it is essential that it continue promoting the energy transition between Australia and France in the Indo-Pacific.
Our nations have an enduring partnership, forged throughout a century of common purpose.
And our Roadmap provides a way to recognise the abiding links and ties between us.
Which brings me to our purpose this afternoon.
Australia and France share a proud history of collaboration in the Antarctic.
We have co-operated on logistics in one of the most demanding environments on Earth.
We have deepened our scientific exchanges and our research activities. And we have worked together to strengthen the Antarctic Treaty System - which stands as a remarkable achievement of cooperation which holds an entire continent in trust for peace and for science.
The 2023 Roadmap carried a commitment to recognise, through an award, outstanding achievements protecting the Antarctic environment.
The Hawke-Rocard Medal is named for prime ministers Bob Hawke, of Australia, and Michel Rocard, of France - who came together in 1989 to spearhead a global diplomatic effort to halt any moves toward mining in Antarctica.
Theirs was an act of ambition and of conviction.
They chose to preserve, for peace, the last and purest wilderness on Earth.
They chose - as Prime Minister Hawke put it - to keep it as a place scientists could measure the past and the present and so protect the future.
Today's recipient of the Medal is among the scientists of whom Hawke spoke.
And, thirty-five years since the Environmental Protocol to the Antarctic Treaty was settled, her work speaks to that important task.
Dr Clara Péron's research integrates ecological modelling, population dynamics, and applied conservation science.
It has shed vital light on the ecosystems and fish populations of southern and Antarctic waters.
And through her work in the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources - across its committees and working parties - she has contributed to the scientific advice on which environmental management in the Antarctic depends.
Dr Péron was the unanimous choice for this honour by a selection panel drawn from both our countries.
Her award is an expression of support for her career thus far, and the relevance and importance of her work in the future.
On behalf of Australia, Dr Peron, I congratulate you for your work and your achievement today - and thank you for your contributions.
I know that I and the people of Australia and France look forward to seeing that work continue.
Just as our peoples look forward to the next years of the enduring partnership between our nations - one that we are building together.
Thank you.
