Australia and Vietnam have emerged as important strategic partners in that respect despite very different forms of government and Hanoi’s communist links with China.
On Saturday Albanese also stressed the importance of ties between the two nations in higher education – there are 26,400 Vietnamese students enrolled in Australia and hundreds of thousands have studied there in the past – as well as economic relations with Vietnam, which is Australia’s 12th largest trading partner.
PM Anthony Albanese visiting a banh mi restaurant in Hanoi, Vietnam.Credit: Nine
He visited a new industry and innovation hub set up in Hanoi by RMIT University, which was the first foreign-owned university in Vietnam when established in 2000 and which is embarking on a $250 million expansion of its Ho Chi Minh City campus.
“This is a vote of confidence in Vietnam’s future,” Albanese said. “And in the strength and the potential we see in joining forces on education.”
Later, he was warmly welcomed at a local cafe where, in the scorching afternoon heat, he sampled the local drop and a Vietnamese bread roll as a showcase of Australia’s exports of malt barley and wheat to Vietnam.
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It is bilateral relations and regional affairs that will be on the menu in Sunday’s leaders meetings.
But Albanese has been urged to also use the opportunity to call for the release of 73-year-old Vietnamese-Australian man Chau Van Kham, a long-time former Sydney baker who was jailed for 12 years in Ho Chi Minh City in 2019 over his association with Viet Tan, a pro-democracy group regarded by authorities in Vietnam as an anti-state, terrorist organisation.
“The Vietnamese government has long been responsible for widespread and serious human rights violations,” Human Rights Watch director Daniela Gavshon said ahead of Albanese’s trip.
“There is little point having these discussions if Prime Minister Albanese isn’t clear that Vietnam’s failure to address violations will impact the bilateral relationship.”
Albanese said on Saturday: “Australia always raises issues of human rights for Australian citizens and we raise them appropriately and diplomatically in order to try to secure a positive result.”
On Sunday he will also visit Ho Chi Minh’s Mausoleum – the memorial and resting place of Vietnam’s communist revolutionary leader and first president.
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