Vietnamese Ambassador Nguyen Tat Thanh said over the last more than 30 years, many Chairpersons and Vice Chairpersons of the Vietnamese National Assembly, as well as Presidents of the Senate and Speakers of the House of Representatives of Australia have frequently exchangeed visits to open up new cooperation frameworks.
NA Chairman Hue’s visit, which will start on November 30, is the first to Australia by a senior leader of Vietnam in five years and also the fifth by a chairperson of the Vietnamese NA to this country since bilateral diplomatic ties were set up.
Voicing his belief in the visit’s contributions to the strategic partnership intensification, the diplomat noted thanks to Vietnamese and Australian leaders’ attention, relations between the two parliaments will continue flourishing with increasingly substantive cooperation in the priority fields of both sides, especially education - training, digital transformation, and climate change response.
He said he believes the parliaments of Australian states and territories will also pay attention to the expansion of ties with NA deputies’ delegations of Vietnamese localities. On this occasion, members of the countries’ newly established parliamentary friendship groups will have a chance to directly meet each other to discuss cooperation orientations.
NA Chairman’s visit to lift Vietnam - Australia strategic partnership to next level: National Assembly Chairman Vuong Dinh Hue received Australian Ambassador Andrew John Lech Goledzinowski on November 18, 2022. (Source: VNA)
During the visit, Chairman Hue will hold talks and meet senior leaders of Australia while attending some major activities, including delivering a speech about the Vietnamese Party and State’s policies and chairing forums on educational and economic cooperation.
Images of a reforming, dynamic, and self-reliant Vietnam that stays steadfast in the foreign policy of independence and self-reliance will be introduced by the top legislator to parliamentary leaders and people of Australia. Besides, connections in education, trade, investment, as well as people-to-people exchange will have conditions to develop more strongly in the years to come, Ambassador Thanh said
About substantive strides in bilateral relations since the strategic partnership was established nearly five years ago, the ambassador elaborated that mutual understanding and trust have been increasingly reinforced via all channels, from Party-to-Party, State-to-State to people-to-people ties, of which parliamentary diplomacy serves as the cornerstone.
The action plan for implementing the strategic partnership for 2020 - 2023 has been being carried out strongly in all the three cooperation pillars of economy, security - defence, and innovation. Meanwhile, the implementation of the Enhanced Economic Engagement Strategy, launched in November 2021, has obtained encouraging initial results, creating conditions for expanding relations to new areas such as digital economy, natural resources, and energy.
In the first nine months of 2022, Australia became the seventh largest trading partner of Vietnam for the first time, and Vietnam ranked 10th among the trading partners of Australia, according to Ambassador Thanh.
Ambassador Nguyen Tat Thanh worked with Western Australian businesses investing in Vietnam in July, 2022. (Photo: WVR)
The Ambassador expressed his belief that the Vietnam - Australia strategic partnership has been ripe for entering a new phase with stronger trust and more effectiveness, thereby meeting the two peoples’ aspirations and actively contributing to regional and global peace and cooperation.(WVR/VNA)