Australia stands ready to assist in Bougainville's continued rehabilitation and I remain prepared to consider further assistance through the aid program to Bougainville if it can achieve similar results in improving the everyday lot of Bougainvilleans. In discussing Bougainville, I should also pay tribute to the work of the Peace Monitoring Group in helping to bring normality to the island. Along with monitors from New Zealand, Vanuatu and Fiji, close to 2000 Australian military personnel and civilians, both men and women, have now served with the PMG on Bougainville. It has been a success story in regional cooperation. It is clear that it is not a permanent force on Bougainville and it has been substantially reduced over the past year from 300 to 190.
Further reductions are likely to occur as the peace settlement nears finalisation.
We look forward to the day when the PMG is no longer needed on Bougainville, but in the meantime Australia remains committed to supporting it. While the Bougainville peace process is a matter of importance to us in its own right, it is in the whole area of economic reform, re - engagement with the international financial institutions, revitalisation of government services and the privatisation of many entities, that one can see the fundamental changes in the way PNG has decided to go about doing business. The reform program introduced by Prime Minister Morauta in July 1999 deserves our full support and it will continue to receive it. Notwithstanding the recent public differences between yourselves and the World Bank, I encourage you to remain committed to the reform program. It poses great challenges, but it also opens up opportunities for growth and expansion, as the government moves away from involvement in the economy to allow the private sector the opportunity to reinvigorate many of the former state enterprises.