Venturing south
“Our relationship with Australia was very distant when I was first posted there.” Lee was assigned to Melbourne for his first stint as a mission head. The ROC mission to Australia, an office then known as the Far East Trading Company, consisted of just Lee and a secretary. Lee soon realized that Australia’s thinking was ready to change, that it was becoming interested in forging ties with Asian nations.
“I think I was very fortunate to be assigned there at that moment.” Lee’s sincerity and diligence enabled him to gradually develop a relationship, building it bit by bit into close ties with Australia’s parliament. In his second year there, he won permission for the mission to relocate to the Australian capital of Canberra, and to change its name to the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office.
The Australia‡Taiwan Parliamentary Group was formed and forged a solid friendship with Taiwan. Over the course of two short years, the group grew to have 90 members, making it larger than the country group for the UK (84 members) and nearly as large as the one for the United States (102 members).
This spurred then Legislative Yuan speaker Liu Song-pan, deputy speaker Wang Jin-pyng, and legislator Tina Pan to visit Australia, where they were received by the speaker of the House of Representatives. MOFA took note of Lee’s achievement, and in 1993 sent him to New York for one month to support Taiwan’s first opportunity to participate in a United Nations working group.
Closer ties to Australia also excited investors, who wanted to know which way the wind was blowing. The Australian government was aware of Taiwan’s economic might, and demonstrated its view of the importance of substantial ties between our two nations by gradually raising the seniority of its diplomatic representative to Taiwan.
When Lee left Australia three years later to take up another post, 35 members of parliament arranged a sendoff for him in one of the parliament’s dining halls.
Docents regularly lead tours of the historically important Fort San Domingo and the objects it contains.