Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic wrapped up his working visit to Australia on Thursday by giving a talk at Monash University in Melbourne and meeting with opposition leader Bill Shorten and Senate President John Hogg.
After the talk at Monash, Milanovic said he and Australian PM Tony Abbott on Wednesday "discussed some agreements Croatia has not signed with Australia because of negligence in earlier years."
The contracts refer to the status of Croatian citizens, "first and foremost a health insurance agreement and a double taxation agreement." "That's in the interest of Croats," he said, adding that he would be willing to sign those contracts "tomorrow" but that it now depended on "the Australian priorities."
Outside the university, Milanovic was met by about 20 protesting Croatian emigrants carrying the same banners and insignia as three days before in Canberra.
"This is democracy. In Croatia people protest... under the government's window several times a week and so it will be. Croatia today is no less democratic than Australia and this is the right to freedom of opinion," he said.
He commented on the dissatisfaction of the Croatian minority in Australia with the number of diaspora members in the Croatian parliament, saying this issue was regulated by the Croatian Constitution.
In Canberra, Milanovic talked with the president of the House of Representatives and the local Croatian business community. He also laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Australian Soldier, saying afterwards that he would like it if in Croatia too "we could talk about our war like this, with calm and dignity, unanimously."
In a speech he gave at the Croatian Embassy in Canberra that evening, Milanovic said "Croatia is stronger than ever since joining the European Union and NATO." He announced a change in the rules so that the country was no longer "vulnerable to outside pressure."
After Australia, he is travelling to New Zealand.
(Hina)
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