Luis Felipe Quesada

Ambassador of Peru to Australia (2011- 2015)

I was the Peruvian Ambassador to Australia from January 2011 to October 2015, and I can safely say that I was not bored for a second in that wonderful country.

A basic characteristic of diplomacy with the Australians is its horizontality. It was 2007 when I visited Canberra for the first time. That day I went to eat at a restaurant with my colleague Claudio de la Puente, who was the Peruvian ambassador at the time. When we walked in, he was asked “did you make a reservation”. He said yes. There was no “Mr Ambassador or Your Excellency”. He said “that’s the way it is in this country”.

So, when President Alan García visited Australia for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders’ summit in November 2007, I told him he had the option of speaking in Spanish and having someone else do the simultaneous translation. But the best thing was for him to read his speech in English and get closer to his audience.

-Australians won’t mind if you don’t pronounce a word properly,” I said. I was then surprised because the President had very good English.

Then it was my turn to be the link between Peru and Australia. First, when Peru took over the APEC chairmanship in 2008 and I was the senior official representative. Our commitment was to continue with the reform agenda that Australia had promoted for the organisation.

Those meetings with Australian officials in APEC undoubtedly opened the doors for me to feel so comfortable about being appointed as Peruvian ambassador to Australia a few years later.

At that time, I did get to learn more about their federal system, meet with potential investors for the commercial and mining areas and build the bridge to strengthen academic exchange.

I was lucky that the Peruvian embassy in Canberra is across the street from the Australian Foreign Ministry. You cross the avenue and there you are. That helped us a lot to create links with the Australian diplomats who said to us “it’s boring to be in the office, why don’t we go to Brindabella”, a café they have in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and that’s where we worked.

In addition, most of the diplomatic work was outside Canberra, which is the Australian capital, but a small city. All the issues of interest to Peru, such as investment or academic links, are in other cities. So, it fell to me to become a kind of nomadic ambassador. An itinerant ambassador, travelling around Australia. That was very nice.

I went to Sydney, Melbourne and Perth frequently. I visited many universities, to learn about the very high level of education they have and to promote it among our students. Because before, when they were looking for quality education in English, many Peruvians thought of the United States or the United Kingdom, but they did not look at Australia. We changed that.

We concentrated on applications for student visas. A good job was done with our scholarship institute to get Peruvian students to go to Australia. Then we visited them, and most of them were very satisfied, because the hospitality of Australians is providential.

That is a characteristic we share, because we Peruvians are friendly and talk to anyone without any problem. At the end of my term in office, I can say that in addition to diplomatic achievements, I have made friends that I keep to this day.

Texted by Melanie Pérez Arias