Senator MOORE (Queensland) (17:33): by leave-I present the report of the Australian parliamentary delegation to the 25th Annual Meeting of the Asia Pacific Parliamentary Forum held in Natadola, Fiji from 15 January to 19 January 2017. I also seek leave to make a short statement.
The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Leave is granted for two minutes.
Senator MOORE: I was a member of the delegation, along with the delegation leader, the member for Leichhardt, and the member for Paterson in the other place and Senator Williams from here. The APPF is an assembly of members of national parliaments in the Asia-Pacific region, which has met every year since 1993 to discuss matters of mutual concern. Issues the APPF deals with are mainly strategic, economic, social and cultural in nature. The APPF is important to the Australian parliament as a parliamentary association of members who share Australia's region. Key regional countries with which Australia has strong links send delegations to APPF meetings. Such countries include Canada, China, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, South Korea and Thailand, and a number of Pacific Island countries, including this year's host, Fiji.
Each conference is structured around a number of plenary sessions and working groups and a drafting committee that considers a range of resolutions from the discussions. Participating countries submit draft resolutions that form the basis of the discussion sessions and subsequent conference resolutions finalised through consensus. The sessions were under the themes of 'political and security matters', 'economic and trade matters' and 'regional cooperation'.
The four draft resolutions forwarded by the Australian delegation reflected the interests of the delegation members. The member for Paterson and I took carriage of two resolutions: one on gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls in the region, and the other on increasing the participation of women in politics. Through several meetings, and with the active support of all of the Australian delegation, Australia lobbied for an initiative call for future APPF meetings to include a meeting of women parliamentarians as a standing agenda item. The member for Leichhardt took special responsibility for carriage of a draft resolution on regional and subregional strategies for combatting communicable and non-communicable diseases in the Asia-Pacific region-
The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Thank you, Senator Moore, your time has expired.
Senator MOORE: Can I table the rest of my speech? There are just a few lines more.
Senator Cormann: Yes.
The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Thank you, Senator Moore.
