Patrick Secker (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I present the report of the Australian parliamentary delegation to South Africa and Zambia in April 2013, and seek leave to make some very brief comments.

Leave granted.

This was a fairly arduous delegation visit over a short period, thankfully, with only three members of the delegation. There was a lot of hard work and we had to share the same load between three instead of the normal number of five people. I would hope that having three members of a delegation is not the norm for future delegations. I thank the secretariat. John Studholme did a brilliant job, particularly considering that that was the first delegation visit that he had been part of.

As noted in the report, the delegation members worked well as a team. In the past I have been somewhat critical of some of the AusAID projects that I have seen while on delegation visits, but I would have to say that, from the projects we saw during this visit, which are noted in the report, I thought AusAID money was being spent very well. So I congratulate those involved in making sure that that money was spent wisely. I think Australia can be proud of the work they are doing both in South Africa and in Zambia.

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