John Faulkner (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Tonight I am going to provide the Senate with a further report on Labor’s Australian Political Parties for Democracy, APPD, work. The ALP is committed to using the APPD program for a range of international activities including the provision of practical training to political parties in the Asia-Pacific. Tonight I particularly want to report on our continuing efforts to build links with political parties in our region and around the world, and on our recent technical assistance programs in our neighbourhood.

An International Observers Program was developed as part of our national conference, which was held in Sydney in late April, to help us build on our relationships with countries in our region. All in all, some 70 participants took part in this program, more than double the number of international guests that had attended in previous years. This included over 30 senior representatives of Asian and Pacific political parties who travelled to Sydney to progress dialogue on the building of relationships with the Australian Labor Party. This number included senior party representatives from China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vanuatu, PNG and New Zealand.

As part of our program, International Projects organised a number of events which brought together Labor’s key policy personnel on foreign policy and development assistance with the visiting dignitaries. These events included expert panels on empowering women in politics in Asia, foreign policy under a Labor government and its implications for Australia and the region, and an international forum on building party-to-party links. Full reports on these programs may be found on our International Projects website, which is at www.ip.alp.org.au, and in our quarterly news bulletin, both launched in preparation for the ALP National Conference. Anyone can subscribe to the quarterly bulletin by following the links on the website. These media will further promote our work in the community and the region and form part of our commitment to accountability for our APPD schemes.

As I informed the chamber in March, three countries in the region will face, or have faced, elections this year. The Philippines went to the polls on 14 May 2007. From 10-19 May 2007 Dr Lesley Clark, recently retired as the member for Barron River in Queensland, joined the International Observers Mission, the IOM, which was organised to oversee the mid-term national and local elections. Dr Clark reports that the presence of the IOM helped to deter the extremes of fraud and violence. The IOM has also made a number of recommendations to improve elections and the electoral process in the Philippines.

Elections in Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste begin on 30 June 2007. In the lead-up to the June polls in Papua New Guinea, International Projects offered a pilot education package for political parties and candidates to remedy some of the confusion surrounding the new limited preferential voting system, especially for new candidates who may not have been exposed to information about the new system. Designed in close consultation with PNG political parties, the package allows party secretariats easy access to relevant information for new candidates. Labor will be sending a team to observe the PNG elections, and a full report of the election observer team will be posted on our website as soon as possible.

On 26 May 2007, a senior International Projects team delivered targeted training on political campaigning strategies to representatives of Timor-Leste’s major political parties. The seminar was open to all the major parties contesting the elections. A number of non-partisan observers were also present. Led by George Thompson, a former chief of staff to Kim Beazley and to me, the team included Gavin Ryan, from the office of Senator Gavin Marshall; Neville Conway, campaign manager for Kevin Rudd’s Griffith electorate office; and Jim Chalmers, a former principal political adviser to Kim Beazley. The program focused on the democratic fundamentals and the process of the political campaign. The training featured strategies for building strong and disciplined campaign teams, organising volunteers, contrasting approaches to campaign strategy and tactics, messaging and values, as well as political communication.

On 7 June 2007, International Projects followed up on this initiative with the launch of a collaborative project with Timor-Leste’s political parties which aims to maintain a register of up-to-date information about those parties’ platforms and people. To find the online version of Political Parties and Groupings in Timor-Leste, you can follow the links from our website, www.ip.alp.org.au. I am sure it will be of interest to many. We plan to continue to update the information about political parties in Timor-Leste as it comes to hand. I look forward to reporting again to the Senate on more progress on the success of the ALP’s Australian Political Parties for Democracy schemes.