Michael Forshaw (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tonight I wish to provide to the Senate a report on Labor’s Australian Political Parties for Democracy, APPD, work. Over the past two years my colleague Senator John Faulkner has reported on our APPD schemes in his capacity as Chair of the International Party Development Committee, the IPDC. This was the committee that the Australian Labor Party established to oversee our international projects. Senator Faulkner resigned from the IPDC last December to take up appointments as the Special Minister of State and Cabinet Secretary in the Rudd Labor government. As Chair of the IPDC, Senator Faulkner guided the creation of the international projects unit within the national secretariat and observed keenly the growth of our APPD programs.

Also resigning from the IPDC is Robert McClelland, who has been replaced on the committee by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, the Hon. Stephen Smith. The Hon. Robert McClelland, of course, has been appointed as Attorney-General. Other changes to the committee include Melissa Parke, the new member for Fremantle, who replaces Carmen Lawrence, who retired from politics at the last election. Ms Janelle Saffin, the new member for Page, is replacing Senator Faulkner. A sitting member of the International Party Development Committee, Mark Butler, now the member for Port Adelaide, has been appointed as the new Chair of the IPDC.

As ALP International Secretary, I remain a member of the committee. Also continuing as members of the committee are former senator and former deputy president Sue West, who is currently the Vice President of Socialist International Women; Richard Marles, the new member for Corio; Greg Sword; and Tim Gartrell, the Australian Labor Party National Secretary. Dr Michael Morgan will continue as the secretary of the committee and Director of International Projects. The high calibre of our committee members—those who have left the committee, together with all other members and new members—demonstrates how seriously we take these tasks. We wish the retiring members the best of luck in their new roles and thank them for their service on the committee.

The Australian Labor Party is committed to using the Australian Political Parties for Democracy program for a range of international activities, including consolidating democracy in our region and building public diplomacy programs with like-minded political parties around the world. Through the programs overseen by the IPDC, the international projects unit has become a focal point of campaigning expertise, party building and democracy assistance in our region and has facilitated broad-reaching party-to-party links.

With the time remaining tonight, I want to report on a selection of these activities. Over the past two years we have maintained friendships with UK Labour, New Zealand Labour and the US Democrats. In 2007-08, we have consolidated these friendships with a range of exchange and observer programs. We will continue to build meaningful international networks with progressive political parties in the coming years. Our counterparts in Asia and the Pacific were greatly interested in the 2007 election, and we organised a series of programs to coincide with the Rudd Labor campaign. In November 2007, a high-level delegation of political party campaigners and strategists from eight major Indonesian political parties undertook a study mission to New South Wales and Queensland. Our people provided training and advice on the use of ‘campaign positioning’ to address themes of message development, party building, campaign structure, campaign logistics and communication strategies. The delegates observed at close quarters our leader Kevin Rudd and Labor’s successful campaign when they undertook field visits to the seats of Griffith, Page and Richmond, amongst others. This visit capped off a year of intensive democracy-building activities in which we provided technical assistance to the 10 major Indonesian political parties.

Mr Phil O’Donoghue, a senior member of our evaluation mission to Papua New Guinea in 2006, was loaned to the US-based National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, the NDI, for their evaluation team in Indonesia in September 2007. Following the success of Mr O’Donoghue’s mission to Indonesia, and building on the achievements of the past two years, the international unit has committed to providing democracy assistance programs to Indonesia’s political parties as they prepare for the 2009 legislative and presidential elections. International projects will focus on providing multi-party training programs and individual party-to-party consultations on a range of issues to promote and strengthen Indonesia’s burgeoning democracy.

Continuing with our theme of multiparty programs, we have launched two major initiatives for the region. In the first week of the campaign, we provided an intensive course to the region’s women political campaigners in Cairns and Brisbane. International projects course director Dr Lesley Clark—formerly the member for Barron River in the Queensland parliament—and her team delivered a world-class campaign and party-building school for women campaigners from Asia and the Pacific. The intake included some 20 women from Timor-Leste, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. The second major initiative was the launch of the political advisers course for Asia and the Pacific. This is a collaborative program designed and delivered in partnership with the University of Sydney’s Graduate School of Government, GSG. The GSG offers a premier learning environment for current and future leaders in public administration. Working with former Western Australian Premier Geoff Gallop, professor and director of the Graduate School of Government, international projects has developed a course tailored to the specific needs of political advisers in Asia and the Pacific. We received over 100 applicants from all around the world for the 15 scholarship positions. Two positions were also offered to self-funding applicants.

Having successfully launched these Australian based programs, we will continue to deliver programs on the ground in Asia and the Pacific in the coming year. Reports on all our programs can be found at our website: www.ip.alp.org.au. I look forward to reporting on our programs in future reports to the Senate.