Sue Lines (WA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I present the joint communique and chairman statement of the Asia Pacific Parliamentary Forum, which took place in Canberra from 13 to 16 January 2020. I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

A number of us in this place, and indeed the other place, participated in this forum. It was one of the biggest groups of the Australian parliament that we have put to one of these forums. It was my first forum and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was an opportunity for us to work as a parliament and not necessarily take sides, as we often do in this place, but to work towards resolutions and outcomes that would benefit us as Australian parliamentarians.

We had very good participation from the Pacific countries. We had the north-east Asian countries, the South-East Asian countries, the Americas. We had a group of parliamentarians come all the way from Mexico. I think they had the longest journey. We had ourselves of course and Fiji, New Zealand and Micronesia. As Australia was hosting this forum it was our opportunity to ask our neighbouring countries so we asked a number of much smaller neighbours of ours, but close neighbours, such as Brunei Darussalam, Kiribati, Nauru, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Niue, Palau and Tuvalu. I have to say that a number of those countries are now looking to join the forum.

We were also successful, with the support of New Zealand and Japan, in getting our Speaker up as the interim president. Unfortunately, with the passing of the Japanese leader that created a vacuum and need to change the rules. So Mr Tony Smith, who is our Speaker in the House, is now the chair for a year. He's got a job to do in terms of implementing a number of resolutions. The women from the Australian delegation particularly wanted to make sure that we had much stronger representation of women, so one of the jobs the Speaker has got is to look at how we make sure that happens. He's also very keen to make sure that the observer countries we invited along to this forum take out formal membership.

I would also like to thank the Parliament House staff. It was a time of the bushfires. There was smoke in Canberra. I know many of the staff had either family or friends that had been personally affected by the bushfires. I thought that the parliament leant itself really well to hosting a forum. We used the big hall and the breakout area around the pond as a meeting place and an eating place. It was a terrific forum.

The next forum is in Korea and I would certainly encourage fellow parliamentarians who perhaps haven't participated in this forum before to look at it next year. I thank Mr Kevin Andrews for leading our delegations. We had a daily caucus where we all got our acts together and spoke with one voice. Thanks to the Speaker in making sure that the executive committee ran well and, indeed, delivered a very good forum.

David Van (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you for the opportunity to make a few short comments on the tabling of the Asian Pacific Parliamentary Forum 2020 communique report. The forum was a unique opportunity, especially for new backbench senator like myself, to engage with our counterparts from regional parliaments, to discuss issues of mutual interest and to commit to cooperative action in the best interests of our countries and their people. I was very pleased to be a member of Australia's delegation of the forum that was held at parliament this January. It gave someone like me, a new backbencher as I said, the ability to debate with some very interesting colleagues from around the Asia-Pacific. For example, debating points on cyber security with the representative of China, who himself was a chair of the United Nations Security Council, was a completely unique opportunity.

As members noted during our plenary session considerations, the security of our communications, data and personal privacy in the cyberworld is a very tangible element of how we can invest in our economic prosperity and sovereign security. Without secure systems, our participation in the global community and economy is not possible, and, as a result, the very prosperity that the member countries have committed to achieving through the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development cannot be achieved, which would be to the detriment of each country's progress and its people.

As our Director-General of Security highlighted in his Annual Threat Assessment the other night, Australia's experience with exploitative cyberactivity has shown that small business, local governments and our critical infrastructure can be vulnerable to disruption through a range of attacks, scams and, also, sophisticated threats—all targeted against those key elements of our communities. Unfortunately, as other countries' experiences have shown, we are not alone in this, and that is why it is so important that the forum member countries strive to enable capability and capacity in each of our countries to counter this exploitative activity and protect key economic systems and infrastructure from disruption.

Debate interrupted.