Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Industry and Innovation) Share this | Hansard source

I present the report of the Australian Parliamentary Delegation to the Republic of Malta and Spain from 14 to 24 April 2007 and the official visit to Kuwait of the President of the Senate from 24 to 26 April 2007. I had the great honour and privilege to be the deputy leader for the recent Australian parliamentary delegation to the Republic of Malta and to Spain. I would like to start by thanking Ms Andrea Griffiths, the delegation secretary, who is with the Department of the Senate, and also the private secretary to the President of the Senate, Mr Don Morris. They were extremely helpful to the delegation in both countries. I would like to thank the leader of the delegation, Senator the Hon. Paul Calvert, the President of the Senate, and also the delegation members: the Hon. Ian Causley MP, the member for Page, who is in the House this afternoon; the Hon. Warren Entsch MP; Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells; and Senator Andrew Murray. This was a very good delegation, and comprised people interested in both those countries. Even though our interest did not mean we knew everything about those countries, we obviously took a lot of interest in them.

While in Malta the objectives of the delegation were to renew and strengthen our ties with the Maltese parliament and people to gain a better understanding of some of the key economic, political and social issues which are always important to the exchanges between our two countries. We wished to exchange ideas to get a better understanding of how we work and to discuss issues of immigration and migration. We also discussed issues that relate particularly to Malta, such as desalination and water, something which is very close to all our hearts in Australia because of the current drought. Another objective was of course to enhance trade, investment and tourism, and to strengthen those bonds between our two countries. In Spain, the objectives of the delegation were similar: to renew and strengthen our ties with the parliament and the people; to learn a bit more about some of the domestic, economic, political and social issues in that country; and to have a better understanding of how our relationship works with that country.

I will give the House a bit of background on Malta, which I previously did not know a lot about. Surprisingly to me, and probably to many other people, it is a very small country that is made up of a number of archipelagos in the Mediterranean. It has an incredible history dating back many hundreds, even thousands, of years. What particularly ties Australia and Malta together is that Malta was involved in the Gallipoli campaign as part of the British armed forces. Quite a number of Australian servicemen who were wounded at Gallipoli were hospitalised in Malta. Malta was then known as the ‘nurse of the Mediterranean’. Those soldiers were there to recover, but those who unfortunately did not recover are buried in Malta. It was a great honour for the delegation to lay a wreath at the memorial at the Pietta Military Cemetery to commemorate Anzac Day 2007, which was a very moving experience for the whole delegation.

We also had the pleasure of meeting the President of Malta, His Excellency Dr Edward Fenech Adami, who recounted his visit to Australia and the relationship between our two people. We had some very good outcomes as far as the potential for future trade and how we might learn from something that the Maltese do very well—that is, finance on the global scene. We met with both the chairman and the president of the Malta Financial Services Authority, and we exchanged some ideas with them. All in all it was a fantastic visit and a great experience, and it certainly strengthened the ties between Malta and Australia.

The delegation spent some time in Spain, which also has a fabulous and interesting history. I do not have time to go through it today, but a successful transition to democracy not so long ago and then joining the EU in 1986 made an incredible difference to Spain on all fronts. We had the great pleasure of having an audience with His Majesty King Juan Carlos I at which we spoke directly about some trade issues. It is great to see a monarch who, while he has his country at the forefront of his mind, can quickly move from the country and the people to trade and to how his country can do better from the relationship between our two nations.

We had a number of meetings with a range of people, from senators and members to chambers of commerce. We talked about trade. We talked about the relations between our two countries. We talked about terrorism and antiterrorism and how we can work better together in the global sense, taking particular interest in the fact that Spain has had to deal with terrorism at the local level for the past 40 years as well as with international terrorism. Spain has a wonderful culture of food, fun and tourism. Delegation members really appreciated and felt a great kindness and likeness between our two countries. It was a wonderful delegation. (Time expired)

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