Chris Hayes (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Earlier this year, together with the member for Hindmarsh, the member for Cowan and Senator Helen Kroger, I was part of an Australian delegation visiting the Republic of Serbia. This delegation was at the invitation by the Speaker of the Serbian parliament, Mr Nebojsa Stefanovic, and was organised directly between the Serbian embassy here in Canberra and the Parliament of the Republic of Serbia.

The purpose of the visit was to further the political, economic and cultural understanding between Australia and the Republic of Serbia. Australia recently awarded Serbia with preferential trade status under the Australian Customs Tariff Act and much has been achieved in the area of police cooperation on fighting transnational and organised crime. In fact, the Australian Federal Police and the Serbian national police signed a memorandum of understanding related to international money laundering and transnational crime only last year.

Our visit to Serbia included a number of meetings where we discussed these developments and plans for future cooperation. One of the most interesting and most significant meetings we had was with the Speaker of the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia, Mr Stefanovic. The discussion was focused on the practices and procedures in the everyday workings of both parliaments. We discussed efforts to ensure higher transparency in parliamentary operations. We canvassed in detail the operation of our parliamentary committee system as well as the possibility of a program enabling the exchange of staff between the two parliaments in order to promote better procedural understanding.

The Serbian parliament recently created an Australian parliamentary friendship group, chaired by Ms Bojana Krkic. During the visit, we had the opportunity to meet with the friendship group members and establish a direct dialogue, which we intend to continue. Our meeting with the foreign affairs committee gave us an insight into the current state of Serbia's efforts to enter the European Union as well as the Kosovo issue. Serbia gained official candidate status for the European Union in March 2012, and this remains a priority for the country. We were also given a very detailed brief on the progress of discussions in the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue.

The meeting with the representatives of the Serbia Investment and Export Promotion Agency was one of the most productive in terms of exploring further economic opportunities between our two nations. The group presented information regarding Serbia's links to Russia, Ukraine, the CEFTA and other markets which are governed by free-trade agreements with Serbia, affording access to potential investors from Australia to a market of over a billion people. We also discussed the prospect of an Australian trade mission to Belgrade to explore investment opportunities.

As the Chair of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Law Enforcement, I had a particular interest in our meeting with the head of the Bureau for International Cooperation in the Ministry of Interior, Mr Igor Peric. Mr Peric informed us about the developments in cooperation between the Australian Federal Police and the Serbian national police force and what the agreement had been achieving. Following that meeting, we had a briefing from the AFP liaison officer in Belgrade, Mr Ric Cummings, on the progress following signing of the memorandum of understanding on cooperation in fighting transnational and organised crime.

Her Excellency Neda Maletic also ensured that our working trip to Serbia included a visit to a number of culturally and historically significant sites. We were given a tour of the House of National Assembly as well as the White Palace, where the member for Hindmarsh and I had the honour of meeting Crown Prince Aleksandar Karadjordjevic. We also visited Viminacium, other incredible ancient Roman sites and the cathedral church and Patriarch's residence in Sremski Karlovci.

On behalf of the delegation, I would like to commend the efforts of Ms Neda Maletic, the Serbian Ambassador to Australia, for ensuring that our visit was most productive. She has been a wonderful representative of her country and the Serbian community in Australia, and we thank her for all her hard work. I also thank her counterpart, the Australian Ambassador to Serbia, Ms Helena Studdert. Finally, I would like to thank the Serbian people for their warm hospitality in welcoming our delegation to their beautiful country.