Mr PRICE (12:56 PM) —I am pleased to firstly acknowledge the contribution of the former Chairman of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, as my friend did opposite, in developing the role of seminars as a useful adjunct, I believe, to committee inquiries. I certainly believe that this seminar was perhaps amongst the more important ones that the joint committee has held.

It is funny how two people can go to a seminar and perhaps reach different conclusions on the impact of the Asian currency crisis. I must say that my response was that yes, Australia is doing relatively well as far as the impact of the Asian currency crisis is concerned but we are far from being fireproofed from it. As other speakers have pointed out, it was an attack on the Thai baht back in July 1997 that really started the Asian meltdown. Of course, the three countries that have been so badly affected have been Thailand, South Korea and Indonesia.

I think one of the important lessons I got out of the seminar was that these economies, firstly, are going to take some time to readjust. The way they are going to get out of their particular problems is certainly through some structural changes in the economy but most importantly through exports. So Australia is in an important position to the extent to which we allow these economies to export into Australia. The critical economy is, of course, the United States of America. Given the protectionist nature of Congress over there, it is a bit of a worry whether or not these countries are going to be sufficiently able to export into the United States to manage their way out of the current crisis.

Another member mentioned the devaluation of the Chinese currency. I think the jury is out still as to whether or not China itself will at some point devalue its currency. Should it do that, of course, it will place enormous pressure—

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Nehl) —Order! The time allotted for statements on this report has expired. Does the member for Kingsford-Smith wish to move a motion in connection with the report to enable it to be debated on a future occasion?