Mr FORREST (1:04 PM) —I would like to focus my remarks on the activities of the technical working group, which is a very important committee of APPF. Having participated in the delegation to Lima, Peru in 1999, I was able to give some energy to achieving the aspirations of the technical working group. I would also like to take the opportunity, Mr Speaker, to congratulate you and your hard-working team. I just sat back as a participant in the delegation, marvelling at what a wonderful job you and your team did in showcasing our country. One of the things I observed in Lima was how proud the Peruvians are of their indigenous cultures, and we were able, in the program of music and venues that you and your team organised, to showcase our own country. I felt very proud to be a part of the delegation.

The technical working group is an important subcommittee of the APPF, and the member for Scullin and I were able to achieve some very important decisions in regard to ensuring that the whole program is achieved. It is all about using modern technology to assist in communication, and, isolated as communities are around the world, this is a perfect opportunity for us to do this. One very ambitious aspect of this is to establish a legislative exchange program in which the parliaments of all the participating countries of the APPF can exchange legislation in an electronic form, so that parliaments considering introducing new concepts and ideas can do some research via the use of the technology and save themselves some difficulty if other countries are further down the track with regard to some of those issues.

During the referral of the report from the technical working group at the conference, I referred to the subject of native title. It would have been very useful for our parliament to have had access to legislation from countries like Canada or even New Zealand which were far more advanced on that subject than we were at the time, to have ready access to some of their ideas. I am very keen to ensure that, by the time the Australian delegation arrives in Chile next year, our legislation will be on the database and available for other countries to see. That is a reasonably modest vision to have, but I think it is achievable given the inputs we were able to make during the technical working group's activities. Not all of the countries of the Asia-Pacific Parliamentary Forum have their legislation electronically available on database. Australia does, and it is located from two sources: one database on federal legislation—it is all there and available—and another on state legislation.

It was the original intention that every country would have its legislative database translated into English, which is the language of the forum, and then deposited in electronic form at the central repository in Lima in Peru. This would have involved an enormous amount of effort and activity, and we were able to persuade the chairman of the technical working group, the Hon. Oswaldo Sandoval, to accept the suggestion that, rather than every nation having to translate, they establish their own electronic databases in their own countries and connect those to the central database in Lima and have interpretation done via search engines.

It is very technical stuff, and I am very grateful to Nigel Sharp, whose deep understanding of the technical aspects has been very useful. I am hopeful that we can make some progress that will allow us to boast lyrically in Chile next year that at least Australia's database is up and searchable in a readily accessible form. It is a great honour to participate in parliamentary delegations, in addition to the honour of being a member of this parliament. It is just a little sad sometimes that our constituencies and the media do not take enough interest. They are important forums, and the public need to understand just how important they are.