Austrialian parliamentarians visit PNG

A GROUP of Australian parliamentarians visited Papua New Guinea last week to see the work the Australian government.
The visit was organised by Save the Children Australia to help new parliamentarians to understanding the challenges faced by developing countries like PNG.
New MPs Damian Drum (National Party), Ann Sudmalis (Liberal Party) and Madeleine Kind (Labor Party) were accompanied by Labor Senator Penny Wong, who is the Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs, on the visit.
Save the Children Australia director Stuart Schaefer told The National that the visit was part of the it international programme of educating Australian parliamentarians early in their career in understanding the development challenges and how they could improve their policies.
“The funding is about educating people about the different development challenges in different countries in this case the parliamentarians from Australia to other countries so that they can understand what challenges and how countries can work together,” he said.
“The people that we brought year are new MPs,” he said  “MPs that hopefully will stay in the parliament for a long time and by bringing them here early in their parliamentary career, they can start to understand the development challenges in this case in PNG.
“We trying to educate them, to have a better understanding of the issues so when the issue are debated in the Australian government they can make critical comments and more informed comments about what sorts of things happening here and how Australian Policy might be improved.
Schaefer said they talked to young public servant managers about domestic violence and how PNG was addressing the issue as well as some women in business.