Latvian Business Delegation

The Hon. J.S. LEE (15:28): I am delighted to rise today and speak about the visit of the Latvian business delegation to Adelaide on 8 December 2015. Thank you, sir, for welcoming them into the chamber yesterday when they were here. It was a great honour for me to host a lunch forum and welcome the Latvian leaders to Parliament House in South Australia.

As the parliamentary secretary for multicultural affairs and trade and investment, I have come to know the Honorary Consul of Latvia in South Australia, Dr Valdis Tomanis, very well. He is a wonderful community leader. In early November, Dr Tomanis informed me that a delegation of high-calibre Latvian entrepreneurs would be travelling to Australia, New Zealand and Singapore at around this time. These delegates were travelling with His Excellency Mr Andris Teikmanis, Ambassador of the Republic of Latvia to the UK, Australia and New Zealand.

The objective of the business delegation was to understand the Australian economic and business climate, to establish strong relationships with trading partners, to exchange information and collect market intelligence on the industries, and to collaborate with like-minded business entrepreneurs. I would like to thank Dr Tomanis and my staff Haley Welch and Cynthia Breiksa (who is of Latvian heritage) for working with me to ensure a successful business forum was organised, in a relatively short time, to provide a platform for an introduction and discussion of a possible collaboration between Latvian delegates and South Australian businesses.

I would like to put on record the delegates from Latvia. They included His Excellency Andris Teikmanis, Ambassador of Latvia to the UK, Australia and New Zealand. He is a remarkable diplomat with a wealth of knowledge about what is happening in the world. There was also Mr Normund Bergs, Chief Executive Officer of SAF Tehnika, a modern wireless data transmission technology company; and Mr Martins Lacis and Mr Juris Bikis from Latvijas Finieris, a large producer and supplier of plywood in the timber industry.

There was also Mr Janis Butkevics, an expert sitting in the Latvian Chamber Of Commerce and Industry; Ms Inese Cvetkova, Executive Director of the Latvian Electrical Engineering and Electronics Industry Association; Mr Henriks Danusevics, President Of the Latvian Traders Association; Ms Julija Marcinska, Project Manager for the Investment and Development Agency of Latvia; Ms Inese Olafsone, economics expert with the Employers Confederation of Latvia; Mr Edvards Selsers, representative in Asia for Euro Rail Trans Ltd; and Mr Ola Stene-Johansen, Director for International Development, Riga Commercial Port of Latvia.

These delegates then met with the local representatives: Dr ValdisTomanis, the Honorary Consul of Latvia in South Australia; Mr Andrew Croft, Co-chair, Electronic Sector Advisory Group from the Technology Industry Association; Mr David Haynes, Deputy Director of the South Australian office of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade; Mr Walter Lebedew OAM, Honorary President of the Russian Ethnic Representative Council of South Australia; Ms Irina Lyudviga, President, Russian-Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry; and Mr Greg Walters, board member of Engineers Australia, who were the South Australian representatives for the business forum.

It was great to see the diverse conversations and the business exchange between the Latvian delegates as well as the South Australian representatives; I wish I had more time to spend with them but we had a really busy day in parliament yesterday. From my understanding, they spoke about the different industries they were in and were working out, between the different chambers of commerce, whether they could actually set up a collaboration between those chambers and exchange different information; perhaps a return trade mission from South Australia to Latvia can actually be formulated between now and next year. Overall it was a very successful business forum and I wish delegates from the Latvian delegation every success as they are travelling from Australia through the Asia Pacific region.