KUCHING: President of Senate Tan Sri Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar received a courtesy call from Austrian Ambassador to Malaysia, Andreas Launer at the former’s office in Kuala Lumpur, today (Nov 7).
During the meeting, Wan Junaidi said Launer congratulated him on his appointment as the Senate President as well as to the Malaysian government for the successful management of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.
“We had an engaging discussion about the current issues in the parliaments of both countries, Austria also practices a bicameral parliament system in its country.
“Launer was particularly interested in my plans to reform Malaysian Parliament such as the introduction of Parliamentary Services Act, change of age limit for senators and to increase the number of members with more allocation of seats to women,” Wan Junaidi said in a statement in connection to the courtesy call.
He said a discussion was also held on the efforts of exploring the harvesting and commercialising sustainable energy in both countries and shared the current initiatives by the Sarawak government in this area.
“Sarawak is abundance with renewable energy and the state government had recently started using hydrogen as a source of renewable energy in several parts of its operations, besides several other renewable and sustainable energy initiatives which are already in plan.
“He (Launer) was surprised to learn that Sarawak had also built a 1,000km artificial reef as part of overall environment and marine preservation in Sarawak,” added Wan Junaidi.
He said Launer applauded the initiatives to reform the Parliament of Malaysia and the sustainable and renewable energy initiatives in Sarawak.
