Julie Bishop embarks on regional tour Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop is embarking on a regional introductory tour this week. FOREIGN Affairs Minister Julie Bishop will visit Indonesia for a second time this week as part of a regional tour that will also take her to New Zealand and Singapore. Ms Bishop returns to Australia on Tuesday after accompanying Prime Minister Tony Abbott on his brief visit to Jakarta to meet with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. But she'll barely have time to catch her breath before jetting out of the country again. The newly-minted foreign minister will meet her NZ counterpart Murray McCully in Auckland on Wednesday - with Fiji, aid to the Pacific and Kiwis' rights all likely to be high on the agenda. The meeting will occur the same day as NZ Prime Minister John Key flies across the ditch to meet with Mr Abbott in Canberra. The foreign ministers will discuss Fiji's troubled transition back to democracy, as well as economic development and stability across the wider Pacific Islands region. They're also likely to touch on the Abbott government's decision to merge AusAID with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, given the Key government ordered a similar merger in 2009. But Mr McCully is also likely to air some long-running grievances with immigration laws that curtail Kiwis' rights to residency, citizenship and welfare in Australia. On Thursday, Ms Bishop will head to Singapore for meetings with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Foreign Minister K Shanmugam. She will also address business leaders and spruik the coalition's New Colombo Plan. Ms Bishop wants Singapore to take part in a pilot program for the plan, which will eventually offer hundreds of scholarships for young Australians to study at Asian universities and vice versa. On Friday, Ms Bishop will head to the Indonesian island of Bali for APEC talks. She is expected to meet with more than half a dozen of her Asian counterparts on the summit's sidelines - possibly including Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa. The pair's first meeting last month became the source of controversy when Indonesia released details of it to the media. The country's foreign ministry later issued a statement saying they had been released by mistake, and it was not a sign of "discord" over the coalition's policy to turn asylum seeker boats back to Indonesia. Ms Bishop will head back to Australia on Saturday night, not long before Mr Abbott is due to arrive in Bali for the APEC leaders' meeting. The foreign minister had hoped to include Papua New Guinea on her tour but a scheduling conflict prevented it.