Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I am pleased to speak to Report 78: Treaty scrutiny: a ten year review, which covers a treaty seminar held by the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties on 30 and 31 March this year. We were very fortunate to have a whole range of speakers from the federal parliament, the state parliaments and the bureaucracy, as well as some international speakers. We kicked off with a function with the presiding officers—the Speaker and the President of the Senate—and we had some great addresses from the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the shadow minister for foreign affairs the previous night. The seminar was divided into four sections. Seminars like this play a very important role in reflecting on the parliament’s role in getting an interaction between academics who have this interest, the diplomatic corps, the bureaucracy, state and territory governments, international speakers and, of course, federal parliament.

First of all we had reflections on a decade. The previous speaker, the member for Lyons, has been on the committee for the 10 years of its history, so the corporate memory of the committee is tied up in the member for Lyons. He has been involved in all the treaties. I think he devastated the Treasury people when he said that the tax agreements were not terribly interesting.

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