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

Double taxation agreements—and they have promised to address that and jazz up their presentation. Ms Devika Hovell from the Gilbert and Tobin Centre of Public Law at the University of New South Wales had a critical analysis of the committee and had a number of suggestions. She felt that it was important to have parliamentary ratification of treaties. This is done in some other jurisdictions. It has not been the practice in Australia, although to enter into force in Australian law it is often required that legislation be passed by the Australian parliament. Neil Roberts, from the Queensland parliament, spoke and he had a number of suggestions about NIAs, about looking at them being made available much earlier and involving the states at an earlier stage.

The second part looked at treaty making and review in a federal system. We heard from Petrice Judge, who has been involved in the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties. She is from the Office of Federal Affairs, Department of Premier and Cabinet in Western Australia. Then we heard from Anne Twomey, who was involved in the original Senate committee report in 1995 called Trick or treaty? Commonwealth power to make and implement treaties. Many of those reforms have been adopted. Probably the most important ones have been the adoption of the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties and the national interest analysis. We also heard from Richard Herr of the University of Tasmania.

At lunch we had a very challenging and, for some of the participants, very confronting address from Greg Sheridan. It was certainly a very lively address. Unfortunately that is not in the report—we did not have a transcript of it—but those who were there would certainly remember it. In the third session Michael L’Estrange spoke about free trade agreements and the resources being put into them. Greg Rose spoke about the treaties with our regional neighbours in the South Pacific, specifically from the point of view of seeing a much greater use of cooperation agreements. There was talk about the enhanced cooperation program with Papua New Guinea to provide policing to Papua New Guinea, which was struck down by the Supreme Court of PNG, and cooperation agreements between our departments helping people with finance and so on. They are many of the treaties that we see involving a degree of cooperation with countries in the region.

We also heard from Professor Aynsley Kellow from the University of Tasmania, who spoke about climate change treaties and looked at Kyoto and also at the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, and who thought that this was probably the way to go in the future as it addressed the involvement of business, technology and so on. Lastly, we heard from two international speakers, Dr Palitha Kohona, an Australian and a former DFAT officer who was the head of the treaty section at the United Nations, and Ms Dianne Yates, who chairs the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee in the New Zealand parliament. As is the case with many other Westminster parliaments, the New Zealand parliament does not have a specific treaties committee, so it is often done on a more ad hoc basis, and sometimes the treaties will be looked at by the foreign affairs committee.

In conclusion, the breadth of treaties that the treaties committee gets to consider is enormous. Some recent ones include scientific balloons being launched from Alice Springs, an agreement between Australia and the United States; and the optical telescope at Siding Spring, an agreement between Australia and the United Kingdom. We do see an enormous breadth of treaties. This is nothing new. Even before Australia became a federation we entered into treaties. Some of the oldest ones involve things like the International Postal Union—the International Telegraph Union, as it was then. Before we became a federation, many of our colonies were members of this organisation.

In its 10 years in operation the treaties committee has presented 77 reports. It has looked at something like 380 treaty actions. It has only ever knocked back one treaty—a treaty of amity and cooperation with Kazakhstan. The treaties committee has often delivered reports which are critical of either the national interest analysis or the consultation—they are a couple of the areas which have been focused on.

Debate (on motion by Ms Hall) adjourned.

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