Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise in support of the Civil Aviation Legislation Amendment (1999 Montreal Convention and Other Measures) Bill 2008. This bill amends a range of acts which are currently on our statute books. They are the Civil Aviation (Carriers’ Liability) Act 1959, the Air Accidents (Commonwealth Government Liability) Act 1963 and the Civil Aviation Act 1988. In amending each of these acts, the bill allows Australia to accede to the Montreal convention.

The Montreal convention is officially known as the Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules for International Carriage by Air. It is so titled because of the fact that the convention was endorsed in the Canadian city of Montreal on 28 May 1999 by the member states of the International Civil Aviation Organisation. The International Civil Aviation Organisation is a UN agency based in Montreal which codifies international aviation and air traffic regulations.

The Montreal convention supersedes the Warsaw convention of 1929, which, despite having had four subsequent amendments—in The Hague in 1955, the Guadalajara convention of 1961, the Guatemala City protocol of 1971 and the Montreal protocols of 1975—was nevertheless very much out of date. That was particularly the case in relation to air carrier liability where there were a number of aspects of the Warsaw convention which were completely out of date. For example, it used a currency which is no longer in existence known as the Poincare gold franc. There was no provision for indexation of liability caps when damages claims were made. So, for example, a number of those liability caps effectively date back to 1929 limits. For death or injury, the total amount of damages that could be provided was between A$16,000 and A$20,000. For a loss of luggage, the amount was between $30 or $40 per kilogram. Clearly these amounts are vastly out of date in 2008.

Despite having had wide adherence—there are 151 parties to the Warsaw convention—it was soon recognised that it was very much out of date and these caps were insufficient. Like other countries, Australia did find its way around the out-of-date nature of the Warsaw convention, and so, through the Civil Aviation (Carriers’ Liability) Act 1959, there were increases in the caps for liability and damages that could be paid in relation to Australian international carriers. That act provided that a cap of $500,000 could be paid in relation to death or injury, $1,600 could be paid in relation to registered baggage and $160 could be paid in relation to hand luggage. But, of course, these caps could not be applied to international or foreign carriers, and that is exactly what the Montreal convention would provide for and why it is important that we now accede to it.

The Montreal convention, as I stated, dates back to May 1999. In June 1999, the then Minister for Transport and Regional Services, Leader of the National Party and Deputy Prime Minister, the former member for Gwydir, announced a consultative process with a view to ratifying and having Australia accede to the Montreal convention, but from that point on very little happened in relation to the accession by Australia to this convention. In fact, it seems to have gone completely out into the backblocks, and the whole business of government appears to have stalled in relation to this important measure, which is ultimately about connecting Australia to the international aviation system. By November last year, at the time of the election, we had a new Minister for Transport and Regional Services—still the Leader of the National Party, still the Deputy Prime Minister, but this time the member for Lyne—who appeared to be spending more time out of Australia than in it. Still the Montreal convention had not been ratified, despite the fact that Japan, the United States, China and New Zealand had ratified the convention in 2003 and the United Kingdom and most European countries had ratified it in 2004. Indeed, as was the case at the election last year and as is the case as I stand here today, Australia is the only country outside the OECD that has not ratified the Montreal convention.

The Joint Standing Committee on Treaties supported Australia acceding to the convention in report No. 65, which was tabled in this parliament on 20 June 2005, so there has been plenty of notice about this convention. It has been completely clear that it needed to occur. It has been completely clear that the old system of international regulation, in the sense that we were adhering to it, was completely out of date. The remedy for this was presented by the international aviation community in May 1999, yet here we are nine years later and nothing has occurred. It begs the question: what were the Howard government doing over those last nine years that they could not put in place an important, but relatively simple, measure to connect Australia to the international aviation system? Perhaps we could speculate, given who the ministers for transport were, given what party they came from, that there may have been some distraction from the Regional Partnerships program, a program which seemed mainly aimed at providing for pork-barrelling in National Party seats. Maybe we can speculate that the reason that the National Party were not engaged in the important business of running this country was that they were more focused on the Regional Partnerships program. Perhaps we could say that, rather than focusing on connecting Australia to the international aviation system, the member for Gwydir focused on the Seawind fiasco. The Seawind fiasco was of course a flagrant attempt at pork-barrelling in Tweed Heads. Seawind was a company involved in seafood processing. It received $273,500 in grants after, according to the former member for Gwydir, a rigorous assessment process.

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