Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I present the report of the Australian Parliamentary Delegation to European parliaments and institutions in the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Austria from 4 to 20 April 2008 and I seek leave to make a short statement in connection with the report.

Leave granted.

This was by a long way the longest and most significant delegation in which I have participated. The delegation visited the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Austria. In the Netherlands we met the President of the Presidium of Amsterdam, visited and met with board members of the Aboriginal Art Museum of Utrecht, visited the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague and spoke with judges from those tribunals. We also met with members and senators from the Dutch parliament. We met the Dutch Minister for European Affairs, Frans Timmermans, a very impressive man, and we met senior officials from Europol.

In Belgium we had an interparliamentary meeting with members of the European Parliament who are members of the European Union Australian Group. This two-day meeting canvassed issues such as climate change, European Union institutional reform and the Lisbon treaty and trade liberalisation. The delegation also met with various political groups within the European Parliament. I and other Labor MPs met with members of the British Labour Party such as David Martin, and other members of the European Parliament who are members of the European Parliament Socialist Group. We had a meeting and briefing with Mr Neil Parish MEP, chair of the Agriculture and Rural Development Committee. We were given an overview and tour of the European Parliament, which was in session. This was something of an eye-opener. Their voting system is extremely quick. They would carry out about 20 divisions in the time that it took the former member for Corangamite, Stewart McArthur, to count one and they are about 10 times the pace of this parliament.

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