Matt Keogh (Burt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

As I was saying earlier today, in the 1970s, after the system of fixed exchange rates collapsed and a series of oil shocks caused an international debt crisis, the IMF stepped in to assist countries in dealing with the economic aftershocks. Following the downfall of the Soviet Union, the fund played a central role in transitioning former Soviet bloc countries from centrally planned to market-driven economies. Today the IMF continues to support nations to deal with the implications of the current credit crises and oil price shocks that we see.

This bill gives effect to an agreement with the International Monetary Fund to provide an increased standing appropriation and authority to borrow for payments to meet drawings made by the IMF under a new bilateral loan agreement. The agreement is only activated when additional funds are required to support lending to member countries. While the bill has no direct impact on the budget bottom line, if the agreement is activated and the funds are provided then there is an indirect impact where the government's lending to the IMF increases our borrowing requirement and where the interest payable on any money borrowed by Australia to meet an IMF drawdown exceeds the interest paid by the IMF to us in relation to that drawdown.

Australia should continue to provide support to institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the nations and people that it supports. The IMF has certainly had its critics—even I do not profess to have agreed with each and every step in some cases—but Australia's support of it and its work should remain. It is therefore important that such legislation receives bipartisan support, which this legislation does. I commend it to the House.

See this speech in context