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

On behalf of the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties, I present the committee’s report entitled Report 110: Treaties tabled on 18, 25 (2) and 26 November 2009 and 2 (2) February 2010.

Ordered that the report be made a parliamentary paper.

Report No. 110 reviews the following significant treaty actions:

• an agreement with the Republic of Lebanon regarding cooperation on protecting the welfare of children;
• amendments to Australia’s existing agreement with Singapore on the avoidance of double taxation and the prevention of fiscal evasion with respect to taxes on income;
• an agreement with the Republic of Poland on social security;
• a treaty with the Republic of India on mutual legal assistance in criminal matters;
• an extradition treaty between Australia and India;
• the amendment and extension of the existing agreement with the United States of America concerning space vehicle tracking and communications facilities; and
• the measure 16 (2009) amendment of annex II to the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty.

The report also deals with two minor treaty actions.

The committee supports all the treaties examined in this report. However, the committee has made some additional recommendations in relation to two of them, and I will direct the bulk of my remarks to these additional recommendations.

The extradition treaty between Australia and the Republic of India is based on Australia’s model extradition treaty, which was developed to comply with Australia’s domestic legislative framework. The model extradition treaty has been used to develop a network of 35 bilateral extradition treaties. A significant element in Australia’s model extradition treaty is the so-called ‘no evidence standard’. This represents an improvement over the process it replaces, which caused considerable delay, and assists countries that operate a civil law system.

It is my great hope that we will now see successful extradition action in the case of Mr Puneet Puneet. Mr Puneet pleaded guilty in February last year to culpable driving causing death. A learner driver, Mr Puneet was drunk and doing more than double the speed limit on City Road in Melbourne when he killed nursing student Dean Hofstee in 2008.

Mr Puneet fled Australia in June using the passport of a fellow Indian student. People should under no circumstances be able to avoid trial simply by fleeing to another country, and I regard this treaty as a positive development in ensuring that justice prevails.

The committee is concerned, however, that extradition treaties negotiated by Australia have no formal monitoring process to ensure that, following extradition, a person’s human rights are protected.

In simple terms, the committee believes that Australia has a moral obligation to protect the human rights of extradited persons beyond simply accepting the undertakings of countries making extradition requests.

Australia must never be a party, directly or indirectly, to any injustice or abuse of the human rights of persons it has extradited, and regardless of whether the persons concerned are Australian citizens or not.

While the committee acknowledges that the risk of such an occurrence may be small, a formal monitoring process would go a considerable way to providing this assurance.

The committee has previously made recommendations, in report 91, that sought to establish a system for reporting the trial status, health and conditions of incarceration of people extradited from Australia.

The government indicated in its response to report 91 that it did not accept the recommendations. Significantly, the government’s reasoning in rejecting these recommendations focused on the procedural and administrative barriers to establishing a monitoring process.

But, given the immense amount of work involved in any extradition, it does not seem unreasonable to ask countries to tell us, for example a year later, what happened to the extradited person. Are they in jail serving a sentence? Were they executed? Did they disappear? It is not unreasonable for us to simply ask what became of them.

It seems clear to the committee that the concept of a process to monitor the trial status, health, and conditions of detention of people extradited from Australia has merit. The committee believes there is an overriding moral imperative that Australia never be a party to any injustice or abuse of the human rights of persons it has extradited.

For these reasons, the committee again recommends that extradition agreements should require the requesting country to provide annual information concerning the trial status and health of extradited persons and the conditions of the detention facilities in which they are held.

The committee has made two further recommendations to improve the extradition process.

First, the committee has recommended that the Australian government ensure the wellbeing of extradited Australian citizens by requiring that all Australians who are subject to extradition should receive a face-to-face meeting with an Australian consular official, except where the person has made explicit their objection to consular assistance to the satisfaction of consular officers.

Secondly, the committee recommends that, when a foreign national is extradited from Australia to a third country, the Australian government formally advise the government of that person’s country of citizenship that one of its nationals has been extradited from Australia to a third country.

The next treaty to which I wish to direct my remarks is the Amendment and extension of the Agreement between the Government of Australia and the Government of the United States of America concerning Space Vehicle Tracking and Communications Facilities.

This treaty marks the 50th anniversary of treaty-level cooperation between the United States of America and Australia in space vehicle tracking, and extends the life of the Agreement between the Government of Australia and the Government of the United States of America concerning Space Vehicle Tracking and Communications Facilities.

While the exchange of notes will provide significant benefits to Australian science, the committee has some concerns about how the process for seeking committee approval was administered.

The exchange of notes was tabled in parliament on 2 February 2010, only 24 days before the exchange of notes needed to take effect.

Because of the importance of the relationship between the CSIRO and NASA to Australian scientists, the committee agreed to meet the requested time frame, and report 109, supporting the exchange of notes and recommending binding treaty action be taken, was tabled on 11 February 2010.

This is one of a spate of recent requests by the government for the committee to expedite consideration of a treaty.

There were, in each case, grounds for expeditious consideration by the committee, and in each case, the committee was prepared to accede to the request. Nevertheless, in all of these cases, it would not have been necessary to make such a request if the treaty-making process had been planned in a more timely way by the sponsoring agencies concerned.

The committee’s inquiries provide an important contribution to treaty making by subjecting treaties to parliamentary and public scrutiny, thereby lending legitimacy to the treaties. The value of the committee’s work is undermined when there is insufficient time to properly consider a treaty or allow public input to the committee’s inquiries.

The committee needs to point out that a request for expeditious treatment is an unsatisfactory solution to poor planning on the part of some departments.

In an effort to remedy this problem, the committee has recommended that the Minister for Foreign Affairs should remind other ministers of the need to include time for proper consideration by the committee when planning to enter into a treaty.

The committee considered and supported a number of other treaties in this report, which I will briefly touch on.

The Agreement between Australia and the Republic of Lebanon regarding Cooperation on Protecting the Welfare of Children establishes formal procedures to assist Australian and Lebanese nationals whose children have been abducted by a parent to either Lebanon or Australia, or where difficulties with contact between a parent and child have arisen.

The agreement establishes a cooperative regime where one did not exist before, as Lebanon is not party to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.

The Second Protocol amending the Agreement between the Government of the Commonwealth of Australia and the Government of the Republic of Singapore for the Avoidance of Double Taxation and the Prevention of Fiscal Evasion with Respect to Taxes on Income will update the exchange of information provisions in Australia’s taxation agreement with Singapore to bring those standards into line with agreed OECD standards.

The Agreement between Australia and the Republic of Poland on Social Security is one of a number of international social security agreements negotiated by Australia. These bilateral treaties address gaps in the coverage of certain social security payments to immigrants in Australia who are entitled to receive payments from another country.

Finally, the Measure 16 (2009) Amendment of Annex II to the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty is intended to enhance protection of the Antarctic environment in a number of ways, including through improving processes for listing specially protected species, introducing permit requirements for the taking of native invertebrates, and strengthening controls on unintended introduction of non-native species and diseases.

I thank the numerous agencies, individuals and organisations who assisted in the committee’s inquiries.

I commend the report to the House.

Danna Vale (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Does the member for Wills wish to move a motion in connection with the report to enable it to be debated on a future occasion?

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

I move:

That the House take note of the report.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In accordance with standing order 39, the debate is adjourned. The resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting and the member will have leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed.