David Johnston (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

As you can see, Madam Acting Deputy President, the opposition is very supportive of this interesting and important piece of legislation, the Australian Civilian Corps Bill 2010, which formalises our relationship with our overseas neighbours and others who become affected adversely by natural events, disasters and all manner of conceivable mayhem where our expertise is required to deliver some assistance. Indeed, we think of Japan, we think of tsunamis and we think of all sorts of things that have occurred in our recent past that have required us to get aboard aircraft and to be delivered into foreign lands and to administer services and expertise.

I want to say thank you to Senator Trood and Senator Back. Obviously they have taken some great time to study this legislation and participate in the committee reports surrounding it. They are much wiser and more knowledgeable than me with respect to these matters. I also want to support the issues that Senator Trood raised with respect to a fundamental threshold issue: the protection of our personnel overseas. The legislation appears to be light on with respect to that, may I say. The conflict and overlap between the Australian Civilian Corps personnel and AusAID appears to be ill defined, if I can say that. Having said that, I do not want to detract from the benefits of formalising and putting on the table a template of rules and a structure for our assistance overseas. The explanatory memorandum to the bill states:

The Australian Civilian Corps Bill 2010 … creates a legal framework for the employment and management of Australian Civilian Corps employees. 

Australian Civilian Corps employees will be a unique category of Commonwealth employee, engaged for specified periods to work in crisis environments overseas before returning to their regular employment.

This is clearly a very positive formalisation of what has been, to a very large extent, an ad hoc situation.

A couple of other issues that come to me through the legislation include that the report is contained within AusAID. Again this underlines Senator Trood’s concerns with respect to the operation. Annually we have to sift through the AusAID report to see what ACC employees have been getting up to and how they have been managed and what matters they have undertaken. Can I also say that the values as espoused within the legislation but unspecified are awaiting the regulations, as is the code of conduct. These are two very important things, yet the legislation goes on to deal with what will happen if there is a breach of the code of conduct. So we have legislation setting out the punitive response for a breach of yet undefined codes of conduct. I find that rather curious.

Having said all of that, as you can see, Madam Acting Deputy President, the opposition is very supportive of formalising these matters, as it appears there will be ever-increasing call upon our expertise to travel overseas and to provide assistance to our near neighbours and further. Thank you.