Nick Xenophon (SA, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

My question to Senator Feeney is: does the government concede that there is an inherent tension between the preamble to the convention, article 1 of the convention and the defence contained in clause 77.41 of the bill? At the very least it raises questions of an inherent tension between the aims of the convention and the defence. There is an inherent tension in there and it goes back to the quite prescient warning of the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties, which stated:

… some of the terms in the Convention are not clearly defined and may provide an avenue by which Australia could participate in actions which may contravene the humanitarian aims of the Convention.

Doesn't 72.41 actually provide an out and actually provide the basis by which the humanitarian aims of the convention, to which Australia as a nation has signed up, could be undermined at the very least by virtue of 72.41?