Kay Patterson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I present the report of the Australian parliamentary delegation to the European Institutions and a bilateral visit to Norway, which took place from 22 April to 6 May 2006. I seek leave to move a motion to take note of the document.

Leave granted.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

In April and May of this year a delegation of the House of Representatives and the Senate including Mr Laurie Ferguson, the deputy leader of the delegation, Mr Joel Fitzgibbon, Senator Stephen Parry, the Hon. Wilson Tuckey, Dr Mal Washer, their spouses and I went on a biennial visit to European institutions. That involved a visit to Belgium, the Netherlands and Norway. This visit was to provide an opportunity for the Australian parliament to renew contacts with the European Parliament and to continue to gain a better understanding of the European Union and its priorities.

I think that it is most probably a record that we have tabled our reports so soon afterwards. That is due not to my leadership but to the tremendous effort that has been put in by the secretary, Chris Reid, who not only helped us prepare before we went and assisted me in writing thank-you notes to all those people you need to write letters to afterwards, but has also been instrumental in assisting with the preparation of this report. So to Chris Reid, my thanks—as always, the Senate staff serve us so well. Also, prior to our leaving, Lynette Mollard dealt with our changes and requests and the various things that the committee wanted to do beforehand, and I want to put on the public record our thanks as a committee to her too. To those two people and to all the other officers of the Senate who were involved and Navigant, who organised our sometimes quite complex travel arrangements: we appreciate that very much.

The trip started in Brussels, where we met with European Union members. I will not go through the report which outlines clearly the issues that were raised and discussed. As always we were very vigorous and robust in our comments on agriculture and agricultural subsidies and I do not think that the European Union members expected anything less. We ranged across a wide range of issues with them. We also visited the Belgian parliament and were delighted to be hosted by them and to visit the parliament and to meet with a number of members of that parliament.

We visited NATO as well and were taken through the various changes, transmogrifications and development that NATO has moved through. We all found that very stimulating and interesting. But one of the salutary parts of our visit to Brussels was spending Anzac Day in Flanders fields. To go to Zonnebeke, Tyne Cot and Menin Gate on Anzac Day is a very special privilege. Those senators who have been in an area like Gallipoli, Flanders fields or Milne Bay on Anzac Day will know what a very solemn occasion that is and also know the emotions that being there brings up. To see 12,000 graves, 9,000 of them unmarked, makes you realise what a tragedy and unnecessary waste of young lives war is.

At Menin Gate, we recognised and remembered the over 36,500 young men who died in three months on Flanders fields in the putrid mud—in many of their stories, the mud seems to be a focus, because it was a very wet season. Menin Gate caught us all off guard. I do not think I was the only one with tears in my eyes as the various people who had that privilege and that honour went up to lay wreaths. There were a lot of young Australians there. It was also tremendously encouraging to see the community at Ypres come out to support that ceremony and remember the sacrifice that the British allied forces made in that area. We also were delighted to meet the buglers who have made a commitment to bugle until 2417. One of them has been doing it for 50 years. Every night, the Last Post Association plays the Last Post in honour and memory of those men—mostly men—who died in Flanders fields.

We moved from there to the Netherlands. We just got there in time to attend an afternoon reception that had been put on by the Ambassador to the Netherlands, Stephen Brady. Through advertising in the newspapers and alerting people in the best way he could, what Stephen had done was to get various members of the groups from the Netherlands who served in Australia. There are about 8,500 Dutch veterans who served in Australia in various guises. Some of them were evacuated from Java and came to Australia and served here.

At this gathering, I met nurses who had volunteered to come to work in Australia after the war had finished in Europe. It was a very moving experience to meet with these elderly people—one man had been in a nursing home crossing off the days until he could come to the reception. They came with their war records in their pockets, with maps and with pictures of the ships on which they had served as merchant seamen. It made you realise the enormous contribution that others made to our war effort, just as we made an enormous contribution to the war effort in Europe. All the guests received a little show bag as they left, which contained some Australian wine and a book about the Dutch in Australia during the war that the Ambassador had had translated. I give full credit to Stephen Brady, because through sponsorship he has raised about $600,000 to celebrate the 400 years of contact between Holland and Australia. He was able to hold this event because of his initiative in raising that money to promote that bond between Australia from when the Dutch first charted the Western Australian coast.

We also visited the Dutch parliament. It just so happens that, as part of that 400-year celebration, there was an exhibition about Dutch emigration to Australia. We looked at that and also met with some of the Dutch parliamentarians. While we were there, we visited a range of institutions in the Hague, including the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Warfare. We met with people associated with those various organisations and it was a very informative period for us.

We went from the Netherlands to Norway. When we first got to Norway, we were able to have a short trip called, ‘Norway in a nutshell’. We ended that trip in Bergen. While in Bergen, we participated in a very small celebration during which we laid a wreath at a memorial to a number of Australians who lost their lives in October 1944. They died in a Lancaster bomber that crashed in the water near Bergen. Six men of Bergen decided that these lives had not been commemorated appropriately and they raised money for the Lancaster memorial. As we laid that wreath, they expressed their concern about the fact that there are only four of them alive now and wanted to know what will happen to the memorial when they pass on and who will look after it. We have recommended to the Australian government, through the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs, that the Commonwealth War Graves Commission be contacted. They have been contacted before and a recommendation was put to them but it was rejected. We believe that it is very important that the Commonwealth War Graves Commission be requested to assume responsibility for the preservation and maintenance of the Lancaster memorial in Bergen, Norway, indefinitely.

Following that ‘Norway in a nutshell’ tour, we visited the Storting, the Norwegian parliament, as guests. We discussed a range of issues there. We had a fairly healthy debate on whaling. One of the interesting discussions that we had was about the Norwegian pension fund. It is one of the largest investment funds in the world. They have an ethical committee which advises the fund investor—who is deemed as one of the better fund investors in the world. They have a lot of clout with companies because if they pull their investment out it can be quite significant. They expect the investments not to infringe on any international agreements they have—for example, the one on landmines. I commend the report to the Senate. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.