Judith Troeth (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I present the report of the Australian parliamentary delegation to the United Nations and other international agencies in Europe and the 121st Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Geneva, which took place from 7 to 24 October 2009. I seek leave to move a motion in relation to the report.

Leave granted.

by leave—I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

I have great pleasure in presenting the report of the delegation of which I was deputy leader, with Mr Roger Price from the other place as the leader. I should also mention Senator Crossin, sitting across from me, who was the other senator who was a member of this delegation.

The international agencies in Europe which we visited and had in-depth discussions with were the World Food Program; the Global Crop Diversity Trust, about which I will have more to say later; the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, more commonly known as the FAO; the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime; the International Atomic Energy Agency; the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban-Treaty Organisation; and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, known as the OECD.

The particular item that I would like to stress as being very important to this delegation was the global diversity trust. The reason is that not only did we visit this trust but it had a particular place to play in the discussion at the IPU. At the IPU Australia was instrumental in moving a resolution on food security which was adopted by consensus and was, I believe, the first in which Australia played a very constructive role, and we issued a press release to mark this.

The Parliamentary Action to Ensure Global Food Security was adopted by the assembly, as I said, and in particular spoke about the way in which governments can assist to free up both the production and the movement of food. The assembly recognised that the world is experiencing various natural and man-made disasters ranging from drought, famine and floods to locust invasions, and of course all of that affects agricultural productivity and the macroeconomic status of countries, particularly developing ones. We recognised that these severe weather patterns have become so common globally that they have led to the loss of life and property and the destruction of farmlands and transport infrastructure and we reaffirmed that, although obviously each country has primary responsibility for its own sustainable development and poverty eradication, there is a great deal that can be done by developed countries to enable developing countries to achieve their sustainable development goals, particularly those that arise out of the relevant UN conferences and the United Nations Millennium Declaration.

It is interesting to note that the number of malnourished people in developing countries has unfortunately increased to more than one billion. Food prices have fallen from their recent peaks but they remain volatile. That is due, among other things, to speculative trade in futures markets in food grains, and they are expected to remain relatively high in the foreseeable future. Armed conflict, of course, also causes a steep decline in socioeconomic conditions, and the international community’s capacity to respond to the growing demand for food is constrained by increasing urbanisation—a topic that we have often discussed in this chamber—water scarcity, the decline in investment in agricultural research and development, distortions in global food markets, increasing energy prices, environmental degradation and climate change.

Our visit to the Global Crop Diversity Trust pointed out several ways in which Australia can help to achieve the millennium goals by the work that we do. The global diversity trust ensures the conservation and availability of crop diversity for food security worldwide. Australia was an inaugural donor to the trust and is now a leading donor. It has also managed to attract large donations from private sector corporations, but Australia is the fourth biggest contributor behind the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the United Kingdom and Norway, and we have guaranteed our future contribution by announcements in various budgets. I was very pleased to note that the Grains Research and Development Corporation, a body for which I was formerly responsible as parliamentary secretary, has pledged US$5 million to the trust, of which US$3.25 million has been paid to date.

As well as funding the endowment fund, AusAID funds a three-year seconded position to the secretariat of the trust, and we have had an officer from the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry in that role. We are also represented on the trust through various members of the board, including in particular Professor John Lovett, who is a former executive director of the Grains Research and Development Corporation.

The global diversity trust, along with the Norwegian government, funded the high-profile Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway, which means that, increasingly, rare seeds and other biological resources can be kept so that the most important collections of priority food crops can be built on in the future and kept in order that agricultural research can be further developed to be the main source of genetic resources for the world’s plant breeders. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault was opened in February 2008 and will eventually store virtually every variety of almost every important food crop in the world. It is essentially the world’s agricultural insurance policy against disaster so that food production can be restarted should it be threatened by a regional or global catastrophe.

When delegations such as this one visit institutions they very rarely make recommendations, understanding that the organisations that they visit are best fitted to run their own business. But in this instance the entire delegation was of the view that Australia could be doing more to ensure the safety and protection of its seed bank. So we recommend in this report that the Australian government work cooperatively with state governments to ensure that their stocks of seeds are securely held in seed banks and that they are duplicated and safely lodged with the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway. That is something that I would particularly like to see happen, and it was an integral part of the delegation’s work.

I also want to particularly mention the outstanding work of Mr Neil Bessell, who was secretary to the delegation and accompanied the delegation throughout. He was absolutely assiduous in seeing that every detail that we needed—particularly at the IPU meeting in Geneva—was provided for us and that our every comfort was looked after. In other words, he ensured that all delegates were completely looked after from the start to the finish. His company was excellent and I do want to extend to him the very sincere thanks of the delegation for the work that he did on that delegation and in every other activity that Mr Bessell carries out.

We went on to develop another resolution at the 121st Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, and that carried over to the 122nd assembly, which was held in Bangkok, Thailand, earlier this year. I was chair of the drafting committee for that particular resolution, and I hope to report on that process when we table the report of the 122nd assembly in the future. This was the most interesting delegation to go on in terms of learning more about Australia’s role in international organisations and playing quite an important role in the resolution on food security at the IPU assembly.

Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to reiterate some of the remarks of my colleague Senator Troeth and to provide a comment on the report of the Australian parliamentary delegation to the United Nations and other international agencies in Europe that we are tabling this afternoon. As Senator Troeth said, I was the other senator on the delegation, and the two delegates from the House of Representatives were Mr Roger Price and Mrs Sophie Mirabella.

From time to time in this place we get reports of parliamentary delegations and they are often tabled and left for people to read if they so wish, and they are probably very rarely looked at. I would really urge anyone who has an interest in international agriculture and food security to have a very close look at this report. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with my colleagues from this place, and what we achieved as a nation is worth studying in this report. Mr Price and Senator Troeth devised this program and it is thanks to their ingenuity and their foresight that it had a tremendous outcome. What this delegation did that was quite different from previous delegations is that we went to the 121st Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union with the intention of moving the major resolution in the main assembly, and that was on food security. In order to do that, we went to a number of United Nations organisations and we met with and lobbied members of the IPU in various countries on the way to Geneva. It was because of the legwork that we did in gathering the facts, having documentation to back the resolution we put forward, and the support of members of the IPU in places such as France, Italy and Austria, that we actually achieved the outcome that we did.

We went to the United Nations World Food Program, as Senator Troeth said. We went to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations. We went to the Global Crop Diversity Trust, and Senator Troeth has talked about the seed bank and the recommendation from this committee following the report to that trust. We also went to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, because food security, lack of food and access to food are interrelated when it comes to serious and organised crime. We also used the time to go to the International Atomic Energy Agency and the OECD.

We spent some time in Italy on the way over, and I want to publicly commend former Senator Amanda Vanstone, the Australian Ambassador to Italy, for her very well organised and warm, hospitable reception. I think she has done this country very proud in the way she has undertaken her duties as ambassador. We were able to meet with the IPU President, Mr Pier Ferdinando Casini, and, of course, Ms Angela Napoli, who played a pivotal role in the IPU.

We also had a chance to meet with the Australian Ambassador to the Holy See, the Hon. Tim Fischer. I know there has been some controversy about that appointment and whether or not we need an ambassador in the Holy See. After spending some time with Mr Fischer and listening to the work that he does, I have no doubt that it is crucial for this country to have a personal presence in Vatican City and the Holy See. I have no doubt that he has played a contributing role—not a pivotal role—in the fact that this year, as Catholics in Australia, we will celebrate the canonisation of our first saint, Mary MacKillop. I think that the liaising that Mr Fischer has done between the Vatican City and this country was, at the time, very crucial and important and that his appointment has facilitated that canonisation.

I also want to mention the fact that we were the very first parliamentary delegation to go to the new country of Slovakia. Of course, that country has existed for a number of years. It was formerly Czechoslovakia and it has now split to become Slovakia. It was a very proud moment for us to be the first official delegation from this country to meet with members of their parliament, to interact with members of their parliament and to talk about how our committee structure works and some of the committee work that we do. I also found that our visit to the parliament in Vienna was quite interesting, particularly the interaction we had with the parliamentary education office there. I have given our Parliamentary Education Office in this building samples of the work that they undertake with children in Vienna. It is interesting that in Vienna they teach children not only about how the legislation program works and how parliament works but also about the media and the perception of legislation and the day’s events as part of their program. I found that that was another interesting way in which you can inform young children about civics and politics in their development.

17:59:51

Finally, I think the delegation was tremendously successful in that on the floor of the assembly there were three items put up to be the main items of debate at that meeting and we and Uganda managed to convince the countries there that our resolution was the one that should be considered. At the IPU they actually vote on what they are going to vote on. Of the three resolutions that were put up, they chose the resolution that we sponsored with Uganda on world food security. That motion, which is about four pages long, is attached to the back of this report.

After a number of hours of debate we were successful in getting that resolution put up. I think internationally it is a watershed resolution. If you want some key pointers for what parliaments, governments, politicians and countries should do when it comes to world food security, I do not think you can go past the range of ideas and options that were in that resolution.

For us as a country, I think it was a tremendously successful delegation. I think the work and lobbying we did on our way to Geneva paid dividends given the fact that we were successful in getting the resolution up. I understand it is the first time Australia has got a resolution through the assembly and I pay tribute again to Mr Price and Senator Troeth for their initiative in taking that forward.

In closing, I also want to reiterate the comments that Senator Troeth made about Mr Neil Bessell and Mr Eric Van Der Wal, who is from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. One of the things that I noticed when I went overseas is that we have some tremendously talented people from this country who know a lot about how the world works and who undertake their roles diligently. They are experts in what they do and they know how to assist delegations such as ours.

Neil Bessell was one of those people. At night, when we had decided we were going to put our feet up and have a bit of a rest, Neil was making sure the next day’s meetings were organised, typing up reports from the day before and making sure that the paperwork was done. He worked many long hours in the days that we were overseas. He knows how to handle a delegation. He knows how to represent this parliament and this country, and he did it astoundingly well. I want to thank him very much for the way in which he accompanied and looked after us. I had a broken arm during my 17 days. With my arm in plaster, they were not exactly the best 17 days I have had travelling in Europe but Mr Bessell made sure that I was comfortable most of the time and not in an awful lot of pain.

I think this report ought to be read by the ministers and shadow ministers in this parliament. It certainly proved to me that we have some very fine people overseas, such as Robert Tickner and Chris Lamb, the head of the International Red Cross. The many Australians we met working in the United Nations certainly do this country very proud. I think that this report and the outcome from this delegation is something this country can be most proud of.

Question agreed to.