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

by leave—When the Australian treaty-making process was reformed in 1996, the new process was designed to accommodate urgent treaty action in the case of exceptional circumstances. Such treaties would be exempt from the usual requirement to be tabled in parliament at least 15 sitting days before the government takes binding treaty action; however, any exempt treaty was to be tabled as soon as possible, together with an explanation of the reasons for the urgent action, and the government undertook to use the provisions sparingly and only where necessary to safeguard Australia's national interests, be they commercial, strategic or foreign policy interests, and this process has become known as the national interest exemption. As the chair pointed out, this is the seventh time that the national interest exemption has been invoked, and on three of those occasions it was to ensure similar protection for Australian personnel deployed abroad at short notice.

This treaty authorises Australia to send personnel, associated equipment and assets to the Netherlands for the purpose of responding to the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17. This was, of course, a flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur which was shot down over separatist held territory in eastern Ukraine on 17 July last year, killing all 298 passengers and crew on board. Amongst those killed were 38 victims who called Australia home. I want to join with other members of the committee in expressing our condolences to the victims' families and their loved ones and paying tribute to the dedicated Australian personnel who worked very hard to bring the victims' remains home and investigate the cause of the downing of MH17. This treaty will terminate no later than 1 August this year, and it is worth noting that the original 500-strong contingent has been reduced to approximately 25 as at 7 November last year. Like other members of the committee, I pay tribute to their efforts.

The shooting down of a Malaysian civilian plane, with the loss of everyone on board, was shocking. This tragic event and many others make it clear that we need to do more to make the world safe for civilians. I think there should be United Nations peacekeepers in Ukraine, in Gaza and around the world wherever there is conflict and wherever there are civilian lives at risk. I believe in collective international action to solve problems, and of course we have the United Nations, established precisely to solve international problems and to seek to improve on the abysmal record of the first and second world wars. I know that the United Nations does a lot of good, but the level of global violence suggests that it needs to be doing much more.

Over my years of political life, I have come to realise that a key measure of political integrity is what political leaders are prepared to tolerate by way of misconduct from people in their camp. And, at present, the big powers, instead of working together to put an end to war and political violence, are prepared to tolerate way too much. In this case, it is Russia who is at fault, but in other places around the world other big powers have been at fault. Of course, getting the big powers to lift their game is no easy matter. But I think that people who are concerned about global conflict should seek to breathe new life into the doctrine of the 'responsibility to protect'. This doctrine took a long time to develop and was very quickly put into cold storage after it was used in Libya. But it does have the potential to save civilian lives, and we should demand that the United Nations Security Council uses it when outbreaks of violence occur. Some people might think that this will require a lot more resources for the UN, but it is not true to think that we do not have these resources readily at hand. Countries like the United States, Russia and China have massive numbers of troops and equipment at their disposal. What is required is for some of these resources to be handed over to the UN to operate for the 'blue helmets'.

I commend the work of the Treaties Committee in relation to this report and I commend the report to the House.

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