Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party, Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties, I present the committee's report entitled Report 174: IMF new arrangements to borrow; scientific cooperation USA; science research innovation NZ; technological innovation Israel.

Report made a parliamentary paper in accordance with standing order 39(e).

by leave—Today I rise to make a statement concerning the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties' Report 174.

The report contains the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties' review of four treaty actions, the New Arrangements to Borrow for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and three agreements on scientific cooperation with the United States of America, New Zealand and our great friend Israel.

The renewal of the New Arrangements to Borrow for the IMF is intended to help the IMF maintain resources to prevent or resolve crises in the balance of payments and reserve positions of IMF member states.

The IMF derives its resources from funds obtained through quota based contributions from members, supplemented by agreements to borrow additional funds from some members. These agreements make up nearly half of the funds available to the IMF.

The borrowing arrangement is one of those supplementary agreements.

Australia is a founding member of the borrowing arrangement.

The renewal of the borrowing arrangement is for a period of five years from November 2017 to 2022 and will continue our commitment of up to $4.15 billion.

The committee identified three issues in relation to the borrowing arrangement.

Firstly, we are concerned that the borrowing arrangement, which has been in place since 1997 and renewed on a number of occasions, has not been previously referred to the committee for oversight of this parliament, despite being a binding treaty action.

I can report that the Treasury has now identified this as a significant oversight, and has moved to rectify the problem. All credit goes to the Treasurer and the Treasury for this work, considering it's been going on for twenty years with little parliamentary oversight. Well done, Treasurer.

Secondly, due to the timing of the referral, the treaty action became binding before we have had a chance to examine it. This means the committee cannot make a useful recommendation on whether binding treaty action should take place prior to it going into place, but, of course, can look back retrospectively.

Finally, the Treasury did not originally provide sufficient information about our overall commitment to the IMF, which, in addition to the borrowing arrangement, includes a loan agreement and quota contributions to the IMF.

This information was provided on request, and the Treasury was been very timely in doing that. We are very appreciative of that at the committee level.

The IMF plays an important role in maintaining international financial and monetary stability and the committee takes Australia's ongoing support for the organisation very seriously.

Likewise, three science agreements with the United States, New Zealand and Israel are designed to enhance scientific cooperation between Australia and these three great friends of our nation.

In the current global world, innovation and technology are driving productivity and these types of agreements provide important benefits for Australian businesses.

The treaty action provides a formal legal framework to encourage cooperation and collaboration in scientific activities. They are expected to boost Australia's innovation system, attract investors and promote commercialisation in the global market.

We recognise the benefits of such agreements and recommend that binding treaty action be taken for all three agreements. The committee notes especially the great work that the innovation hubs are doing in Israel, and some of the outstanding successes Australian companies are having working with the great state of Israel through these innovation hubs.

On behalf of the committee, I commend the report to the House.