Mr HARDGRAVE(11.34 a.m.) —I am very pleased to participate in the discussion of the report that I was very proud to have played a part in compiling. The fifth report of the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties is certainly worthy of debate here today and its discussion is a very important national as well as international matter. Restrictions on the use of blinding laser weapons and land mines: 5th report is the name of the report. The joint standing treaties committee will next week table its ninth report in less than a year.

I have to say it was privilege enough for me to have been elected to this place to represent the good people of the electorate of Moreton. It was an unexpected honour to be appointed by the parliament to the joint standing treaties committee and to participate in a very important process, the deliberation and consideration of the international linkages that Australia has. Certainly, a criticism often offered to me in the lead-up to the last election was that there were just so many agreements that Australia had with other countries and other entities around the world and that there really was no accounting back to the parliament.

It is a great credit to the Prime Minister (Mr Howard) to have embraced an agenda first put forward by Senator Rod Kemp of Victoria—now Assistant Treasurer—to have this treaties process. It is very important that the consideration of treaties and international agreements of all types is not just the domain of the executive or the foreign affairs club. We have been able to break through the obvious and natural barriers of the bureaucracy in the committee process to expose a number of very important issues to date.

The committee's work range has included everything from tuna fishing through to the rights of the child, which is the current inquiry. This report before us is one that I was very pleased to be part of for a number of reasons. I will mention a couple of them. It helped me to keep faith, as a member in this place, with a lot of people who wrote to me prior to the election looking for some action on just this issue. People from Catholic Social Response, the International Red Cross, Amnesty International and others all have an interest, naturally enough, in the use of landmines. They are simply one of the most cowardly forms of weaponry used by armies around the world.

I am very pleased to be part of a government whose Minister for Foreign Affairs (Mr Downer), on 15 April last year—in essentially one of the first acts of the new government—deplored the use of landmines and stated very clearly Australia's position. As the honourable member for Lindsay (Miss Jackie Kelly) just said, we have a vital leadership role in our region, particularly to show countries such as Cambodia—with not just its killing fields but also its maiming fields—that we do not believe the use of landmines is good enough. I join with the honourable member for Lindsay, and I am sure others in this place, in calling on the government to get even tougher on the use of landmines.

They are simply horrendous weapons. They leave in their wake children, particularly, who, after conflicts, may wander into fields, into what would normally be productive areas, and trip over these things. They are not designed to kill; they are designed to maim. They were designed to maim sections of the opposing army because it paralyses an army. It is bad enough when a soldier is killed, but when a soldier is injured two other soldiers are then taken out to carry that injured soldier. There is at least a triplication effect with these sorts of weapons. So we now have in countries in our region children innocently tripping over landmines and losing limbs. The photos in this report provided by Dr William Maley are just too horrendous to contemplate, with large rafts of skin being torn off innocent children. Landmines have to go.

Landmines are quite easy to make. They are literally being made in people's kitchens and underneath people's homes. In fact, it is quite astonishing to note, and we received evidence to suggest this, that some of the very best electrical companies around the world have their components stuck inside some of these landmines. I am not about to advocate that we should be putting a ban on products that are also produced by these companies—because I suspect, in their defence, a lot of the materials used are simply cast off components that have been picked up by those who want to make these bombs and who do so, literally, on the kitchen table.

They are everywhere. As the honourable member for Lindsay has alluded to, and this is contained within the report, antipersonnel landmines total 400 million since the Second World War. The US State Department has estimated that there are more than 85 million uncleared landmines scattered in 62 countries around the world, and five million new landmines are being laid each and every year, with a cost of up to $US1,000 to clear each mine.

There is evidence from the International Red Cross that for every landmine cleared 20 additional are laid. It would cost in the vicinity of $US33 billion to rid the world of this scourge. We are not about to get rid of landmines tomorrow. I certainly wished that I could have been part of a process that had got rid of landmines but I think the important part about this report is that it states very clearly the view of the parliament. I am glad to see the government is going down the same track. Landmines are dreadful devices and they should be taken out of the play, as far as the world is concerned.

I think it is also important to note the evidence of Dr William Maley with regard to some of the ways that these landmines are quite deliberately being used. The last thing a retreating army does is to lay landmines in and around hospitals, schools and fields that can be used for food production. It is a quite deliberate and cowardly device used by a retreating army to inflict horrendous psychological and physical damage on the opposing side when they reclaim the land.

As I said, I was proud to be part of the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties in the compilation of this report. I am very pleased that we have discussed this here today and I urge the government to continue its efforts to rid the world of these mines. Also, in closing, I wish to register my praise for the role of the Australian defence forces, who quite rightly maintain a small stock of landmines here in this country in order to train and to maintain their expertise in order to continue their important role in ridding the world of these devices. Australian Defence Force personnel are amongst the best in clearing landmines, and God speed to their work.