Mr HARDGRAVE (12:41 PM) —I am very pleased to join with the member for Wentworth and the member for Lyons in discussing this latest report from the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties and to pick up from where the member for Lyons ended. It is over four years since the revised treaty making process began reviewing, through this place, Australia's obligations under international treaties and the impact of them on Australians—which is a legitimate role for this parliament. It is just not good enough, then, for a department or an agency to simply presume, `Oh, it's just a parliamentary report; we don't need to pass on everything we know.' It simply is not good enough. It is behaviour that is contemptuous of this place. It is certainly true to say—and we have said this in the report—that it is hard to feel very confident about the way in which Environment Australia have represented Australia's interests in international fora if they believe that it is up to us to undertake private research to find out some of the things that they did not tell us and that, under the revised treaty making process, they were certainly obliged to tell us. They assumed that this matter was well understood, because of other witnesses appearing before us and because of the amendments, et cetera presented at the Conference of Parties in Nairobi, and they assumed that there was no need to present an explanation to parliament in documentary form. That is very poor work indeed, especially some four years after we began the revised process—it certainly was a false assumption. The fact that the Australian government sponsored two proposals to delete the rainbow plant and the Albany pitcher plant from appendix II was not even mentioned in the NIA. Forget about the details—the fact that that information was not put forward to this parliament so that proper processes were made easy for this committee is very sad in the very least. They did not put forward matters relating to dugongs and to whether or not the issues that were put before this committee were relevant to what was happening, and that in itself is very sad.

It was not until after the hearing, not until the committee undertook its own research on this issue, that we became aware of the Australian government's submissions to CITES in support of its proposals. They were available from the CITES Internet site. Those proposals should have been brought before the committee, and therefore before the people of Australia, by Environment Australia. It was part of their obligations to this place and to the Australian people. This is quite in contrast to the experience of the committee—of which I was a member—during the last parliament in compiling its 10th report on similar amendments to CITES. In that instance, we felt quite satisfied that the information had been brought forward to us and we had no criticism of Environment Australia. As honourable members would realise, this committee, on behalf of the people of Australia, has never been afraid to put very strongly its criticism of, and disappointment in, the conduct of certain departments. In a whole of government approach, we are working our way through department after department to try to get a consistent dealing on this matter.

It really is vitally important that each department in this government, in this nation, understands that when we are making inquiries about treaties and their impact on the people of Australia we are doing so on behalf of the people of Australia and that the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties takes its subcommittee role in this place very seriously. I commend the work of so many of the members of the committee who managed to dig out a lot of things that Environment Australia had not brought to our notice.

Nevertheless, Mr Speaker, I am sure you would agree that 34 reports in a little over four years is a tremendous volume of work that has been done by the joint standing committee over the last two parliaments. I look forward to our ongoing commitment on behalf of the people of Australia to dig out those matters so that people feel very much comforted by the fact that when we do sign a treaty it is in the best interests of Australia and that there is some advancement for the people of Australia as well as some advancement for our reputation in the world.