Senator LUDWIG (4:16 PM) —At the request of Senator Cooney, on behalf of the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties, I present the 41st report entitled Six treaties tabled on 23 May 2001. I seek leave to move a motion in relation to the report.

Leave granted.

Senator LUDWIG —I move:

I seek leave to incorporate in Hansard a tabling statement by Senator Cooney.

Leave granted.

The statement read as follows—

Madam President, the report I have just tabled contains the findings of the Treaties Committee's review of six proposed treaty actions tabled on 23 May 2001.

The proposed treaty actions are:

· an Agreement with Germany on Films Co-Production;

· an Agreement on Social Security with New Zealand;

· an Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels;

· a Protocol to amend the Convention on Limitation of Liability for Maritime Claims;

· the withdrawal of ratification of a series of International Labour Organisation Conventions relating to hours of work and manning of ships; and

· the denunciation of International Labour Organisation Conventions relating to minimum age rates and the inspection of emigrant ships.

In this Report we express our support for all six of these treaty actions.

Madam President, rather than trying to cover all of the treaties reviewed in this Report I would like to just comment on the Agreement on Social Security with New Zealand and the Protocol to the Convention on the Limitation of Liability for Maritime claims.

The Social Security Agreement with New Zealand is important because it enables the period of working life residence in either country to be added together to form an eligibility for a range of pensions in either Australia or New Zealand.

The essential feature of this agreement, which replaces an existing and long standing agreement with New Zealand, is that it changes the manner in which each country contributes to the payment of pensions.

The current agreement is an old style `host country' agreement, where the country in which the pensioner is resident meets most of the cost of pension payments.

The new agreement is a `shared responsibility' agreement, where each country contributes to paying the pensions in proportion with the length of time that the pensioner has lived and worked in each country.

Because of the typical patterns of immigration between the two countries, the new agreement is expected to save the Australian Government $93.9million over the next 4 years.

The agreement is clearly in the national interest - it will result in considerable financial benefit to Australia, while at the same time preserving the important role that freedom of trans-Tasman movement and a single labour market play in developing closer economic relations between our two nations.

Madam President, the second treaty I would like to comment on is the Protocol to amend the Convention on Limitation of Liability for Maritime Claims. This Agreement fits alongside other international maritime agreements to provide a framework to ensure Australian authorities can claim damages against shipowners for accidents that lead to environmental damage.

We agree that Australia should recognise and be part of a scheme that increases the amount that claimants may recover in the event of a ship accident, while at the same time not placing undue financial risk on shipowners or salvors.

We see this Agreement as providing a way to support new higher liability limits while instituting simplified procedures.

The Agreement also acknowledges the fact that inflation has eroded the value of the liability limits provided for in the current Convention.

I commend this latest report, our 24th in this Parliament, to the Senate.

Question resolved in the affirmative.