How are international treaties formalised?
Response to a newspaper editorial:
You state in your
(Queensland Times) editorial (Jan 23) regarding the MAI:
‘After all, such an agreement would have to be
ratified via the normal parliamentary processes’. Regrettably
that is not the case.
The recent signing of the FSIA without any
debate in the Parliament might have alerted you to the fact that
such treaties do not need to be ‘ratified via
the normal parliamentary processes’. The signing of hundreds
of other treaties with the United Nations which have effectively handed over
the political sovereignty of the Australian people since 1983 without any
debate in the Parliament, might have alerted you further, but apparently
not. Failing that, had you read the federal government’s own preamble
to their ‘Australian Treaty List: Bilateral: as at December 1995’,
you would have read the following. ‘Pursuant to
the Constitution, the treaty-making power is formally exercised by the
Governor-General, who acts on the advice of Ministers....The approval of
Parliament is not required for the conclusion of a treaty.’
Graham Strachan