Worth Richard: Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Stockholm Convention) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Worth Richard: Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Stockholm Convention) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:609;Page:6995] 
RICHARD WORTH (NZ National—Epsom) 
: There are two schedules. The first schedule is the actual Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants done at Stockholm on 23 May 2001 and the annexes to the convention; and the second schedule which surprisingly is labelled schedule 2 lists the persistent organic pollutants. If time permits I would like to talk about schedule 2 but I will confine my comments to schedule 1 and express real concern that the United Future party does not seem to have understood the significance of the debate as it has gone through the Committee stage and has been foolish in the extreme in not looking at the implications of the proposed amendments. 
It is well illustrated in article 18. Article 18 is all about settlement of disputes and for those United Future members who are present in the Chamber and may be following this issue it is set out at page 32. I will make two points about article 18. The first is to draw the attention of United Future members to article 18(2)(a) which is all about the possibility of arbitration in accordance with procedures to be adopted by the conference of the parties in an annex “as soon as practicable”. The point that speakers from this side of the Chamber have urged on the Government is that because the bill is worded in the way it is there may be later events—and here is an illustration of a later event—this annex will be developed will become part of the treaty and as a result of the clumsy drafting in the bill it will become part of New Zealand domestic law. 
It is a simple illustration and there may well be multiple illustrations within the context of the treaty. There was an opportunity for United Future members if they were thinking members of Parliament to have looked at this issue and resolved it. They failed to do that. The allusion can easily be made to their being little more than the marionettes of the current Labour Government. That is a sadness because if their role is to stand as a party that can add value to the process then they fail so significantly in this case. United Future members sit dumbly; the Labour members barrack. 
I would like to come back to the second point which is concerned with the settlement of disputes provision in article 18. A process is set out in article 18 for the settlement of disputes through negotiation or other peaceful means. It is an interesting trend in international treaties particularly environment treaties that those dispute resolution provisions are becoming increasingly common. One could not say that 10 years ago but now there are about 180 treaties of an environmental character as this one is that contain quite sophisticated dispute resolution provisions. We have a plan for negotiation or other peaceful means and the ability for parties to stipulate for one of two options. The first is arbitration and I have referred to that clause in article 18(2)(a). The second possibility is a submission of the dispute to the International Court of Justice. That is not a customary provision to find in dispute resolution provisions in environmental treaties. 
There are subtleties in the way these provisions have been developed. Clause 6 of article 18 in Schedule 1AA states that if the parties to a particular dispute have not stipulated for one of those two procedures or if they have and there is not concurrence in respect of the choice that the two disputing parties have made the dispute then goes to the conciliation commission. We see immediately the difference between that and the arbitration process.