Page 519 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 20 February 1991
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HAGUE CONVENTION ABOLISHING THE REQUIREMENT OF LEGALISATION FOR FOREIGN PUBLIC DOCUMENTS
Ministerial Statement and Paper
MR COLLAERY (Attorney-General), by leave: I inform the Assembly that the ACT Alliance Government has advised the Commonwealth Government, on 9 January 1991, that the ACT supports the accession by Australia to the Hague Convention Abolishing the Requirement of Legalisation for Foreign Public Documents. The formal advice about the ACT's support for the convention was by way of exchange of letters between the Commonwealth Attorney-General, the Hon. Michael Duffy, and me. Members will be aware that I have already written to them about this matter under correspondence dated 9 January 1991.
The convention has been in existence since October 1961 and the parties to the convention comprise some 36 nations, including those with which Australia has significant contact such as Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom and several European nations. The parties to the convention are listed at the back of the convention, which I will table for the information of members at the completion of this statement.
The convention is a technical document and is designed to streamline certification of public documents which have been executed in one contracting nation state and which have to be produced in the territory of another contracting state. At present the system which applies involves a significant amount of time and money being expended by Australian residents in dealing with foreign embassies and consulates to have Australian documents certified for use overseas. This has had a particularly heavy impact on ethnic communities. This is even more onerous when one realises that validation of some documentation requires a series of certificates. The convention recognises that a party to the convention agrees to recognise certification of the validity of a document under a single approved certificate referred to as an apostille. The documents in question range from court documents, including those delivered by a process server, administrative documents and official certificates. The convention does not cover documents executed by diplomatic or consular agents, customs documents or commercial papers.
The consequences of accession to the convention will involve legislative amendments to evidence Acts and the appointment of authorities in each capital city of Australia to certify documentation. Members will recall that, when I tabled the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the optional protocols to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights on 14 August 1990, I explained that, while the Commonwealth Government has exclusive constitutional power to enter into these international agreements, it prefers not to ratify or accede to these instruments until it has sought the views of the Australian States and Territories.
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