Page 2934 - Week 10 - Thursday, 15 August 1991
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The Attorney gave a short overview of the Act as it now stands. I would like to put on the record, in our own Hansard, in the history of this Assembly, what processes lead us at this stage to encourage commercial arbitration of disputes and to support the expansion of commercial arbitration legislation in the ACT in line with expansions elsewhere in Australia to allow for mediation and conciliation. It is a further alternative dispute resolution machinery.
Mr Speaker, commercial arbitration as a method of settling disputes came late in the piece in the developed world. We all know that lurking beneath every merchant's bed in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, and perhaps even up to the end of the first half of the twentieth century, were governments. Governments tacitly, directly, indirectly, or in a shadowy manner, backed up the proprietal concerns of enterprise.
The United States Government often is seen to be too close to some of the private commercial activities of its corporate sector; but, really, that is merely a more open manifestation of the fact that all governments of all persuasions seem to support the commercial activities of their national companies. That is well and good. But, when that support can result in diplomatic involvement in commercial dealings formally done at arm's length, then you often see a misuse of the diplomatic immunities and a misuse of diplomatic power.
This resulted, after the end of World War II, in significant developments in terms of work on conventions to allow for the orderly settlement of international trading and investment disputes. One of the early and important documents was the Washington convention in 1965. There were others, but I choose that one. Growing out of that convention has been a move towards a model law for use by all nations in the settlement of disputes. That model law was adopted at the eighteenth session of UNCITRAL in June 1985. That provided for a uniform law for regulating international commercial arbitration.
It provided for a model law, as distinct from a convention. It meant that other governments could adopt that model and replicate the provisions of it. That is slowly permeating the developed world. A number of countries, including Australia, are now in the process of applying that model law which has come to us from abroad. In fact, what we are doing today is implementing and mirroring the provisions of the international model law in our own ACT law. So here, being moved today, are legal amendments that have their origin in international negotiation at the conference table at international fora. In 1986, to my knowledge, the national working group on that in Australia was set up and the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General of this country agreed to adopt the model at a meeting they held in, I understand, March 1987. That is how we have arrived at this mirror legislation.
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