World Heritage Convention

What, what, what was going, what was going on, on, on that day? Well, just take, I guess, take me back into that room, like in that UN committee hearing, what were you thinking? What were you, what message were you delivering there?

Yeah, so we were participating in the World Heritage Convention, and it moves around, so every year it's in a different country.

There's 196 state parties to the World Heritage Convention.

The United States of America participates in the treaty, and we were there to represent the United States.

So you had all of those countries from around the world in this giant room talking about the most outstanding places on the planet.

The federal government in 1983 used the external affairs power to intervene and prevent the state government from building the dam.

The justification was that it was to meet Australia's obligations under the World Heritage Convention.

This intervention was upheld by the High Court.

The External Affairs Power, by the way, is not just a blanket approval to legislate on any matter related to an international treaty, though.