Alexander Downer (Mayo, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the House for the opportunity to talk on this matter of public importance. It is quite good news that yesterday we had a debate on Iraq and today we can have a debate on the Pacific. I notice that the shadow minister for overseas aid and Pacific island affairs cannot even fill up his time to discuss the issues of the Pacific. He cannot even fill a full 15 minutes.

Several things are interesting about the Labor Party. The first is that the Labor Party does not take the Pacific very seriously. Apparently, the ever-talkative shadow minister for foreign affairs and trade is too senior to deal with the Pacific. So the Pacific is relegated not just to a junior shadow minister but to a junior shadow minister who has been deselected by the Labor Party. That is how important the Pacific is to the Labor Party. Even the garrulous shadow minister for foreign affairs—saying the word ‘garrulous’ reminds me of Gareth Evans—who is often described as ‘Gareth Evans without the charm’, you would think would want to participate in the Pacific debate and be involved in bagging the government constantly on Pacific affairs. But apparently the Pacific is not quite important enough for him, so it has all been relegated. Labor’s interest in the Pacific is false.

The second observation I have made about the Labor Party over the years—and I do have a bit of experience in this parliament—is that it has a bit of a chip on its shoulder about Australia. We always have to apologise to other countries. We always have to go cravenly to the rest of the world to try to win their approbation. And if anybody in the rest of the world, even in the Pacific, criticises Australia, the Labor Party regards it as—you know what?—a failure of Australia. If anyone criticises Australia, it is our fault. I think this is a psychological issue. I think a person with self-confidence is a person who can stand up for what they believe in, and a person who loves this country is a person who will stand up for this country and its interests and will not always think that because we are criticised by foreigners somehow those foreigners are always right.

I know the shadow minister does not know anything about the Solomon Islands Prime Minister, but people who do know about him will know a lot about his background, and we do. In this particular case, when somebody like that kicks our high commissioner out of the Solomon Islands for talking with the opposition, you would think that all members of this parliament would say that that was a shameful thing to do and would stand up for Australia. But what did the Labor Party do? The junior shadow minister—not the senior shadow minister—came out and bagged Australia. It was our fault. It was a failure of Australia that Mr Sogavare kicked out Patrick Cole. Those with whom I work on this issue day by day could not believe that press release. We were absolutely aghast. The only people who back Mr Sogavare are a handful of his people—not the people of the Solomon Islands, who are appalled—and the Labor Party in Australia, because if Australia is ever criticised it is always Australia’s fault.

Mr Sogavare chooses to appoint as his Attorney-General somebody who, as it turns out, is wanted by the Australian Federal Police. The Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions thinks charges should be brought against this person. Not only is that relevant in a legal sense but there is more to it than that. The allegations against this person—and they are just allegations until they are tested in court—I think are especially egregious. I think they are incredibly serious allegations. But there are two countries which have not helped to send this person back to Australia, and we got into an argument with them. Surprise, surprise! Not even for one minute do I regret getting into an argument with somebody about something as serious as that.

I am a father of four children. I know a lot about children. I care a lot about children, and I think allegations like that—and it is just an allegation; it is not proven—should be tested in court. I feel strongly about people who try to protect that kind of person. I do not care what the Sydney Morning Herald says or whoever else the member for Maribyrnong may quote. For me, it is a very important issue. It is not an issue that I think lends itself to some puerile party political game from the Australian Labor Party, from its defunct shadow minister. The Labor Party do not even think he is worth re-endorsing and they get him to introduce an MPI on an issue like this because they are just a tiny bit embarrassed about it—and so they should be. I feel strongly about this and I do not mind what people say about me. I think we are a proud, strong, great country and we should stand up for good values and good things.

For the Labor Party to criticise the government over this is typical of the kind of stab in the back that we get from the Labor Party whenever we get into a dispute with another country. It is always our fault. Even when other countries decide to deliberately not repatriate to our country someone who has been charged with child sex offences, it is our fault for being unhappy about it. No wonder I never joined a weak show like the Australian Labor Party. What a weak and pathetic show it is. The shadow minister thinks it is all terribly funny, because for him it is just a little game—another opportunity, another day to have a crack at the Liberals. We heard all sorts of cant and nonsense from the shadow minister about how we do not care about the Pacific, and we heard about some academic from the Australian National University, or wherever it was, who does not like John Howard. I mean, seriously! This government has been in power for 10 years, and we appreciate that we are patronised every day and accused of blithering incompetence and utter stupidity, but we happen to have been on the Pacific beat for 10 full years. We know a lot about the Pacific, and we read a lot about the Pacific—and we have access to information that the opposition do not ask for. They do not ask for briefings, although we would be happy to give briefings sometimes if they would choose not to make party political points the whole time, and if they wanted to get across the subject. I do not recall—I stand to be corrected, so I look to the advisers box—receiving a letter from the opposition asking for a briefing on the flight of Mr Moti from Papua New Guinea to the Solomon Islands.

I think that if the opposition knew what we know they would be ashamed of the position they have taken on this sensitive issue. They would be ashamed of themselves. I think that the position they have taken is absolutely disgraceful. If they knew all the facts, maybe they would not play party politics with such joy and relish or take comfort, for goodness sake, from the Sydney Morning Herald. I do not have anything against the Sydney Morning Herald, but if the Labor Party think it should be their guide why don’t they just elect the Sydney Morning Herald to lead them? At least it has a consistent point of view, which is more than you can say for the weak Leader of the Opposition.

The Labor Party say we have not done much in the Pacific. They were in government for 13 years. I know Gordon Bilney. He is not a bad bloke, but the fact is that he was a junior minister. Gareth Evans was all so grand and mighty he could not be bothered to deal with small countries in the Pacific. He wanted to re-engineer the United Nations. I do not mind Gareth, by the way, but he was not interested in the Pacific. Everybody knows that. After all, I became the minister after him, and I know what the department said about his attitude to the Pacific. He was not interested in it. It was not where he wanted to operate. It was not the big stage. So Paul Keating put Gordon Bilney in to do the job. Gordon is a well-meaning sort of bumbler, and not much happened. We shovelled aid into the Pacific, but we did not do anything about the problems of corruption and governance, and—surprise, surprise—not very much happened.

When I became the foreign minister, there was a civil war in Bougainville. I never blamed the Labor Party for the civil war in Bougainville when I was in opposition. I did not make pathetic points like that. The Labor Party tried. Gareth Evans, Gordon Bilney and Paul Keating were concerned about this issue, and I did not think it was worth making some puerile party political point about it. But when I became the foreign minister I had already visited Bougainville as the shadow minister—not for Pacific islands affairs but for foreign affairs. I had actually bothered to go there myself. We worked with the New Zealand government—which did a great job, by the way—in the form of Don McKinnon to put together a peace settlement in Bougainville. More than four times as many people died in the civil war in Bougainville as have died in Northern Ireland since the so-called troubles began in 1969. Okay, there are no TV stations there, and it was not an issue that people wanted to debate much in this parliament—except during the Sandline affair, when the Labor Party said it was all our fault. There was not much debate or discussion. We contributed, in a very major way, to bringing that terrible civil war to an end.

The deselected junior shadow minister has got the audacity to say that we do not care about the Pacific. That just shows what a fool he is. He is a fool to take sides with a bunch of people who are protecting and harbouring someone who is facing child sex tourism charges in this country, and he is a fool to overlook something like the Bougainville civil war and the role Australia played in helping to bring that to an end. We have indeed done our best for the Solomon Islands, and I think that the ordinary people of the Solomon Islands are delighted with what we have done over the years. RAMSI has been a very big success. I go to Papua New Guinea a lot, and I know that a lot of the ordinary people of Papua New Guinea are enormously grateful for what Australia has done.

There is a problem in the Pacific with corruption, and the Labor Party think that the best way to deal with that is to continue with this policy of always cuddling up to the elites and having little gabfests and chats with the elites. Now they want to set up an eminent persons group of elites to somehow negotiate away Australia’s interests. It is all about the elites. That is all it is about. We spare a thought for the ordinary people of Papua New Guinea, and we spare a thought for the ordinary people of the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Tonga, Fiji, Samoa, Tuvalu and Kiribati. Those people have, in some cases, been well served by their leaders—and, frankly, everybody knows it in Australia. The people in the gallery know it only too well. The elites in those countries, in some cases, have done a good job, but in some cases they have not done a good job. If we get into an argument with those elites, the Labor Party says that it is our fault. No, it is not. It is not our fault. We are going to stand up for what we think is right and, if that means having some arguments with other people who we think are wrong, we will do it.

I said in question time that there are people in the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea who are very good, decent and educated people and who are excellent leaders of their country, and they are very unhappy about the Moti issue and very concerned about issues like corruption. And the people who let those people down are people like the member opposite, the member for Maribyrnong, who bags the Australian government because of the concerns it has about a very serious issue. It is our fault!

What a spineless political party the Labor Party is. It has not always been. I always say Andrew Fisher—the member for Maribyrnong would not have even heard of Andrew Fisher—was one of the very best Labor Australian prime ministers. In fact, I got the High Commission in London to make sure that his grave was being properly looked after because I am concerned that in Highgate Cemetery it has not been. He was a good man because he was strong. And Bob Hawke was quite a strong leader. But what a pitiful, pathetic outfit there is sitting opposite today. They are always on the side of the foreigner. Guess whose side we are on on this side of the House? We are on Australia’s side. That is our team. Foreigners may be your team, but our team is Australia.

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