Peter Garrett (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Heritage) Share this | Hansard source

I support the motion brought to the House by the member for Cook. I acknowledge his significant contribution in the life of this parliament in bringing forward motions which draw to the attention of the House some of the more direct and challenging human rights and political abuses that are happening in the international community. In this case the motion is about the ongoing activities of the regime in Zimbabwe. I want specifically to commend the terms of the motion because it identifies two of the key features that, regrettably, we always see in a regime which is intent on holding onto power at all costs and which seeks to use the power of the state to silence dissent and to restrict people in that country from expressing themselves and from participating fully in the political process.

The first of those features is that the attention of the regime is directed towards those who express themselves as activists. ‘Activist’ is a word that has sometimes had a connotation in this country of something to be looked down upon, but people who are prepared to be active and to get out and peacefully express within their community—in this case, in their country—their desire to see democracy and freedom are the people who continue to provide the lifeblood of democracy, particularly where it is imperilled. Secondly, the attention of the regime is directed towards the churches, who continue to stand up and speak about the rights of those who are downtrodden, in this case by the Mugabe regime.

So I want to join with other parliamentary colleagues in supporting this motion, but I note additionally that we are not committing the government here to taking any additional actions on the diplomatic front. Given the seriousness of the issue, as has been eloquently described by previous members, I hope that the government will take note of this motion and consider whether there is a possibility for additional diplomatic action as a consequence of our debating this matter in the House today.

The situation continues to be of grave concern. The domestic and international pressure for democratic reform is intensifying and we have seen a number of emergency discussions, including at the Southern African Development Community summit in March of this year, where Thabo Mbeki was to mediate crisis talks and bring the Movement for Democratic Change, the opposition party in Zimbabwe, together with ZANU-PF to try and start reaching some accommodation on how democracy may be begun to be established in Zimbabwe. But these negotiations came on the back of a rapid decline in human rights. There has been a significant clamping-down on freedom of association, freedom of assembly and freedom of expression. Amnesty and others have noticed extraordinary evidence of government intimidation and arbitrary arrest of opposition activists, including the arrest of activists on 11 March 2007, and the torture and beating of Gift Tandare, the Youth Chair of the National Constitutional Assembly, which is something we mark with great regret.

The South African Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu has spoken out quite strongly about the need for there to be, on the African continent, a more robust condemnation, such as we are seeing in the House here in Australia, of human rights violations. I acknowledge the contribution that Archbishop Tutu continues to make, particularly in affairs dealing with human rights in southern Africa and on the whole African continent.

The latest report, from the Australian of 18 June, says that talks between Mugabe’s ZANU-PF and the MDC have resulted in very little that is positive. I think we are left with no option other than, in addition to debating and condemning the Mugabe regime here in the House, urging the Australian government to intensify its efforts. I recognise that there was a package of, I think, some $12 million that was directed towards assisting non-government organisations and others in Zimbabwe, and that is acknowledged by Labor. There have been calls for Mugabe to be taken to the International Criminal Court, and a number of international organisations, including the Heads of Agencies Contact Group on 15 June, and other countries, have warned of the economic paralysis that is likely to befall the people of Zimbabwe. They will continue to suffer unless we take real action. This motion is supported.

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