Julian Leeser (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Australia's Foreign Relations (State and Territory Arrangements) Bill 2020 and the Australia's Foreign Relations (State and Territory Arrangements) (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2020. This legislation is timely for the security and wellbeing of Australia. This legislation clarifies the capacity of the federal government to do one of its most important jobs—that is, protect Australia's interests and interact with other nations on behalf of our citizens. If there is one task we are trusted with in this place, it is the defence of Australia and its interests. Before we ask questions about what sort of country we may become in the years ahead or how we will cut taxes or where we will build a new road, we must first secure the ability of our people to govern themselves, free of outside malign interference. Each person who has a seat in this place only does so because they represent those Australians who have elected them. This is fundamental to the integrity of our system of government. It is what ensures the sovereignty of the Australian people.

On questions of foreign policy, it is the federal parliament and the federal government that have the unique responsibility in this area of policy. There was a time when defending this nation from foreign influence meant submarines, defence personnel and aeroplanes only. It meant patrolling seas and intervening when foreign agents entered our shores. That's still relevant to today's security environment, but just as relevant is the need to ensure we don't foolishly roll out the red carpet to those who seek to compromise Australia by entering into deals and arrangements that put Australia at risk.

Foreign interference is exerted not only militarily but economically and culturally as well. Many countries have become increasingly aware of the ways that foreign powers have sought to influence their domestic political affairs through financial arrangements, cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns, combined with trade sanctions and threats. For instance, in 2017 the Swedish Institute of International Affairs found Sweden had been the target of a wide range of foreign interference activities from Russia that were designed to influence that country's decision-making. In recent years, Sweden's Civil Contingencies Agency not only prepares for natural disasters but now monitors websites for exaggerated news stories that could breed fear among the Swedish population.

Earlier this year the Australian Strategic Policy Institute released a report looking at the Chinese Communist Party's coercive diplomacy. Tracking reports over the past 10 years, the report found 152 cases of coercive diplomacy, affecting 27 countries in the European Union. The volume of cases has increased significantly since 2018. These coercive actions involve things like the arbitrary detention of foreign nationals, restrictions on travel—as experienced by my friends the member for Canning and Senator Paterson when their visas to China were denied last year—boycotts, trade restrictions and other threats. The report describes the tactics used against countries as being 'divide-and-conquer tactics'. It states:

The CCP intentionally isolates countries in this way to retain comparative strength and ensure the effectiveness of its coercive methods.

Sometimes we think of Australia as being singled out for special treatment in recent times by the Chinese Communist Party, but, in fact, this is happening all over the world. For instance, in November 2010, China blocked salmon imports from Norway on the spurious grounds of food safety after the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to a Chinese dissident in Oslo. Sales of salmon to China collapsed by 61.8 per cent between 2010 and 2013. The situation improved after 2016, when Oslo agreed not to support actions that undermined China's interests.

In March 2017, the Chinese government organised boycotts against South Korean businesses after South Korea agreed to host the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense anti-missile system. Hyundai reported a 42 per cent drop in sales, and Kia recorded a 54 per cent drop. South Korean supermarket Lotte had nearly all of its stores in China forcibly closed due to unspecified fire code violations. In October 2019, a US congressional delegation were denied entry visas into China. Chinese authorities wouldn't allow them entry unless they cancelled their scheduled trip to Taiwan. In December last year, the Chinese Ambassador to Denmark made threats during a meeting with the Prime Minister of the Faroe Islands autonomous territory that they wouldn't enter into a free trade agreement if Huawei were not given a contract to develop the region's 5G infrastructure. In the same month, the Chinese Ambassador to Germany threatened economic consequences against Germany after draft legislation was written to exclude untrustworthy vendors such as Huawei from developing Germany's 5G infrastructure. Just this year, Australia has also experienced a significant amount of threats and trade restrictions.

In this environment, it's essential that the Commonwealth government retains primacy and oversight in all areas of foreign policy, in order to counter the divide-and-conquer tactics of foreign powers. This bill ensures that our own people don't recklessly or naively give foreign governments the keys to the country. The events of recent years have given us reason to be concerned that foreign actors could more easily interfere with our sovereignty. The Victorian Labor government under Daniel Andrews has been rightly cited in relation to this legislation. His courting of the Chinese Communist Party to give state owned Chinese companies access to Australia has implications well beyond his own state's borders. Premier Andrews has made numerous trips to China's as Premier, and, in October last year, at a roundtable in Beijing, the key message prepared by his department set out the Andrews government's desire for Chinese firms to establish an office in Victoria and to bid for Victorian projects. His talking points stated that the Victorian government's vision for Victoria is to be China's gateway to Australia.

The Chinese Communist Party's Belt and Road Initiative is a mechanism by which China will invest in infrastructure, including roads and telecommunications, across the globe. The Victorian Labor government had pitched for rail and road projects in Victoria to be part of this scheme and, in 2018, signed a memorandum of understanding that compromises the future security and sovereignty not only of Victoria but of all Australians. This act of the Andrews government alone is evidence for why this bill is essential. The Belt and Road Initiative has been described by Peter Cai from the Lowy Institute as one of President Xi's most ambitious foreign and economic policies. He says that the Belt and Road Initiative has geostrategic and economic goals. He further says:

The two goals are not, in fact, contradictory. China is using OBOR to assert its regional leadership through a vast program of economic integration.

Professor Clive Hamilton's submission to the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee regarding this bill puts plainly the risks facing Australia. When a former Greens candidate and former director of The Australia Institute can see the problems we're facing, the situation is very serious indeed. He states:

… until recently it has not been evident that a foreign state has been building relationships with subnational governments and with universities as a means of influencing or interfering in Australia's foreign policy and shaping the national conversation in ways more favourable to the foreign state.

… As long as subnational governments and universities continue to live in a state of innocence, they will remain easy targets for the CCP's influence campaign.

He also refers to the Chinese Communist Party strategy of 'using the local to surround the centre', which is described as using good relations with local actors in order to put pressure on the national government. He says:

The Victorian government's decision to sign the state onto a Belt and Road Agreement with Beijing, and to make the state China's "gateway" to the nation, is a classic example of "using the countryside to surround the city" (that is, Canberra), or in this case, use the countryside to bypass the city to achieve the objective and undermine national foreign policy.

The federal government needs the power to prevent a state entering into an agreement that is not only inconsistent with Australia's foreign policy but actually undermines it. The federal government must be able to exercise its responsibilities to the Australian people without that task being compromised by state and territory governments or universities. We do not want to put ourselves in a situation where another country can turn off our trains or shut down our telecommunications or our water supply. The Victorian government's actions would risk this. The actions of the Victorian government compromise the security not only of Victorians but of all Australians.

One hopes that the Victorian Labor government were simply naive when they did this deal, but history would suggest that that's unlikely. Sadly, the Labor Party has a long history of compromising Australia's foreign policy, exercising extraordinarily poor judgement in who they seek to align with, whether it's the Whitlam government's recognition of the annexation of the Baltic States or Kevin Rudd, in more recent years, selling out traditional allies in order to secure a seat on the UN Security Council. Labor's track record is disastrous when it comes to standing up to regimes that compromise the freedom of their own citizens and act aggressively on the international stage.

The Morrison government is clear that Australia will always stand by our values and protect our sovereignty. This bill is important in ensuring we can maintain our sovereignty given the shifting geopolitical environment we operate in. State and local governments and universities do not have the requisite knowledge or experience of foreign policy or Australia's strategic interests. Even if their intentions are good, their capacity to assess the strategic implications of their partnerships is limited.

This bill will fill the gap that currently exists by giving the Minister for Foreign Affairs a scheme which the minister can maintain to oversight Australia's international engagements. The legislation would give the minister oversight over arrangements made by Australia's public universities and state, territory and local governments and a foreign government or its related entity such as a foreign government controlled university. The minister will have the capacity to determine whether those arrangements adversely affect Australia's foreign relations or if they are inconsistent with Australia's foreign policy. If they're problematic, the minister can prevent negotiations and arrangements from proceeding. The minister can also cancel or vary existing relationships. Importantly, there are a number of considerations the minister must balance in making this judgement. Among those considerations, the minister must take into account the importance of the arrangement in assisting or enhancing the functioning of the state or territory, whether the declaration would significantly curtail or interfere with the capacity of the state or territory to function as a government and whether it would have serious financial consequences for the state or territory. In some circumstances the Commonwealth would also be liable to pay compensation for financial or other impacts that result from a ministerial declaration.

Some of the criticism that this bill has attracted is related to the inclusion of public universities within its scope. There are principled reasons for this inclusion. Publicly funded universities are strongly engaged in international affairs regarding research relationships and partnerships. They do so as institutions established largely by state and territory law. They are publicly funded and they have the potential to significantly impact Australia's foreign relations and foreign policy. Frankly, I don't think our universities, in particular the group of eight, have taken this issue seriously enough.

This bill does not seek to squash foreign partnerships and collaboration but simply to ensure that those partnerships do not unwittingly compromise Australia. It doesn't compromise the institutional autonomy of universities; it simply gives the minister oversight to intervene when that university is risking Australia's interests—its security or its intellectual property—through its partnerships with a foreign government. As DFAT explained to the Senate inquiry, this bill will not apply to bilateral arrangements between Australian universities and foreign universities that enjoy the same institutional autonomy with which we're familiar in Australia.

The vast majority of foreign universities will remain unaffected by the bill. This aspect of the bill is also essential because of the genuine risks that exist in the university sector. It's concerning that many universities are concerned about their institutional autonomy in relation to the way their own government will have oversight of a very small and distinct aspect of their work when their real concern should be around the risk of their campuses being used for foreign interference.

The treatment of Drew Pavlou by the University of Queensland when he protested against the Chinese Communist Party's treatment of Uighurs and the people of Hong Kong, the two contradictory statements issued by UNSW when one of its academics published a tweet about human rights abuses in Hong Kong, and the infiltration of China's Thousand Talents program don't leave people with confidence in our universities. The sort of influence foreign actors have in universities has been long known. Earlier this year, Professor Salvatore Babones from the University of Sydney described Confucius Institutes as places:

… not so much designed to indoctrinate the students who take their courses as to influence the administrators of the universities that host them.

He wrote:

Rising totalitarianism in China has turned the tables on Western universities: Instead of spearheading the liberalization of China, they are uncomfortably vulnerable to Chinese pressure in the opposite direction.

I declare: I'm a director of the Ramsey Centre for Western Civilisation, and it beggars belief that some of the Group of Eight universities were afraid to host a Ramsey centre to study our own culture and our own civilisation but that they were very quick to adopt the Chinese Communist Party sponsored Confucius Institutes.

Our public universities are a key part of Australia's international relationships, and we've all got good reason to be proud of the research and academic work that they do. This bill is not in any way designed to damage or compromise universities. It will do exactly the opposite. Rather than hamstringing the universities, this bill will protect them from foreign interference that they may not even be aware of.

It's unfortunate that we're in this situation where this legislation is needed. But we would be naive to ignore the very real challenges that Australia faces. This legislation arms us to better confront these challenges in the years ahead. We must not allow Australia's sovereignty to be eroded by stealth. The naivety of those universities and state and territory governments who do not believe this is essential legislation demonstrates the need for these measures in the first place. The national parliament and the minister for foreign affairs must always be able to retain the oversight and the key policy-making functions of our foreign relations and our foreign policy. That is in the interests of all Australians.

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