Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Foreign relations has always been one of the most complex and delicate aspects of public and political life. Even before the internet and the advent of jet travel, understanding the interests of 200 nations and working to integrate and align them with our own across trade, defence, culture, science and technology, has always been an awesome and sometimes unenviable task. Today it is getting exponentially more complicated. The internet has made instant global communications commonplace and created millions of links between Australians and their counterparts in every nation. Most recently, we've begun to see regional governments around the world, including our very own states and territories, and even our local councils, building their own links and entering into arrangements with foreign governments directly. Many of these are welcome, and many of them benefit Australians. However, they raise important questions of consistency and oversight. We need to ensure that these arrangements are in keeping with our national interest.

The Australia’s Foreign Relations (State and Territory Arrangements) Bill 2020 will address that issue and ensure that we can all have confidence that our understandings with foreign governments will be a force for good in our community. In Australia, such arrangements are becoming increasingly common as states and territories look to pursue their own interests and priorities overseas. New South Wales has a memorandum of understanding with Israel's Ministry of Energy over the use of water resources. It has another with the government of Japan regarding material science and a third with the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg on the subject of their activities in outer space—of all things!

Others raise more concerns. My own state of Queensland, in 2016, signed a memorandum of understanding with the US Navy regarding the supply of biofuels. Though the US is our most important military ally, we surely cannot allow a situation where state and territory governments can enter into supply arrangements with any foreign armed forces without proper Commonwealth oversight. Perhaps almost as worrying, the Queensland government has since the early 1990s regularly renewed a memorandum of understanding with Papua New Guinea which covers a wide range of areas of cooperation across business, governance and health. Though Papua New Guinea is also a very important regional partner, this arrangement comes disturbingly close to constituting a separate ongoing foreign policy towards PNG on the part of the state of Queensland.

Most concerning of all is the Daniel Andrews Victorian Labor government's memorandum of understanding with the National Development and Reform Commission of the People's Republic of China. Signed in October 2018, this MOU sets up a path to investment by China in infrastructure in Victoria under the controversial Belt and Road initiative. This initiative is one of the most strategically significant foreign policy actions currently pursued in our region by a foreign power. It has been the subject of considerable concern throughout the international community. As the Lowy Institute's report Understanding China's Belt and Road Initiative, among many others, describes, elements of this initiative meet obvious but understated national security and foreign policy aims for the Chinese Communist Party. These include priorities like providing alternative access routes for China's fuel supplies, delivering access to potential future military ports, and increasing China's economic influence over other nations in our region. Yet the Victorian government was able to sign up to pursue funding under this initiative without any substantive consultation with the Commonwealth government. Worse, the Commonwealth and the Victorian public have no visibility of any flow-on contracts arising from the implementation of this agreement. They have no ability to assess whether these contracts are in Australia's national interests because of the shroud of secrecy which covers this clandestine agreement.

More widely, at this stage the Commonwealth does not even know how many arrangements of this type have been entered into by state and territory governments, let alone what those agreements might hold. The government's research suggests that more than 130 arrangements have been entered into by states and territories with more than 30 countries. Yet, since there has to date been no formal obligation on the part of these governments to inform the Commonwealth when such an arrangement is made, this parliament's ability to have oversight over external affairs has been severely and seriously compromised.

Some would argue that this is not a problem and would question why we are so concerned about it. However, though we cannot know the intent of any particular agreement, we do know that there are overseas actors right now who are seeking to have influence contrary to our national interests over processes and outcomes throughout the Western world. Recent attempts to spread misinformation and shape the outcome of US elections on the part of state-sponsored Russian actors are indeed well documented. Concerning evidence summarised in the Australian Strategic Policy Institute report Hunting the phoenix has shown that the Chinese Communist Party has used seemingly innocuous talent recruitment programs in covert attempts to acquire technology from a wide range of Western democracies, including Australia. These high-profile cases are certainly not the only examples. They are far from the only foreign governments engaged in activities of this kind.

All countries around the world seek to protect their national security and promote their national interests. Where this can be done through commercial or other arrangements with an Australian state or territory, no doubt some other countries would pursue such an opportunity. In many cases this will be of mutual benefit, will be consistent with our nation's foreign policy and will be of little to no concern. However, the problem at present is that those states and territories which are entering into these agreements are not fully equipped to identify which arrangements are benign and beneficial and which are not.

Our state and territory governments do not have full access to the resources of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. They do not have experienced teams of diplomats embedded in nations across the world. They do not have full access to the information provided by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service or the Australian Signals Directorate or the intelligence shared by our Five Eyes partners. When the Prime Minister, the foreign minister and the cabinet make decisions about our foreign policy and what arrangements with other countries are consistent with our national interest, they do so with the benefit of all of that information. They do it on the basis of the decades of experience provided by DFAT officials at home and overseas. As the world becomes smaller and more interconnected, and relationships between nations more complex, this input only becomes more critical. With the best will in the world, states and territories simply do not have access to the breadth and depth of expertise and information they need to make these appropriate and informed decisions. Ultimately, this practical truth proceeds from an important foundational principle.

Section 51 of the Australian Constitution reserves the power to legislate on external affairs to this Australian parliament. The High Court has repeatedly upheld the principle that it is the Commonwealth government that has the power to set and administer our foreign policy. There is a very good reason for this. Like any organisation or group of people, while Australians have our internal debates and robustly disagree amongst ourselves when it comes to interacting with external parties, we must speak with one voice on the world stage. Our interests as Australians do not always align with the interests of other nations. Tough negotiation and robust interactions are occasionally necessary even as friendship and cooperation exists. In that situation, it would be highly damaging for all Australians if a foreign actor believed that there were other powerful institutions in this country that would undermine our position of strength and help them achieve their objectives. Once again, as the world becomes more interconnected and the links between governments, corporations and public institutions at all levels grow, this ability to speak with one voice is more important now than it ever has been.

The Morrison government has been very alive to this emerging challenge and has put in place a comprehensive program of legislation to militate against it. This bill is one of the cornerstones of that effort.

The bill recognises that different arrangements have a different scope and potential impact, depending on the levels of government involved. It separates arrangements into two tiers. In the first tier are those arrangements entered into between Australian state and territory governments themselves and foreign national governments, which are likely to be of the greatest scope and impact. In the second tier are arrangements of a usually more limited scope such as those entered into by state and territory governments with regional governments overseas or those negotiated by individual Australian regional councils and also public universities. This bill would apply different requirements on the two tiers of arrangements. For the first tier, of core foreign arrangements, state and territory entities would be required to attain the foreign minister's approval before entering into any formal negotiations or signing an agreement. For the lesser, non-core foreign arrangements, the state or territory entity has only to inform the foreign minister before entering into the arrangement and to give the minister the opportunity to prohibit its formalisation.

However, importantly, the minister would retain the power to cancel any existing or future arrangement entered into by a state or territory entity whenever he or she became aware that it was no longer in the national interest. The minister's declaration would make the arrangement invalid and unenforceable or require its amendment as necessary. This is a critically important part of the bill.

Foreign policy and the national interest are fast-moving and ceaselessly changing. They are shaped by the changing needs and will of the Australian people. They respond to the actions of more than 200 other nations and seven billion individuals around the globe. What is in this nation's best interests today may not be tomorrow, and the minister must always have the ability to respond appropriately. This power will be reinforced by schedule 1 of the bill, which requires state and territory entities to inform the minister of all pre-existing arrangements so that they can be properly assessed against our national interest today. Ultimately, the details of such arrangements would be placed on a public register for all Australians to see. It is difficult to argue against that transparency.

This bill will bring our country's arrangements with foreign governments out of the shadows. It will ensure that Australians can have confidence that their elected governments are speaking with one voice and protecting their national interest together. Just as importantly, it will give our state and territory governments the tools that they need to go out and make safe arrangements that will benefit the Australians that they represent. I commend the bill to the House.

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