Gordon Reid (Robertson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is such a vital topic to be discussing in our parliament today. I look around and I see freely elected members of all political persuasions, Liberal, Labor and Independent, and it's because we have one of the healthiest and most successful democracies in the world. Our democracy is one that respects human rights. It respects fundamental freedoms, especially and including freedom of speech.

Our government is most certainly aware that some foreign governments try to influence our democracy, our society and our communities, from Sydney to Perth, to Darwin and to South Australia, through corrosive and harmful narratives. This is evident overseas, particularly on social media, where foreign governments try to sow division around issues that are felt deeply by the Australian public. This type of interference is deliberate, and it deteriorates our social fabric. It is coercive, corrupting, deceptive and clandestine. It causes conflict, and it causes painful rifts throughout our community. It is relentless and it is insidious. It affects individuals, families and communities, and within that it affects community leaders and politicians—you name it. It fundamentally undermines our democratic process.

The Albanese government is working tirelessly to identify, investigate and disrupt these threats and acts of foreign interference, including on social media, to ensure that Australia's resilience and defence is strengthened to this ongoing threat. Our government has valued and continues to value integrity, openness and transparency. Openness isn't always possible in a national security setting, but in some areas knowledge conquers fear, and knowledge is definitely what keeps us safe. The nation's future—Australia's future—will depend on how free and how fair our democracy is and on how much Australians trust and then engage with it. The stronger our democracy and the more choices we have about how we engage with the world, the stronger we will be as an Australian family.

The threat of foreign interference is ever-present, it is relentless, it is insidious and it not only affects individuals but, like I said before, fundamentally undermines the principles of our democracy. Our best defence against foreign interference is to arm and prepare the people who are the possible targets of this behaviour with the information that they need to not only recognise but report the foreign interference, because these are corrupting and deceptive acts. We must therefore change the nature and the tone of the foreign interference discussion. It's time to bring foreign interference out of the shadows, as the minister has said, and expose it for the despicable act that it is. What makes foreign interference problematic and what makes it illegal is the deceptive nature of it and the covertness of it. It's state actors. It's foreign governments that are trying to influence the discourse of our democracy and coerce people who live in Australia—who live within our communities—to behave in ways that may undermine the fabric of what we call home for the benefit of a foreign power. I've got to say: that's not on.

Foreign interference is not a hypothetical. It is real and it is ever-present. It's not merely something that only lies in the future; it's happening now. It's happening today. I want to thank Minister O'Neil and our other colleagues throughout the intelligence community who wear and don't wear uniform, as the member for Solomon said, for the tireless work that they do in this space to defend our national interests both here and abroad. As a government, we will call out the egregious acts of individual countries when it is in the national interest to do so.

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