Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Let me say what a serendipitous privilege it is for me to be able to follow the member for Moreton in this debate for his last contribution in this chamber. Let me put on the record my deep affection and admiration for GP. This is a man who has made a contribution across so many different aspects of our nation. Importantly to me, he has been a consistent voice for Australia's relations with Africa, a cause that I have spoken about a lot in my time and a cause that needs more voices in this chamber speaking up for it. GP and I have been able to travel all the way to north-western Kenya to the Kakuma refugee camp, which so many members of the Australian community have travelled through on their way to Australia, to really see the impact that our work through both ODA and other arrangements has had there. Travelling with someone in an environment like that you get a sense of the kind of person they are. I won't share with the chamber everything that happened on that trip, GP! But I have to say it is a genuine tribute to the calibre of GP and the regard in which he's held in this chamber that he can inflict so much pain on so many members of this chamber on the sporting fields of Parliament House and still be so beloved. The member for Fremantle and I have both been personally affected by GP's enthusiasm on the sporting field! Good luck, mate. I know you owe it to your family. Let me put on the record our thanks to them for sharing you with us during this time. Good luck in retirement from this place, mate.

I am pleased to be able to speak on the Pacific Banking Guarantee Bill 2025 today. Since the election of the Albanese government, we have committed to a new era of Australian engagement in the Pacific. We have worked hard to deepen the social, cultural and economic connections between Australia and our Pacific family. We have really worked to enmesh our nation with the Pacific family. The foreign minister visited the Pacific on just her fourth day in the role, travelling to Fiji to discuss how we could best secure our region and help to build a stronger Pacific family. The foreign minister visited every member of the Pacific Island Forum in the first year of this government. It was a clear demonstration of the new energy and focus that our government would bring to Australia's Pacific relationships. This was replicated across our government, with visits to the Pacific by the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Minister for International Development and the Pacific, the Treasurer, the Attorney-General, the Minister for Home Affairs and other ministerial colleagues. When we say we are part of the Pacific family, we mean it. We share an ocean and we share a future.

The connections that Australia shares with our Pacific family—our mutual understanding, common purpose and cooperation—have never been more important. We face the most challenging strategic circumstances of the postwar period. There are major changes reshaping our region and the world—climate change, technological innovation and disruption, geostrategic competition and demographic change. These circumstances demand that Australia work more closely with our international partners to shape the kind of region that we want—a region that's peaceful, stable and prosperous, a region that operates according to agreed rules, norms and international law, where sovereignty is respected and where individual countries are free to make their own choices, and a region where no country dominates and no country is dominated. We can't achieve a region like this on our own. We have to work with others, and it is only becoming more challenging. How we work together with our international partners, with our neighbours, with our Pacific family to meet our shared challenges today will have a great effect on future generations.

The Pacific is at the front line of many of the environmental, geopolitical and economic challenges we confront. Our Pacific neighbours are highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, increasing their need to work with us. They also need to look to us first to support their development and economic needs, which can be acute. Responding and providing support is what good partners do.

As the Foreign Minister has said, we are now in a state of permanent contest in the region. We need to work harder to be the partner of choice in the Pacific. Our opportunity to be the only partner of choice was lost to us over the previous decade, when those opposite were in government. The former coalition government cut Australia's overseas development assistance program to the Pacific. They cut official development assistance by $11.8 billion in their time in office—and perhaps later tonight we will see further commitments to cuts in the budget reply speech. This was a drastic drop that made our region less safe, and it left a vacuum in the Pacific for others to fill. Australian security continues to pay a price for the coalition's neglect in government. We now have to compete to become a partner of choice. We have to work at it. That's why the Albanese government has been hard at work implementing our vision for stronger engagement with the Pacific, with our nearest neighbours, with our family.

On that note, I will cede the floor to my colleague the member for Fremantle, in anticipation of this evening's budget reply speech.

Debate adjourned.

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