Jim Turnour (Leichhardt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Foreign Affairs. Will the minister advise the House of the implications for Australia’s relationship with China of the Gorgon liquefied natural gas agreement? Are there any challenges to Australia’s relationship with China?

Stephen Smith (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for his question. I am asked about the Gorgon deal, I am asked about implications of that deal for relations with China and I am asked about any challenges to our relationship with China. I very much welcome the Gorgon announcement. It is the largest trade and investment decision in our country’s history. Some of us on this side have been supporting this project in advance of the Gallop government’s in-principle decision to approve the project in September 2003. I welcome the very strong support that we saw from the Gallop government, the Carpenter government and, to its great credit, the Barnett government.

I am asked about the implications of the deal for Australia’s relationship with China. Of course, this arrangement will have significant benefits for our economic relationship and partnership with China. Indeed, it is testimony to the strength of our economic relationship with China. As I indicated to the House yesterday, our relationship with China started with our early recognition of it by the Whitlam government. It started in economic terms with minerals and petroleum resources from Western Australia., but we now see a much broader both economic and bilateral relationship, reflected by the fact that early last year we saw Foreign Minister Yang come to Canberra to conduct the first strategic dialogue between Australia and China, and that was replicated with the second strategic dialogue when I visited Beijing in the first quarter of this year.

So our relationship with China continues to be strong and productive and very focused on the economic complementarity between Australia and China. The fact is that we are a reliable, safe and secure supplier of resources and that China’s economy continues to develop and be enhanced.

I am asked about any challenges to that relationship. Any significant bilateral relationship always has challenges, and sometimes there are threats. But what are the challenges? Until very recently, the government and the opposition, both sides of this House, understood that our relationship with China was important economically and strategically, as reflected by the recent holding of strategic dialogues, but also complex and complicated—not a relationship that could be dealt with simplistically. That was until very recently, but recently, regrettably, we have seen challenges to the relationship presented by people taking a very simplistic approach to our relationship with China and raising spectres of misjudgment, miscalculation, naivety and simplicity. We saw some of that yesterday, with the question from the opposition about potential consequences of the government’s decision to allow Rebiya Kadeer to come to Australia, and I was left wondering overnight whether indeed the opposition supported the government’s decision in that respect.

As well as that, recently we have seen the Leader of the Opposition somehow thinking, believing or pretending that the difficult and complicated Stern Hu case can be dealt with in some way by megaphone diplomacy, raising very serious questions about miscalculation and misjudgement on his part. I wonder whether at some stage the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow minister for foreign affairs might want to tell the House just how many representations they had from the Australian business community about adopting a different approach on that matter.

But yesterday we saw the doozy of them all. On the very day on which we saw the single largest trade decision in the country’s history made, the single largest trade decision made in respect of China and Australia, we saw the Leader of the Opposition say the relationship was at its lowest ebb. Have we ever seen a more fundamental miscalculation or misjudgement? No wonder that the Australian community will be asking the very serious question as to whether this complex, complicated and very important relationship could be trusted in the hands of a Leader of the Opposition so prone to miscalculation and misjudgment.

This relationship is economically very significant. It is predicated by a number of things, including that of course Australia and China have different systems and different values, and from time to time there will be differences which need to be carefully and successfully managed, just as the government is carefully and successfully managing the Rebiya Kadeer issue and the Stern Hu case—not in a manner of simplicity, naivety, politics, miscalculation and misjudgment, which the Leader of the Opposition would have us believe is the best course to follow.

This is a most significant decision as far as trade and investment is concerned. It is a very significant decision for the long-term benefits of Australia and the long-term productive economic partnership between Australia and China.