Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Myo Min Min and Naing Htay Lwin were sentenced to over two years in prison for their protests against unfair wages and unfair dismissals of garment workers. Khin Khin Kyaw, a lawyer representing nearly 60 students detained after protests, was summoned to court for obstructing authorities after signing a petition calling for the activists' release. Phyo Wai Kyaw, a solo protester protesting the use of bribery in the judicial system, was also sentenced under section 18 of the artfully named Peaceful Assembly and Peaceful Procession Act. Despite claims of a shift towards democracy in Myanmar, these incidents all occurred just in the last month. Campaigning is currently underway for Myanmar's general election, which will be held on 8 November.

This week I met with a group of Burmese residents who live in my electorate of Hotham. They told me stories of friends and family who have been targeted for their political views and of their longing to be able to return to their birthplace and see a fully formed democracy there.

Under complex practices, the polls that are to take place will elect Myanmar's national and local parliaments. Whilst voting is in November, it will not be until the meeting of both parties of parliament and a meeting of military officials 90 days later that we will discover who the new president of Myanmar is. These polls have been described by Burmese officials as the first open general elections in 25 years. Senior military officials have publicly committed to respecting the results of the election, and the country's military controlled electoral body, the Union Election Commission, have implemented some reforms towards improving the transparency and the veracity of polls. But these changes do not go far enough. Constitutional and procedural barriers continue to prevent free and fair elections in Myanmar, and the lingering military presence around all of these proceedings puts a chill on freedom of expression for those that wish to become politically engaged.

There are 96 political prisoners who remain in Myanmar's jails and a further 466 activists who today await trial, according to the Association for Political Prisoners. The military continue to retain a quarter of all the parliamentary seats in Myanmar, meaning that any challenging party has to control two-thirds of the remaining seats in order to carry any laws in that parliament. Key ministers, such as for defence, continue to be selected by the head of the army, not the President of Myanmar.

You know that Aung San Suu Kyi has been fighting for decades for a more peaceful democratic process in Myanmar. Today she is the leader of Myanmar's opposition party but is prevented from running for President under constitutional changes which prevent candidates from running if they have foreign spouses or children. Despite protests, there do not seem to be any indications that this incredibly unfair and arbitrary policy will be changed. The Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law described Myanmar's constitution as the most entrenched and most difficult of any in the world to change. We know that Ms San Suu Kyi's party would need to win more than two-thirds of the remaining seats to form a majority government.

I want to mention something about the millions of Burmese who live today outside of Burma. Many of them have settled in Australia but also in Singapore, in Hong Kong and in other parts of Asia. Today the right to vote of even those that remain Burmese citizens is being significantly curtailed. Burmese Australians who are living here at the moment can only vote at the embassy in Canberra, when most of these residents are located in Sydney and in Melbourne. What we have heard from the Burmese community locally is that there has been a lack of clarity about how exactly they go about voting. They do not know when they need to be at the embassy to lodge their vote. This is preventing many Burmese who are living around the world from having their say in the democratic process.

In Myanmar itself, there are further concerns about how the election itself will be conducted. The Burmese community in Australia told me about significant and well-founded fears they have that votes will be tampered with and that the distribution of ballot papers will not be done fairly. It is another issue within their democratic process that at this stage there is no clear and transparent way for resolving electoral fraud—just another in a long list of things that I would like the Myanmar government to consider as it goes through its democratisation process.

As Australians, our government does have influence on what happens in Myanmar, and I ask today that the Australian government use its full diplomatic power to call for free and fair elections in Myanmar. We need to ensure— (Time expired)