Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that this bill be now read a second time, and I call the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, the member for Corio.

Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and can I say it is very good to see you physically in the chair and not on the screen!

Honourable members: Hear, hear!

And, on indulgence, I might just give a nod to all the Victorians who are up here this week.

I rise to speak on the Australia's Foreign Relations (State and Territory Arrangements) Bill 2020, and the cognate bill associated with that, and, in doing so, I move the amendment that is circulated in my name:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House:

(1) notes:

(a) the desirability of greater oversight and review mechanisms for decisions made under the bill; and

(b) the lack of clarity in the definition of 'arrangements' and 'institutional autonomy' in the bill; and

(2) calls on the Government to:

(a) address the regulatory gap of private universities;

(b) provide clarity on the treatment of the Port of Darwin in the bill before the bill proceeds;

(c) make clear how this regime will interact with the existing legislation and guidelines that work to safeguard Australia's sovereignty, and provide confidence that the bill does not present a sovereign risk that will undermine investment and cost Australian jobs;

(d) engage in genuine consultation with Australian entities covered by the bill on the design of the regime; and

(e) redraft the bill and re-present it to the Parliament at the earliest opportunity".

Australia, at this moment in time, faces the most complex set of strategic circumstances that we have since the end of the Second World War. The world around us is changing rapidly, and there are challenges being presented to us which are far from obvious. They require much analysis and much thought, and they are complex in terms of the path forward. Whatever else it means, there is a requirement for our nation today to play bigger than perhaps we ever have done since the Second World War. There is a sense in which the journey forward is for us to determine; we don't have many countries who are in our circumstances with whom we can share the strategic burden of thought. We of course have New Zealand and we are of course in an alliance with the United States. But the way the world looks to a global superpower with capital on the Atlantic seaboard in the Northern Hemisphere is very different from the way the world looks to a middle power in the Southern Hemisphere in the East-Asian time zone. It means we have to work this out for ourselves. That's why we need to have a foreign minister and a Prime Minister who act with leadership in relation to the course we take forward in respect of foreign and strategic policy.

It's not good enough to pursue foreign policy on the basis of slogans. When we hear our Prime Minister talk about 'negative globalism', without really explaining what that means and all the implications it suggests, it doesn't help us guide our way on the particularly complex and difficult strategic international waters. When we hear our foreign minister talking about the need for global institutions to improve their performance, but not a cent is offered in additional resources from the point of view of Australia to play its part in those global institutions, all we can take from it is that these are slogans; they are not actually meaningfully about trying to build Australia's strategic weight to give a sense of the pathway forward for Australia at this most complex moment in time.

As a nation, more than anything, we need to be speaking with one voice—and that is very much the desire of the Labor Party. Foreign policy should be a matter of bipartisanship—basically, it is—but there does need to be a sense of deep thought in relation to this. There needs to be a dialogue with the opposition and indeed all the stakeholders around this nation so that we can meaningfully build that voice and act with that one voice. It's not beyond us. It's really not a matter of partisan political divide, but it does require the government to lead and to do that work.

The intent of the bills that are before us today is something that the Labor Party supports. To state the obvious, our Commonwealth government, our federal government, government at a national level, should be the tier of government which leads in relation to foreign policy and, more than that, leads in relation to the way in which we strike arrangements with foreign entities. Whilst there are plenty of legitimate reasons why subnational entities—states, territories or other entities—may enter into arrangements with foreign entities, that obviously should occur consistent with a policy which is determined nationally by the Commonwealth government. That is the intent which fundamentally underpins the bills we are discussing today. That is an intent which Labor clearly supports.

But the way in which this bill has found itself before us today, the way in which the bill made its way into the public domain, ultimately ended up being all about politics. This bill was announced on 27 August, the very day the government was under pressure in relation to aged care. We all know it; we all saw it.

It was the very day the Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians walked out of the Senate after repeated questioning about the parlous situation of our aged-care sector in the face of the COVID-19 crisis, particularly as it was playing out in the state of Victoria. We were seeing multiple deaths—more than that, really—in our aged-care sector. We had seen a failure in the management of infection control and that's what led to this virus ending up in the aged-care sector and what led to the pressure that the aged-care minister found himself under on that day and, indeed, the pressure that the Commonwealth government found itself under on that day. So why is this relevant in the context of today's debate? Because this bill was announced on that very day, in that very moment, to try and change the conversation. That's what everyone understood. That was what every commentator could see.

So we have a really important bill which goes to the question of a completely sensitive part of federal public policy being rushed into the public domain in order to try and change the conversation which the government was finding difficult on that day. As a result, the bill that we have before us right now just isn't ready; it's not ready. It's been in the making for some time but it was rushed into the public domain well before the work was done and that, ultimately, is the position that we bring to this House today. We on this side support the intent of the bill, but the work behind this bill needs to be done. This bill is poorly drafted. This bill finds itself before us without any proper consultation with the critical entities that it seeks to regulate. This bill finds itself before us today with the entire public university sector included in the regime set out in this bill, but included essentially as an afterthought and with many problems in it.

This bill should be a considered part of a suite of legislation and measures taken at a federal level in relation to Australia's foreign policy and strategic path forward. For example, it should be part of a suite of measures which includes the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme, the University Foreign Interference Taskforce, the Security of Critical Infrastructure Act. All of these are critical pieces of legislation or measures that are taken by the federal government, of which this legislation should be a part. But how this interacts with those other areas is not at all explained in the legislation or by the minister involved.

A huge compliance task is now being placed upon the universities. Exactly how the universities are to behave in a way which meets their obligations under this legislation, or how they interact with the Universities Foreign Interference Taskforce, is unclear, and this legislation does not include the regulation of private universities. Collaboration by our universities is fundamentally important; that's what science is about. Science is actually about international collaboration in so many respects. Some of the most important advances that have occurred in science in this country have been the result of international collaboration. The Gardasil vaccine and working out the genome of the COVID-19 virus have both been a function of international collaboration. There are thousands of agreements that universities enter into to facilitate that international collaboration. That is not to say that there isn't a legitimate issue that this bill goes to; there is. It is really important that we don't see foreign interference on our campuses around the country. But again, how this bill interacts with the task force is not at all clear.

States and territories were not consulted before this bill was brought into the public domain, and there was no evidence presented by the states and territories in the Senate inquiry into this legislation. Again, what we see is thousands of agreements that states and territories enter into that may potentially be covered by this legislation, and it's really unclear how that administrative burden is going to be met and exactly how this legislation interacts with that.

There are other questions at large which stand out. How does this legislation interact with the Foreign Investment Review Board requirements? How is foreign engagement to be pursued by subnational entities which need foreign engagement? How is that now pursued in the context of this legislation that has been put before us? There are a whole lot of outstanding questions in respect of this government's own performance which are very unclear in respect of the impact of this legislation. This government has overseen an increase in trade with China of 18 per cent. We're now in a situation where there are real issues around the future of trade with China, and we see nothing from this government, which signed the China free trade agreement, about how it seeks to protect the trade that we now have with China. What will this do in relation to that? What will this bill do in relation to the Belt and Road Initiative agreement that this government itself signed? What will this legislation do in relation to the sale of the Port of Darwin?

There are no oversight mechanisms in this legislation. There is no clear indication of how an appeal of a minister's decision is made in relation to this legislation. We support the objectives of this legislation, but, as I said at the outset, the work that needs to underpin it simply hasn't been done. So, on that basis, we call on the government to withdraw this bill and to redraft it to get it right—to redraft it in a way which establishes an oversight mechanism and, subject to appropriate arrangements to protect national security, requires the minister to provide reasons for the decisions that the minister makes and a process for the review of that minister's decision. It needs to be redrafted with a view to providing much greater clarity to the word 'arrangements' and the words 'institutional autonomy'. It needs to be redrafted to create an obligation on the minister to report to this parliament annually outlining the engagement that is occurring between entities in this country and foreign entities and to explain how that is consistent with Australia's foreign policy. There needs to be a redrafting of this legislation so that the regulatory gap in relation to private universities is closed. In other words, the actions of private universities also need to be a part of this legislative regime.

The opposition is calling on the government to make clear how this legislation interacts with all the other legislation and guidelines which are currently in place to safeguard Australia's sovereignty, including the University Foreign Interference Taskforce guidelines, the Foreign Interference Transparency Scheme and the relevant Foreign Investment Review Board processes. We need to be sure that this bill, as it comes before this parliament, is presented in a way which does not undermine our sovereignty and does not give rise to sovereign risk. We need to be clear about how it impacts Australian jobs. We need to understand what it means in respect of the Port of Darwin. The government needs to do the work to repair this bill. The intent is laudable, and we support it, but what's been brought before the parliament is severely underdone. Most significantly, the government needs to do the work in consulting with those entities which are going to be regulated by this regime. There needs to be proper engagement with them, because they are the ones who, at the end of the day, will be required to administer the obligations that are contained within this legislation.

Labor wants foreign policy to be a matter of bipartisanship, and we want to be able to have that conversation with the government to get to that point. I reiterate that we absolutely support the intent of this bill, but this bill needs a whole lot of work done on it, and it's on that basis that we make the remarks that we do before the House today.

Llew O'Brien (Wide Bay, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour.