Josh Wilson (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. What actions did the government take to secure the release of Professor Sean Turnell?

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Fremantle for his question. Indeed, it was a great day last week when Professor Sean Turnell was released after 650 days in detention by the Myanmar regime—650 days in a Myanmar prison. It was one of the great honours of my life to have the phone call with him when he landed in Bangkok at around about the same time that I did the other evening. It was fantastic that he was able to reunite with his wife, Dr Ha Vu, an economics lecturer, in Melbourne on the weekend after 22 months apart and they were able to be flown home to Sydney.

Mr Turnell is a great Australian. He's very proud to be an Australian, and we should all be proud of him. What was extraordinary about the conversation I had with him was that he was just busy thanking people—thanking the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade; thanking the foreign minister, Penny Wong; thanking the embassy staff in Yangon and in Bangkok; and thanking the Australian people, who had campaigned so strongly for his release from that hellhole in prison. When I spoke to him, he spoke about getting food in a bucket but said that the Australian embassy would deliver food for him, food hampers with an Australian bag with the crest of the emu and the kangaroo. The emu and the kangaroo, of course, don't go backwards. They only go forwards. He would put the bag facing outside of the cell so that those people who had incarcerated him would see his pride in Australia. He is a great Australian. He, of course, is a highly respected academic. He developed a speciality in the Myanmar economy and he worked as a long-term adviser to Aung San Suu Kyi, who he met in the 1990s. He continued to live in Sydney, but he travelled regularly to Myanmar to provide advice to that country on how they might develop. He was detained on 6 February 2021, five days after the military coup.

I do want to thank our friends in ASEAN, who made strong representation; our friends throughout, including the Cambodian Prime Minister, Hun Sen; and others as well from Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia, who were solid in their support and in supporting Australia's representation. It was a great day when he was released. I pay tribute to him for his courage, his determination and his resilience, and I wish him and his family all the best.

Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

on indulgence—I want to join with the Prime Minister and congratulate the government on this outcome. Sean Turnell is somebody who went to Myanmar to try and provide assistance and a better way of life and future for the people of Myanmar. He worked very closely there with a number of Australian colleagues who were involved in that cause. Of course, we were all shocked when he was taken into custody, and the operation to release him commenced on that very day.

I want to acknowledge the work of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Department of Defence and many other departments that have been involved in this operation to lead to the point of his release. I want to say thank you very much for the perseverance, which the Prime Minister spoke of, of many of our near neighbours and friends within ASEAN with whom we'd had close conversations over a long period of time. Every angle of opportunity to bring pressure to bear to see him released has been underway for that 650-odd days.

I want to say thank you, personally, to the Prime Minister as well. It's right that he's been released. It was wrong that he was held for so long. I hope that it sends a message to the rest of the world that Australia will never tolerate our people being incarcerated in circumstances like that and we'll fight every day until they're released.