Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the speakers in this debate for their support for this very important motion. I know it will be taken seriously by the government, and the contents will be conveyed to the Beijing authorities. I note that there are travel warnings, which Senator Faulkner informed us about. However, the reality is that all plane and rail access to Tibet has been shut down by the Chinese authorities and it is very unlikely that anybody can get access to the country. The control over the flow of information—including access for the world to see what is going on in Tibet—is one of the problems that indicate the authoritarian nature of the Beijing authorities. The authorities are still failing by a long way to meet the standards that we take for granted in this country.

The Beijing Olympics are coming up later in the year. This will put the spotlight on China, but that spotlight must also spread to the people of Tibet and elsewhere in China who are left out. There ought to be a Tibet team marching with the rest of the world in the great stadium in Beijing but there will not be. There will not be, because since the 1950s the world has failed to stand up for the Tibetan people and the Tibetan nation. We are now, again, seeing the consequences of that failure as well as the brutality of the regime in Beijing. Australians have consistently, as shown by the polls and through their own activities, been horrified by the repression in Tibet.

One proposal I hope the government will consider is a request to the Chinese authorities to allow a high-level independent government delegation from this country to go to Tibet as part of the dialogue to see what is happening in Tibet. The Chinese authorities have put a different spin on the events there to that coming from the government in exile. Let us see. I would propose to the government that the Prime Minister be requested to take, or that he consider formulating, a high-level government delegation to Tibet to see for themselves what is happening in this beautiful country, which culturally has given so much to the world—not least through the extraordinarily peaceful philosophy of the Dalai Lama—and which still suffers such brutality and repression.

Question agreed.