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

by leave—The motion simply acknowledges the recent unilateral efforts by concerned governments, including Australia, and the failure to secure meaningful negotiations on Tibet’s future. We have just heard a list of references that the Australian government has made to the Chinese bosses in Beijing and not one word of result—nothing. It has been an absolute failure to get any progress whatever for the seven million beleaguered Tibetans who are under the jackboot of the Chinese-Beijing authoritarian regime. And it is not good enough.

This government is now following the failure to take action by the Howard government and several governments before that. It is an appalling failure not to use the diplomatic muscle that Australia no doubt has to at least get these talks back on the rails. His Holiness the Dalai Lama has spoken about hell on earth being experienced in Tibet, and the world is turning its back on it. That includes this government. I am ashamed, as a legislator in this place, that we have another government that simply does not have the ticker to stand up against this appalling abuse of human religious civil rights in Tibet. We should get better out of the Rudd government than that.

Question put:

That the motion (Senator Bob Brown’s) be agreed to.