Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Having heard those comments by the minister quite a number of times now, I would like to note that we were in quite constructive discussions with the minister’s office over these motions. Minister, it is not that you do not like foreign policy motions going through the chamber; the ones you do not like are the ones you do not like being dealt with in this fashion through the chamber. It is not appropriate to go into the details of why negotiations fell down, but suffice to say that had we been able to come to an agreement with the government they would have waved this through. I do not understand why it is that we are continually treated to this lecture about not wanting to deal with matters in this way.

What is it exactly about expressing ‘hopes for a productive visit, including a frank and wide-ranging dialogue on matters of concern to both China and Australia’ that is offensive to all the senators sitting on this side of the chamber? I simply do not understand it and I think in a way it signals the Australian government’s view that Chinese governments are somehow immature and not able to hear these kinds of comments or accept these points of view. Welcoming the Vice President of the People’s Republic of China in a motion is somehow a complex and nuanced foreign-policy position.

Part (b) of the motion ‘acknowledges the continuing concerns of the Australian people over human rights in China and Tibet’, which the minister has just stood up and told the chamber were actually raised with the Vice President when he was here. That is the entire motion, and for some reason we have the entire chamber, apart from the Greens and perhaps the crossbenchers, about to vote against a motion that is no more or less than a statement of the obvious, welcoming the Vice President to Australia. It is somewhat unbelievable that the Australian government does not see fit simply to allow this motion to proceed. I should alert the Senate that I have another, similar motion.