George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

New Zealand, of course, is a very close friend and ally of Australia, and we make no attack on the New Zealand government. We make no criticism of New Zealand. We make no attack on the relationship—of course we do not. Credible and hardworking though you may consider Ms Bishop to be as foreign minister, Senator Wong, I'm afraid, after that contribution, the same compliment cannot be returned to you because, although New Zealand is a close friend and ally, of whose government and of whom we make no criticism whatever, nevertheless, it is a foreign nation, and if Senator Wong, who is supposed to be the shadow foreign minister, cannot understand that there is something extremely inappropriate about the Australian Labor Party using, in an underhand and devious way, the internal political processes of a foreign country, albeit a friendly foreign country, to subvert Australian political processes then she is not fit to be the shadow foreign minister. The view that I express is a view shared by none other than the Prime Minister of New Zealand himself, Mr Bill English, who a short while ago in answer to a question in the New Zealand parliament had this to say: 'These are serious issues, to interfere in another country's politics, and it appears that there has been a serious misjudgement by the member's fellow opposition party.' The member he was referring to, Chris Hipkins, is a close associate of members of the Australian Labor Party. The fellow opposition party to which Mr Bill English was referring was none other than the Australian Labor Party.

The fact is that the issue of the citizenship of Mr Joyce is a legitimate matter for parliamentary debate in Australia. The government, in an extremely forthright manner, itself put this question onto the agenda. Nobody had the faintest inkling that Mr Joyce was going to rise in the House of Representatives at 10 am yesterday to indicate that he had been advised the previous Thursday by the New Zealand High Commission that they considered that he may be a citizen, by descent from his father, of New Zealand. He was under no pressure to do so, but he did, because having become aware of that matter it was his instinct as an honourable man to put the matter into the public arena and take the appropriate course, which he did. And, ever since, in the last 28 hours or so, the Australian Labor Party has done nothing but play politics with the matter.

We now know that, in pursuing their political vendetta against the Deputy Prime Minister, they have chosen not only to debate the matter here, or in the other place, or in the Australian media; they have also interfered in the processes of the New Zealand parliament by an underhand conspiracy with Mr Chris Hipkins, a New Zealand Labour member of Australia and an associate of various Australian Labor Party members of the parliament—including, by the way, Mr Perrett, the member for Moreton, our colleague Senator Catryna Bilyk from Tasmania and others.

You don't do that. You just don't do that. You don't use the processes of another country—you don't interfere in the processes of another country—to pursue a political campaign in Australia to try to bring down the Australian government. I am shocked at Senator Wong; I thought she was smarter than that. What is really revealing is that neither she nor her colleagues seem to grasp the significance of this behaviour. They seek to ridicule, they seek to belittle, but they don't grasp the significance of foreign interference in New Zealand and using New Zealand's parliamentary processes to prosecute an Australian argument. (Time expired)