Kimberley Kitching (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I present the report of the Australian parliamentary delegation to Singapore, Myanmar and Indonesia, which took place from 2 July to 13 July 2017. I seek leave to move a motion to take note of the document.

Leave granted.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

It's a pleasure to have this opportunity to speak on the report of the parliamentary delegation which visited Singapore, Myanmar and Indonesia in July of last year, of which I was the deputy leader. I want to begin by thanking my fellow delegation members: the Hon. Kevin Andrews MP, Mr Ken O'Dowd MP and Ms Cathy O'Toole MP. Although we hold a range of political views we worked well together as a delegation, and I'm pleased we were able to present this unanimous report to the parliament. I now know their middle names, because at some of the places we went to in Indonesia they put up our full names, including our middle names, so I do feel I know them reasonably well. I would also like to thank Dr Cameron Hill, who performed the duties of the secretariat of the mission, all of the Australian missions and the staff at those missions and the attaches. They did everything they could to make the delegation a success and as smooth-running as possible.

We visited these three ASEAN states at a crucial time in the evolution of Australian foreign policy. In each one of them we saw in real time, as it were, the issues which were addressed or, in some cases, perhaps, not addressed in the government's new foreign policy white paper. These issues include the rise of China's economic, political and strategic power in our region; the role of the United States as an ally and guarantor of the region's security; the increasing challenges to the ideals of democracy, human rights and secularism, which Australia has promoted in the region; the threats of terrorism and of ethnic and religious conflict; the challenge of refugees and population movement; and the escalating threat of climate change to food security and economic progress.

The dominant narrative in Australia about our ASEAN nations over the past few decades has been of their rapid rise to prosperity and, perhaps not in all cases but in some, to democracy. There is a lot of truth to this narrative, as we can see when we compare, for example, the Indonesia of today with the Indonesia of the Suharto era, but the picture is far from uniform. Of ASEAN's 10 members, only Indonesia and the Philippines are fully-functioning multiparty democracies. Vietnam and Laos are communist party regimes, Thailand is under military rule and Brunei is an absolute monarchy. Malaysia and Singapore have each been ruled by a single party since before independence. Cambodia is succumbing to authoritarian rule, and Myanmar is making a difficult transition from decades of military despotism. Even in Indonesia and the Philippines we can see disturbing trends: increasing authoritarianism, and ethnic and religious conflict. The three countries we visited vividly illustrated the great political and economic diversity of the ASEAN countries.

In the limited time I have left—and I would urge senators to read the report or perhaps to participate in the upcoming ASEAN delegation—I want to go to some of the matters we saw. We started in Singapore. We were greeted with great depth and a really great openness by both the Singaporean departments we visited, the foreign affairs department and the defence department, and also by the politicians we met. We did run into the Prime Minister in a lift and then later had a meeting with him. We ran into him in the lift as he was running into the chamber, so we all had some sympathy for him!

We also went to the Kranji War Memorial and paid respects to those who were buried there. We laid crosses made by school children from our respective states at some of the graves, and it was an incredibly moving experience.

I want to go to some of the other programs we saw. In Indonesia we went not only to Jakarta but also to Surabaya and Malang. In those cities we saw the difference we are making through a water sanitation program. While we were there we visited a household where the husband and father of that household had died recently because the water system there is so polluted. In fact, many people who still wash or wash clothing in that water system die from disease. Obviously, this is a country not that far away from us. This is a great program that the Australian government is rolling out— (Time expired)