Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

The premise of this legislation is that Australia's national government should be responsible for our international relations. That's a reasonable proposition and it's one we support. If only the leader of Australia's national government, Mr Morrison, took this idea to heart. All the legislation in the world is not going to change the fact that we currently have a Prime Minister who doesn't take responsibility for anything other than political slogans and marketing photo-ops. It is, indeed, past time for Mr Morrison to take responsibility for Australia's foreign relations. It is past time for him to take the action on climate change that enables us to be a partner of choice in our region and to stop leaving a vacuum that others will fill. It is past time for him to show leadership in preparing Australia to manage the impact of a more assertive China rather than leaving it to the most extreme members of his backbench to score cheap points over China and diaspora communities. It is past time for him to take responsibility for diversifying Australia's export markets and the hardworking Australians who depend upon them, having overseen Australia becoming more reliant than ever on China for trade. It is past time for Mr Morrison to do what Mr Howard recommended and seek to engage, leader to leader, with the President of China to make our interests clear. It is past time for Mr Morrison to do what he says he wants to do in this bill, which is to take responsibility for Australia's foreign relations. But I'm afraid Mr Morrison doesn't actually want to take responsibility for it.

He wants two things with this bill: to gain another weapon to politically bludgeon state premiers he doesn't like and to create a distraction from the tragic aged-care scandal that was dominating the news when he rushed to announce this new law. He wanted to be able to say, 'Don't be horrified by some 600-plus deaths in aged-care homes,' regulated by his government. 'Instead, look over there to what state premiers are doing, forming partnerships with other countries.' It's the same approach that Mr Morrison takes with another area of federal responsibility—our national borders and quarantine arrangements. Mr Morrison famously said, 'I stopped the boats,' and stood up a federal quarantine facility with a moment's notice in the weeks before an election, when he thought it was to his political advantage. This is the same Mr Morrison who then blamed New South Wales for not stopping the Ruby Princess and now says, 'Quarantine of stranded Australians returning from overseas is the states' problem.' He sits back and points the finger of blame when something goes wrong in state-run quarantine but refuses to take responsibility for standing up federal quarantine facilities, which he could. All this, despite 8,000 Australians being stranded overseas in vulnerable situations and an additional 29,000 desperate to come home. This is the same Mr Morrison who wants to take credit when there's a political point to score when the headlines are good and when the photo op is nicely lined up but who doesn't want a bar of it when there's a risk something might go wrong, which is what we saw in South Australia and Victoria.

This legislation may assign responsibility, but only a leader takes responsibility. But, regrettably, when there is so much at stake, Australia has a Prime Minister who wants to play politics for headlines and pose for photo-ops. Yet we are facing some of the most grave strategic circumstances the nation has faced since World War II, an economic downturn more severe globally than any since the Great Depression, escalating competition between the great powers, rising nationalism and waning international cooperation, all of which means we face a less stable, more divided and risker world. Our world is being reshaped and the assumptions we have long held about the stability of the global order and the resilience of our region no longer hold. This means Australia will have to work much harder to secure our interests. We will have to be more self-reliant and more ambitious, and we have to act now to build the world and region we want, one that not only respects sovereignty but also is stable and prosperous. This does require an honest assessment of our own capabilities and a re-investment in all the elements of our national power. It requires leadership, consistency and discipline from our foreign minister and our Prime Minister, leadership to articulate our values and our interests and to advocate them internationally, to explain Australia to the world and the world to Australia. In an increasingly disrupted and complex world, this is more important than ever.

Instead, we have a vacuum of leadership, a government that is knee-capped. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade that slashed our development assistance and undermined Australia's credibility as a partner of choice in the region, just at a time when we need to be 'the' partner of choice. We have a foreign minister who appears not to like picking up the phone—not to universities or state governments or even to her foreign counterparts. We have a Prime Minister and a government that too often put domestic political interest over the national interest, and nothing in this legislation changes that reality.

If there were an amendment that could be moved to compel Mr Morrison to put the national interest over his political interests, I'd be moving it. However, because there isn't such an amendment, instead we will be moving amendments to improve the bill. First we will be moving a second reading amendment calling for the government to redraft the bill and address its flaws. These include the absence of an oversight mechanism for decisions made by the foreign minister under the bill to cancel any arrangement entered into by public universities or state, territory or local governments; the lack of any requirement—subject to appropriate arrangements to protect national security—for the minister to provide reasons for a decision to cancel any such agreements, meaning an entity will have no idea what it should do differently; the lack of a process for review of a minister's decision; the lack of clarity in the definition of key terms in the bill such as 'arrangements'; and the regulatory gap in the bill—private universities, which, for reasons still not explained, will not find any international agreement they engage in subject to scrutiny to assess whether it is in the national interest, while public universities will. So Bond University can go about doing whatever foreign deals it likes, but the University of Western Sydney has to meet a higher standard. There is the lack of clarity on the treatment of the Port of Darwin, a strategic asset leased to a private Chinese company for 99 years under Mr Morrison's watch. That has been conspicuously less subject to criticism by this coalition government than decisions taken by Labor states. There is the lack of clarity on how this new regulatory regime will interact with the existing legislation and guidelines that were to safeguard Australian sovereignty—including FIRB processes, University Foreign Interference Taskforce guidelines and the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme—and there are concerns that the bill presents a sovereign risk that will undermine investment and cost jobs.

Our amendment calls, as we have been doing for some time now, on the minister to engage in genuine consultation with the Australian entities covered by the bill on the design of the regime. As it stands, the bill puts no responsibility on the federal government to do anything to help entities covered by the bill to play their part in supporting the national interest. You see, they only get told when they get it wrong—just another opportunity for Mr Morrison to do what he does so well, which is point the finger at someone else. Surely it is a core function of federal government to support the Australian entities that need to engage with the world. It takes time, energy and effort to provide the leadership that Australians and Australian businesses and institutions require—the leadership to understand Australia's interests and understand how to weigh competing demands to help them act in a manner that is consistent with the national interest. That's the sort of engagement entities need, but instead the engagement with those covered by this legislation is ad hoc.

I suppose we shouldn't be surprised. At a time when the world is more complex and when the impact of that complexity is felt ever more keenly in Australia, the foreign minister regrettably does so little—some might say nothing—to help Australians manage that complexity. You see, safeguarding our sovereignty is about more than passing laws. It is about our resilience. It is about the resilience of our parliaments. It is about the resilience of our institutions, our universities and the private sector. It means people need to understand what is happening and they need to know what to do.

This is one of the reasons why I have repeatedly asked the foreign minister to allow agencies to brief parliamentarians on our ever more complex, consequential, difficult and challenging relationship with China. She keeps saying she's unpersuaded to do that, but somehow she's persuaded to go a whole lot further with this legislation. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that this government is simply not interested in improving the resilience of our institutions and equipping them to manage the risks and opportunities of our international engagement. It is interested in playing political 'gotcha' games when institutions don't succeed in managing these risks. Too often we've seen the Morrison government playing politics with state governments on matters of foreign and strategic policy by chasing media headlines—not by engaging them and actually working through these issues in the interests of all Australians but by having a whack through the media. That's not leadership. What it demonstrates yet again is that this is a Prime Minister not interested in delivering on the national interest. What he's interested in are headlines and political hits on his opponents.

I think we'll always remember that Mr Morrison's first attempt at foreign policy was to announce unilaterally that he was moving Australia's embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem to help win votes in the Wentworth by-election. That was without any advice from our diplomats and security agencies, and without any regard for the far-reaching ramifications for our foreign policy. Everything this man does is about scoring domestic political points. There's always an angle, even in announcing this legislation. The background spin on this bill by the government was that it was a crackdown on the Premier of Victoria, who entered into a Belt and Road arrangement with Beijing. The Morrison government has never explained its own secret Belt and Road deal with China in 2017, a deal which has never been made public and which the government still refuses to make public. Nor has it explained the commercial implications of this legislation; in the midst of a recession, the government can't guarantee that major commercial projects won't be cancelled or jobs won't be lost.

And it's not just state governments which have been dealt a hypocritical hand by this government. On Mr Morrison's watch, universities have been encouraged to become more reliant on foreign interests. Cuts to our universities have forced them to attract more overseas students and to increase engagement with foreign entities, and now they face any number of arrangements they have entered into being cancelled by the foreign minister with no explanation and no capacity for review. So it is a bill that claims to seek transparency but it is administered in secrecy—a bill that claims to seek transparency that is administered in secrecy!

Labor will seek to increase the transparency for entities affected by the bill. If the government proceeds with this bill instead of withdrawing it and engaging in genuine consultation with affected entities on the design of the regime, re-drafting the bill and re-presenting it to the parliament as soon as possible, we will move substantive amendments in an effort to improve this rushed and flawed bill. We'll move for the minister to be required to table an annual report outlining decisions made under the legislation and engagement with entities covered by the bill to articulate and explain Australia's foreign policy and how entities should engage with foreign entities in the national interest. We'll move to require that this report be referred to the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee for inquiry and report. We will also move that the minister be required to provide reasons to affected Australian entities, and for entities to have the capacity to appeal ministerial decisions to the AAT. And, importantly, we will move for the minister to be required to prepare a report into the lease of the Port of Darwin. I hope, given the expressed desire for this bill to be a bill with bipartisan support, that the minister would want to avoid the very obvious double standard being applied to the LNP decision to lease this critical strategic asset to a foreign company.

I welcome the fact that the government has already moved an amendment in the House to fix the lack of definition of institutional autonomy, a concern that we had previously identified. I hope that in the debate in this chamber the government continues to display a willingness to work in a non-partisan fashion to improve the bill by accepting our remaining amendments.

Labor supports the stated intention of the bill, but its flaws reflect a Prime Minister who puts his political interests above the national interest. The reality is that it was announced in haste, before it was ready and before affected entities were consulted, just so Scott Morrison could change the headlines from the tragic neglect in aged care—on the same day as his minister walked out on scrutiny here in the Senate. That is not responsible stewardship of Australia's national interests. Labor calls on the government to rewrite the legislation and to focus on delivering robust, carefully written laws, instead of just grabbing the headlines. We look forward to the Morrison government giving this proposed bill further consideration, and invite them to work in a bipartisan way to advance our shared national interest.

In conclusion, I move:

At the end of the motion, add: ", but the Senate:

(a) notes:

  (i) the absence of an oversight mechanism for decisions made under the Bill;

  (ii) the desirability, subject to appropriate arrangements to protect national security, of requiring the Minister to provide reasons for decisions, and a process for review of a minister's decision; and

  (iii) the lack of clarity in the definition of 'arrangements' in the Bill;

  (iv) the Minister should make an annual report to the Parliament outlining engagement with entities covered by the Bill, if enacted, to articulate and explain Australia's foreign policy and how entities should engage with foreign entities in Australia's national interest; and

(b) calls on the Government to:

  (i) address the regulatory gap of private universities;

  (ii) provide clarity on the treatment of the Port of Darwin in the Bill before the Bill proceeds;

  (iii) make clear how this regime will interact with the existing legislation and guidelines that work to safeguard Australia's sovereignty, including Foreign Investment Review Board processes, University Foreign Interference Taskforce Guidelines and the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme, and provide confidence that the Bill does not present a sovereign risk that will undermine investment and cost Australian jobs;

  (v) engage in genuine consultation with Australian entities covered by the Bill on the design of the regime; and

  (vi) redraft the Bill and re-present it to the Parliament at the earliest opportunity".