Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Minister, I hear what you're saying. You're essentially saying: trust us that it's not going to impact on too many and most of the arrangements will be considered beneficial. But there is a cloud hanging over those arrangements. In having 'unless and until', it is entirely in your hands currently, or in the hands of future foreign ministers, to determine that something suddenly is no longer in our foreign policy interests. And that is on a basis that doesn't have to be laid out, that there are no guidelines for and that there is no analysis of. So a university or a state government entering into an arrangement with another government agency cannot have certainty that the arrangement they're entering into, which may be for 10 years, won't at some stage in the future be determined, on the basis of whatever is in the head of the foreign minister at the time, not to be compatible with our foreign policy interests. What certainty can you give them that they can confidently sign an agreement that will last for the next 10 years and not, potentially, have it overturned at some stage in the future?