Marise Payne (NSW, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Obviously, we respect the confidence of the stakeholders who have been engaging with us but we have addressed every issue that they have raised. The public positions which are of interest to them can obviously be ascertained through their submissions to the committee process and from the public comments that they have made, but I do respect their confidence in the consultations.

In relation to countries, let me be very clear: this bill is not directed at any single country, or any single arrangement for that matter. As I said yesterday, and as I said publicly when the bill was announced by the Prime Minister some time ago now, an open-source review of state and territory arrangements with foreign countries provided a tally of over 130 different arrangements with more than 30 countries which literally spanned the globe, and the alphabet actually, in terms of their breadth. There will be many countries which have been discussed in consultations with officials. But until the stocktake process is underway and is in motion, as it were, as part of the implementation of the bill, should it pass, it's difficult to identify if there's a specific sort of arrangement, or a specific issue, or a specific country which will come to the fore in this. Most importantly, though, to bring it back to the principles behind the bill in relation to foreign policy and foreign relations: we come back to that position where the Commonwealth is the part-lead voice on these matters. Australia's approach is a consistent and joined-up one, and I do think that that is a very important purpose of the bill.