Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

There needs to be a couple of key observations made at the outset of this debate. First of all, the Australian Greens are the only party in this place who opposed ChAFTA when it was put to—I say when it was 'put' to the place, but it was never fully put to the place, and we shall get to that in a moment. We opposed it then and we oppose it now. Our view on free trade agreements, and particularly on this one, has not changed. We do not support agreements that do not explicitly protect the rights of Australian workers and the integrity of our democracy over corporate interests. A lack of labour market testing means that there are no requirements for jobs to be advertised locally. There are issues around environmental standards. There are issues around human rights.

These are issues which the Greens raise in this place time and time again. Senator Hanson-Young raised them as trade spokesperson before me. Senator Whish-Wilson raised them when he had the portfolio. It comes back to the fundamentally broken nature of our treaty-making system in this country. It is a treaty-making system which facilitates the executive—the Prime Minister, the cabinet and whichever powerful figures within the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade exist at the time—colluding with business interests in creating deals that benefit corporate interests globally at the expense of the environment, human rights and labour standards both in Australia and around the world. It is a broken system that is rapidly losing its legitimacy and becoming an exception to the overall norm. There are many countries and jurisdictions in the world which have taken the process of treaty making and put it back where it should be—that is, with the parliament to scrutinise. It is absolutely unacceptable that all we get to do here in these legislatures is basically give treaties the tick and flick—or not even the tick and flick, really, but the shadow of the tick and flick. It gives no opportunity for the community, the social sector, the union movement and environmental campaigners to properly scrutinise the impact of these treaties.

It also has to be said, in addition to all of this, that the presence of investor-state dispute mechanisms within these free trade agreements has consistently been raised by the community and the relevant stakeholders as completely unacceptable. These are the mechanisms that allow corporate interests to sue governments, through quasi-judicial mechanisms where precedent doesn't exist, for taking action in the public interest. This is absolutely unacceptable to the Australian people and an issue which we will continue to raise in this place.

It is very important, I think, to recognise the context in which we have this conversation here today. There is absolutely no doubt as to the reality that the diplomatic relationship between Australia and the government of China is at a particularly low ebb, and there is no doubt that there exists a great deal of tension between our government and the government of China. However, the Greens would contend that in the analysis offered by the major parties and by others contributing to the debate today there is a fundamental misanalysis of the cause, which leads us to a space where we cannot effectively articulate the solution. Here I want to pay tribute to Janet Rice, our foreign affairs spokesperson, who is doing some fantastic work in this space.

It is so important to recognise that we have come to this moment, where there is such a profound breakdown in the relationship between the Australian government and the government of China, because of a process which has been in train now for more than a decade—that is, the setting of our security policy on a collision course with our economic policy and priorities in the region. It began with the Pacific pivot, proclaimed in the other place by President Obama on his visit to Australia in November of 2011. We have seen from that point an ever-growing closeness between Australia and the United States in our military relationship. We have seen troops permanently based in and rotated through Darwin, we have seen treaties signed with Singapore enabling the expansion of their military presence here, we have seen the beginnings of a defence framework being established with Japan, and we've also seen the opening up of our military installations in a way which is clearly understood to be sending the signal that we would be able to take the presence of such machines as American strategic bombers. All of these actions send a very clear geostrategic message, as they are intended to do: that Australia intends to maintain its status as America's largest aircraft carrier in the Indo-Pacific.

This is a position which is completely at odds with the stated diplomatic desires to develop greater trading relationships and economic partnerships for and with China. We have been willing participants in a strategy of military and economic containment in relation to China, as articulated through the TPP processes and as articulated and made material, in the security sense, through these various shifts in policy in relation to the American and other allied presences here in Australia.

At the same time, and subsequently, we have undermined terribly the ability of the Australian government to speak out on human rights issues by perpetrating incredible human rights abuses here at home and in other Pacific island nations. I speak now here clearly of our disgraceful program of detaining refugees and asylum seekers on Manus Island and Nauru. These practices undermine completely any demand made on the part of the Australian government to any of our regional neighbours to step up to any type of human rights standards while we at home perpetrate similar abuses. The Australian Greens have consistently warned that this moral undermining of our position in the region would harm our ability to call on our friends and neighbours in the region to hold and uphold human rights standards. It is also the case that, as we have continued to undermine this position, we have also failed to admonish and call out other state actors, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, in their violation of human rights abuses. This absence of consistency undermines further our ability to call out the horrendous human rights abuses being committed by the government of China in relation to issues such as the treatment of Uighur people.

I sit here as a member of the Australian Greens, the only political party that, for 30 years, has been consistent in its criticism of the human rights record of the government of China. There is no doubt—there can be no question—that abuses committed by that government are unacceptable and in total violation of global human rights standards. It is because of our understanding of the importance of calling out these issues and this treatment of people that we have also been consistent in arguing that we here in Australia be consistent in our criticism of other global perpetrators of human rights abuses and be consistent in relation to our own human rights practices in Australia and under Australian political policies.

It is very clear what must now be done. There must be a de-escalation of this trade war that is developing between our two governments, because it hurts our peoples and it hurts the small businesses that depend on exports to China. There also need to be policy settings put in place that seek to diversify our economic trade pathways in the region so that we are not dependent on any one state actor. But we must first recognise the history of what brought us to this moment. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.