Kimberley Kitching (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased today to rise to speak on the Autonomous Sanctions Amendment (Thematic Sanctions) Bill 2021. The world is at a tipping point in the struggle against creeping or, in some places, marching, authoritarianism. In Australia, we live with the benefits of a stable and prosperous democracy. Its superiority over any other model of political and economic organisation may seem self-evident, but this is actually not the case for many people in many parts of the world. Democracy and personal liberty cannot be taken for granted anywhere or at any time. They must be defended and, if I may put it this way, they must be defended aggressively in all of our countries.

The practical application of human freedom through political participation in democracy as a universal idea is central to our humanity, and so are human rights and the protection of human rights. While these notions had their origins in Europe and North America, they are not Western in essence. They are universal, and just as applicable in the developing world as they are in the developed world. As the United States Declaration of Independence expresses it:

WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness— …

And the Declaration des Droits de l'Homme et du Citoyen de 1789 contains a very similar principle

Art. 1er. Les hommes naissent et demeurent libres et egaux en droits. Les distinctions sociales ne peuvent etre fondees que sur l'utilite commune.

We must remind ourselves that these are quite radical ideals. Throughout history they have not been the norm.

For evidence of how fragile democracy is, we need only look at certain parts of the world where, in recent years, we have seen a slide back to authoritarian governments. In that context, the fault lines are there for all of us to see. Many of the great democracies, the 'free world', if you like—and I'm sorry that that has become a controversial expression, but it's the free world of which I'm very proud—Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, India, Japan, New Zealand and, of course, our great alliance partner the United States of America, respect human rights, the rule of law, the protection of private property rights and the right to speak out about political issues without fear of a knock on the door at midnight. Just imagine what that's like to live with—someone coming to knock on your door to take you away.

Of course, democracies don't always do this perfectly. The Declaration of Independence, which I quoted earlier, has not always guaranteed that the United States is free from error or the oppression and dispossession of its own citizens. And yet its ideals have lit the way to freedom. One only has to look at the T-shirts of those marching for freedom recently in Cuba or Hong Kong; those T-shirts were adorned with the American flag, the Stars and Stripes. However, no less a figure than Dr Martin Luther King Jr invoked that very phrase, 'We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal,' in the struggle for civil rights that led his nation to a more perfect union. And therein lies the genius of democracy: our willingness to accept imperfection, to own up to our mistakes, and then to use them as an example of how to be better and how to do better.

The authoritarian world—I won't name individual countries—does not respect anything other than the maintenance and projection of power. It has ever been thus. Without the protections and due processes of democracy, even the most prosperous businesspeople can lose everything overnight, and we've seen this quite recently in a country in our region. The most innocent citizen can be jailed without cause. The most seemingly powerful official can be sent straight to jail, after a show trial, if she or he falls foul of their authoritarian ruler. In the authoritarian world, the average citizen lives looking over their shoulder, watched by facial recognition cameras, judged by a police state, randomly punished in the most brutal prisons imaginable, all while these abuses are aided, abetted and covered up by a controlled media. As democratic senator for New York Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said: 'If the newspapers of a country are filled with good news, the jails of that country will be filled with good people.'

It is not wrong to say that one side, for all of our faults—which are many—is good and to say, equally, that to deny basic human rights and due process to any person is evil. 'Evil' is a word that some are uncomfortable with in our modern age. It is a word without which we cannot do, and I am idealistic enough to believe that you support good and you oppose evil, even if it costs you, even if it hurts you. History will judge us for this. Future generations will judge us for this. In this modern age, there are regimes run by the dregs of humanity, who, because they are so inhumane, torture and jail and murder their own citizens, and break their spirits; delight in causing fear; take away hope and humanity; place their citizens in concentration camps; steal from their compatriots; and enforce slavery and arbitrary detention. If you understand the beauty that it is to be a human being, of being alive and vital; if you believe in the dignity of human beings, then you can't really allow such evil to go unchallenged. And, if you do believe in the beauty of human life, then, for every person who lives under such regimes and cannot stand in the light but is shoved into the dark, you understand why Magnitsky legislation is necessary and you also understand why democracies must be supreme.

President Kennedy said in his inaugural address that 'the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God'.