Marise Payne (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Madam President, and congratulations on your elevation to the role of President.

It is important, and a strong mark of respect, that this parliament records our sincere and shared grief at the shocking death by assassination of a faithful friend of Australia—a great leader, the former Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe. I also offer my sympathies to his family, to his dear wife and to all of the people of Japan.

None in Japan have so profoundly deepened the Australia-Japan relationship than Mr Abe. Ours is a relationship informed by a complex shared history, but Mr Abe did not allow those historic enmities to undermine progress between our nations. Indeed, as the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, Senator Birmingham, said, Mr Abe was the first Japanese leader to visit Darwin. Instead, he understood perfectly that our unique past was, in fact, the strongest of foundations from which to forge closer ties.

Like other colleagues in this place have already mentioned, I vividly recall Mr Abe's address to a joint sitting of our parliament in July 2014. On the cusp of signing the Japan-Australia Economic Partnership Agreement with then Prime Minister Tony Abbott, Mr Abe spoke of the example set down by his grandfather some 57 years prior, recalling Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi and Prime Minister Robert Menzies signing the commerce agreement, amongst the first of its kind in the postwar decades. Mr Abe didn't waste a moment. He used that same speech welcoming the JAEPA to outline a raft of additional economic agreements he wanted to pursue: the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and pursue it he did; the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, and he did; and the free trade agreement, which he also did. These agreements would be the fruit, in the words of Mr Abe, of a relationship 'with no limits'. This encapsulated the essential character of Shinzo Abe—a boundless energy for tackling challenges and opportunities alike; a clear vision for Japan, our region and the world; and a commanding understanding of history and how it shapes our lives. The people of Australia remain the thankful beneficiaries of Mr Abe's efforts towards trade liberalisation.

In my own time as minister, I borne close witness to the careful work of Mr Abe, including in fostering vital, closer bilateral defence cooperation with Australia. In our governments, he found a strong and willing partner. The Australia-Japan Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement, the ACSA, signed in Sydney in early 2017 by Mr Abe and then Prime Minister Turnbull, clearly demonstrated the importance that Mr Abe placed on our special strategic partnership. Later that year, when I visited Tokyo for our annual two-plus-two talks, meeting with Prime Minister Abe to discuss these initiatives in the defence cooperation environment, I was struck then, and I said then, that I was left in no doubt as to Mr Abe's strong personal support for our shared mission of creating a safer, more secure environment for our nations. And, as Senator Birmingham has recorded, it was always a great pleasure and honour to meet Prime Minister Abe.

Most recently, due in very large part to the leadership and work of Shinzo Abe, in January, now Japanese Prime Minister Kishida and then Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison signed the vital Reciprocal Access Agreement, which, most importantly, enables the ADF and the JSDF to work more closely, more cooperatively, more collaboratively on the great security challenges of our region and the globe.

Underpinning our deepening security and defence relationship over the years and continuing now is Japan's Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy, to which Senator Wong alluded, which was strongly, proudly championed by Mr Abe. This doctrine is the central organising principle for Japan's engagement in our region, and it's provided many nations with the vocabulary, if you like, required to navigate this time of strategic competition in the Indo-Pacific. It is one of the most significant contributions made by Mr Abe not just to the safety of our region but to the world.

Mr Abe matched words with deeds. The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, which Mr Abe played such a substantive role in helping to form, is a key forum through which the four like-minded democracies of Australia, the United States, Japan and India are advancing our shared vision for a free, open, inclusive Indo-Pacific region. When the first in-person meeting of the Quad foreign ministers took place in New York in September 2019, this was a significant event. I took my seat with then US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; Indian Minister for External Affairs, Dr Jaishankar; and my friend Toshi Motegi, Japanese foreign minister.

This was indeed an historic moment on many levels. In very considerable part, the commitment of Shinzo Abe and his government, including of foreign minister Motegi, made this possible. For the Quad to have grown to leaders meetings, virtual and in person, is an enormous contribution in strategic and security terms to our region and to the globe, including through the Quad's COVID-19 support and in addressing the actions of authoritarian states that threaten that security and stability. In my view, thanks also to Shinzo Abe and subsequently his successors, Prime Minister Suga and now Prime Minister Kishida, Japan continues to make that strong and growing contribution in global security and strategic terms.

Shinzo Abe reimagined the modern-day JSDF and, although he did not achieve all of his goals in that respect, the enormous difference that he made will be writ large in the pages of history. Most recently, it's notable that NATO's invitation to countries of our region—Australia, New Zealand, the ROK and Japan—to first join the meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels in April, which I attended, to add our voice and support to the opposition to Russia's illegal, unlawful invasion of Ukraine was the first such invitation and, indeed, the first time the Japanese foreign minister and leaders subsequently had sat around the NATO table since its formation in April of 1949. I was pleased to sit around that table with foreign minister Yoshi Hayashi.

Shinzo Abe's projection of Japan in the regional and global security conversation in the military space was profound and meaningful. Given the issues that face us now as a world and as a region, it was also essential. Under his leadership, Japan was a faithful actor in many international fora, as both Senator Wong and Senator Birmingham have noted. Committed to collective engagement and action, he was a decisive and consequential figure in the G7, in the G20, with ASEAN and in the United Nations, and was a leading voice for adherence to international rules and norms, particularly the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. I want to acknowledge today my many Japanese colleagues with whom I worked as minister and mark the appalling loss they have experienced in the last few weeks. I particularly acknowledge my good friends Taro Kono, Toshimitsu Motegi and Yoshimasa Hayashi, all foreign ministers of Japan—and some also defence ministers of Japan—with whom I served. To Ambassador Yamagami and his team here in Canberra: my sincere condolences.

The assassination of Shinzo Abe while giving a campaign speech in pursuit of the democratic process in the city of Nara was nothing less than a wanton assault on democracy. I think most of us will never forget where we were when we heard that Shinzo Abe had been shot. The free exchange of ideas in the democratic process was tarnished badly that day, not just in Japan but for liberal democracies everywhere. That cowardly, callous, criminal act is a brutal reminder of the absolute necessity to ceaselessly safeguard democracy, safeguard freedom, safeguard the rule of law and human rights—values which Shinzo Abe championed relentlessly and which in Mr Abe's memory we must work even harder to nurture and protect.

Rest in peace, Shinzo Abe, a great friend, a great leader.