Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Steele-John. What I would say is that I certainly won't be—and no foreign minister would be—responding to a declassification request on the floor of the Senate. Any request for declassification of national security documents would be considered in the usual appropriate way. It's not a political issue; it is a consideration of how these matters should be dealt with.

I appreciate the political point you're making, and I don't think it would be reasonable to suggest that anybody in this chamber would be anything other than horrified by what occurred in terms of the oppression during Chile's dictatorship. What happened to the Allende government is something that many of us have been engaged with over many years. (Time expired)