Dave Sharma (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I was reassured to hear the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Senator Wong, affirm that the United States' relationship is so important to Australia's security and describe the United States as our closest ally and potential strategic partner, because this issue has been a little confused over the last few days, after Senator Farrell, the trade minister, remarked that he wouldn't describe the United States as necessarily our closest ally.

I'm very fond of New Zealand. We have a close relationship, a close economic relationship—a number of economic and trade ties and people-to-people ties. But, undoubtedly and overwhelmingly, the United States has always been our most important security, defence, strategic and intelligence partner, and that relationship is incredibly valuable to Australia. It is a force multiplier. It allows us a reach an insight and set of capabilities that would simply not be accessible to us given the size we are and given the amount of the national budget that we spend on defence. When it comes to these issues, words matter, and unity of purpose and messaging matters. That's why the comments from Senator Farrell earlier in the week, which were not in response to the question that was being asked, were an unnecessary distraction, and I'm glad they've been cleared up. I would say that they fit a pattern of a sense of growing division with our partner, the United States.

We've seen in recent days, for instance, the government make the decision to restore funding to the UN Relief and Works Agency. This is the UN agency which has been entrusted, in part, with providing humanitarian assistance to the displaced Palestinian population since 1948, but which was credibly involved with and complicit in the Hamas terrorist attacks of 7 October. Bear in mind that, within hours of UNRWA receiving allegations that 12 of their employees were directly involved in these attacks, they had dismissed nine of them. It was not after some sort of judicial inquiry or due process. They dismissed them immediately, which suggest these allegations were credible. Of course, these allegations were so serious that the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services has been tasked with conducting an investigation, and a former French foreign minister has been appointed to lead their own inquiry. Neither of these investigations or inquiries has concluded yet. It cannot be said that UNRWA has been given a clean bill of health. We have made the decision, in advance of the United States, to restore our funding to UNRWA, seemingly without having any independent evidence, assurance or confirmation that UNRWA has dealt with this issue of their complicity in the 7 October terrorist attacks and seemingly without any sort of assurances or commitments that steps, measures or safeguards have been put in place to prevent such an instance from happening again.

We also saw division with the United States in our voting on the ceasefire resolution in Gaza. Members here would recall that, when that resolution was initially put before the general assembly, Australia abstained. But, on 13 December, when a resolution calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire—the implication of which would be to leave Hamas in power—was put to the general assembly, Australia voted in favour of that resolution, whilst the United States voted against that resolution. So we have been seeing an increasing divergence of our position from the United States on important issues of international security—the funding to UN bodies and the current conflict in the Middle East. That is why the comments of Senator Farrell were so concerning.

I did also wish to take note of Senator Wong's response to Senator Paterson's questions about the composition of the National Security Committee of cabinet. Let me just say that, in these sorts of issues, it is incredibly important that the people with the most expertise, the most intimate knowledge of our security and intelligence relationships and the access to the most information—our liaison and dialogue partners with our Five Eyes intelligence partners, the director-general of ASIO and the directors-general of ASIS—have a seat at the decision-making table, have their voices heard, are not added in ad hoc and are not only consulted when it's convenient but are always present for these discussions. That was always the practice under past coalition governments, and I very much hope that that remains the practice under this current government.

Question agreed to.