Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Hansard source

For the past few decades democracy in our region has been balanced on the knife's edge. We walk round on eggshells trying to balance our massive trade with the Chinese Communist Party, not being too critical so that their heavy-handed trade sanctions won't cripple us again. We have welcomed the premier of China into this place, celebrated by a gun salute and a drop of our finest wine, but I have to ask: what was the Albanese government toasting? Were you toasting the deliberate injuries inflicted on Australian Navy divers last November by sonar pulses from a Chinese warship? Were you toasting the crippling trade sanctions on Australian agricultural products? Were you toasting locking up innocent Australians like Cheng Lei in Chinese prisons? Were you toasting the more than one million Uighur people who have been held in detention by the Chinese Communist Party since 2017? Or were you toasting the Chinese Communist Party's erosion of democracy in Taiwan?

As a middle power, Australia has a role to play in ensuring that Taiwan's future is as bright as its democratic past. Like many territorial disputes, this is not an issue that has been brewing for a couple of years or even decades. China's dispute over Taiwan goes back centuries. Once upon a time, China controlled Taiwan for just 212 years out of the 30,000 years of people living in Taiwan. The people of Taiwan continuously reject reunification with the Chinese Communist Party, with less than five per cent of support for the reunification in Taiwan. The Chinese Communist Party has no business in destroying democracy in Taiwan. The people of Taiwan need an international community with a spine. Australia must stand up against the Chinese Communist Party and back the more than 22 million people of Taiwan who choose democracy and freedom over the authoritarianism of the Chinese Communist Party.