Linda Reynolds (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I, too, rise to very strongly support this urgency motion, and I commend both Senator Fawcett and Senator O'Neill for their leadership in putting this forward as members of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China—an alliance of 40 like-minded nations who are doing a very important job in highlighting the bad behaviour, to put it politely, of China.

The brutal reality for those of us in this place, and for all Australians, is that we now have a four-nation axis of dictatorship and authoritarianism, the members of which are now working together in ways that we never previously thought possible. This alliance is seeking to increase quite rapidly its sphere of influence and part of that is through a wide range of multilateral fora and international agreements, by stealth and, as other people have said, by gaslighting—in China's case—Taiwan.

As I said, this alliance is cooperating in ways that we had not thought possible. They have come to understand that an enemy of my enemy is my friend—or something similar to that. But each of them do understand the importance of collaborating and joining their industrial bases to support each other's aims. We have seen for many years the impact of that in non-kinetic attacks on our nation in a wide range of areas. Sadly, it has never been more important for us to stand with like-minded democratic nations against what these four nations are now doing and the threats they present.

We now have two kinetic wars. It is not just non-kinetic war anymore. We have Russia in the Ukraine. We have Iran in Israel and the Red Sea using three proxies, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. China are now preparing very rapidly to cross the Taiwan Strait. And of course, North Korea ever-longingly looks across the DMZ at the Republic of Korea. With what is happening globally, we see with very clear eyes now the threat of China and the other three nations in the new axis. We have to stand up, in this case against, as other colleagues have said, what they are now trying to do—to change this definition of Taiwan—is wrong, like so many other things they are seeking to do. We have to stand up.

Question agreed to.