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

Unfortunately and alarmingly, the issue of public importance we are discussing today, Hong Kong's widespread application of national security laws to repress civil society, has just taken on a new level of urgency and crisis. Earlier today, a court in Hong Kong sentenced 45 former politicians and activists to up to 10 years in prison in the biggest prosecution brought under Hong Kong's national security laws to date. The alleged crime of these individuals was to participate in an unofficial primary election for opposition candidates for the Hong Kong legislature. This is normal political activity, but, somehow, participating in this most basic democratic exercise was labelled by authorities as a conspiracy to commit subversion. An Australian, Gordon Ng, was one of those sentenced, and we feel for him and his family.

Let me be absolutely clear. This is part of an ongoing and relentless assault by authorities in Beijing and their local enablers against fundamental freedoms in Hong Kong. It is designed to silence criticism, stifle dissent and enforce obedience. It's a complete repudiation of the rights enshrined in Hong Kong's Basic Law.

Tomorrow I fear we will see yet another of the remaining embers of Hong Kong's freedoms stamped out because Jimmy Lai's trial on national security charges is due to recommence. Jimmy Lai is a journalist, publisher, writer and pro-democracy campaigner. He was the founder of Apple Daily, one of Hong Kong's most popular newspapers and the largest independent Chinese-language media outlet in the region, until authorities forced it to close in 2021. Mr Lai was first arrested in August 2020 and has been detained in prison since December 2020, in solitary confinement for much of that time.

His current trial is for alleged 'sedition' and 'conspiracy to collude with foreign forces'—and I put that in quotation marks. But, as the prosecution case makes abundantly clear, Mr Lai is being charged for practising journalism, for holding political authorities to account, for scrutinising their conduct and for raising concerns about the respective authorities for fundamental human rights. As the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has found, Mr Lai is being unlawfully and arbitrarily detained. This same working group also found that Mr Lai's ongoing detention and imprisonment is a violation of his rights to freedom of expression, to freedom of peaceful assembly and association, his right to a fair trial and to freedom from arbitrary detention. As the group concluded, Mr Lai's ongoing imprisonment is unjust, and he should be released immediately and have his trial discontinued.

I add my voice to those calls today: Mr Lai should be immediately and unconditionally released. I also urge those four Australian judges—Patrick Keane, Robert French, William Gummow and James Allsop—to urgently reconsider their roles as non-permanent judges on the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal and to reflect on how their continued service on this court confers a legitimacy on Hong Kong's respect for the rule of law which is, clearly, unwarranted.

I know that many Australians who have visited and grown to admire and love Hong Kong over the years—myself amongst them—for its vibrancy, its energy and its entrepreneurialism and, most particularly, its liberal institutions and freedoms, are distressed by the path that Hong Kong is taking. It is a tragedy for many of Hong Kong's residents but it's also a tragedy for Hong Kong itself. With its hasty and unchecked abandonment of its freedoms and its commitment to the rule of law, it is quickly turning itself into a backwater city of mainland China.

I urge Hong Kong authorities to correct course and I urge the government in Beijing to recognise that the preservation of Hong Kong's essential freedoms is in its own national interests. This should begin with the cessation of prosecutions under the national security law and the immediate and unconditional release of Mr Lai and the 45 political prisoners that were sentenced just today.