David Fawcett (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I, too, rise to speak on this matter of public importance and I thank my colleagues Senator Sharma and Senator O'Neill for moving it in this place. For many Australians, the issue of human rights or what happens in other nations is of second-order importance to the cost of living—to issues that they face in their daily lives—but I encourage people just to pause and consider the import of what is happening here, because this does indeed not only affect the underpinnings of the governance that has seen human rights, the private sector flourishing, prosperity and increasing health for populations around the world, but it goes to the very freedoms that we so often taken for granted. And, in this case, an Australian citizen is in fact involved.

So, whilst people will hear terms like 'rule of law', they should also understand that, in some countries, it is rule by law, not rule of law. Now, what's the difference? When it's rule by law, the law is applied arbitrarily, in the interests of the state, not in the interests of the people. Rule of law means that, no matter how wealthy you are or how much influence you may have in a government, everyone is subject to the law and is required to obey the law. That means that even people who don't have a huge amount of influence are protected, and institutions such as this are designed to make sure that those people have a voice and that the laws that are put in place in the land consider the interests of all citizens, not just the powerful.

How do we see that work out in practice? Well, Tiananmen Square in the People's Republic of China in 1989 is an example where citizens decided that they wanted change and they wanted more freedom. In response, the Chinese Communist Party sent in the troops and the tanks, and to this day it is not clear how many hundreds or thousands were killed or arrested. In contrast, in a country where there is rule of law, in Lafayette Square in America, after the riots following George Floyd's deaths, again the authorities used force to clear a square. But the people who were held to account were not the protesters but the authorities because it was deemed that that use of force was excessive.

If we want to live in a nation where the government and the state exist for the people then we need to be prepared to support the democracy that we have and the system of government that we have, which, while imperfect, is designed such that the people choose who is their government. That goes to the heart of what is happening in Hong Kong at the moment, despite a legal agreement that the Chinese Communist Party signed with the British, the Sino-British Joint Declaration signed in 1984, regarding the transfer of Hong Kong back to the Chinese Communist Party. The agreement that was signed was that it would be one country but two systems and the system of governance and the economy would remain the same and the freedoms that the people of Hong Kong had grown up with and were used to living by and had underpinned their economy would be respected.

Instead what we see is that today, as we are here in Australia, there are 45 people, including an Australian citizen, who took part in the most basic of democratic processes, which was to choose their chosen representative to run for election to represent them in the legislature of Hong Kong. Under the national security law, which has been imposed by Beijing on the people of Hong Kong, that is deemed to be a crime and people who took that most basic of actions are facing anywhere between three years in prison and life imprisonment. Likewise we see the crackdown not just on those democratic people but on other pro-democratic figures, opposition groups, media, trade unions, civil society and media leaders, such as Jimmy Lai, who at age 77 is still detained and facing trial. Despite the clear indication from the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, which has found that it's unlawful and he should be released, he still faces jail. We call on the Chinese authorities to respect their obligations under the ICCPR and their obligations under the treaty to respect the people of Hong Kong and their freedoms.