Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Pursuant to contingent notice, I move:

That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent Senator Brown moving a motion relating to the conduct of the business of this Senate, namely a motion to give precedence to general business notice of motion No. 63.

This relates to the issue of the death penalty being rampant in China. Though somewhat pulled back by recent legislation to include only ‘extremely vile criminals’ according to the President of the Supreme People’s Court, Xiao Yang, China is nevertheless the place which executes more people—and sometimes these executions can only be described as summary executions because they occur within weeks of a court hearing, in which very often the people have no representation and no freedom to argue their case as we understand it in Australia—than the rest of the world put together. Included amongst those potentially facing the death penalty are political prisoners and people who the communist dictatorship in Beijing sees as a threat to its power. Currently we know there has been insurrection in Tibet and indeed in the Uygur part of western China, where death penalties have been handed out recently against people who were alleged to have been plotting against the Olympic Games.

The current massive movement of troops into Tibet can only be seen as a crackdown on political dissent within the Tibetan people. We know from past form under President Hu Jintao, who was the governor of Tibet in the late 1980s, that the death penalty is used as a coercive threat against people who have a different political point of view to the dictatorship in Beijing. We in Australia are not only historically opposed to the death penalty but also horrified by the potential for the death penalty to be used because of people’s political activities. I know that the government has a view that no single country should be named in motions such as this, but I believe this is a time when, as a chamber of the great Australian parliament, we ought to be directly calling on China to not use the death penalty.

There is no doubt that the Prime Minister and the government of the day will say, ‘Well, we will raise the issue of the death penalty.’ I ask: where is the logic, therefore, that a chamber of this parliament should not exactly promote the same matter of human rights and welfare? Of course we should, and I make no apology for particularly asking for the Senate to have the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Smith, seek the abandonment of the death penalty in China. This is a very reasonable motion. It is very directly targeted. It says what it means. I do not accept the argument that we have no place in this great and powerful Senate of Australia in calling directly on the Minister for Foreign Affairs to consult with another country on a matter as serious as this.

I reiterate that China puts to death by judicial decree more people than all the other countries of the world put together—Iran included. In 2006 Amnesty International recorded 1,000 death penalties in China but estimated that the total would be closer to 8,000. Other human rights groups put it as high as 10,000. These groups include the US State Department. I am—and I am sure many Australians are—absolutely horrified at the prospect that there will be summary executions in Tibet. (Time expired)

Chris Ellison (WA, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Just so that the position of the coalition is clear can I say that the coalition fully sympathises with the sentiments expressed by Senator Brown. This is a very important issue, but I must say that we should look at it in a broader context. Senator Brown’s motion is about China. Australia has long held the view that the death penalty is inappropriate, has said so internationally and has worked at the level of the United Nations to try to achieve a world where the death penalty is not practised across the board. So that is our position: we approach this with an across-the-board, international approach to say that the death penalty is not something that we believe in and we urge all those countries that have the death penalty to do away with it. I might add that that includes the United States and a whole range of other countries, not just China. Particularly where Australian citizens are subject to the death penalty we take every step possible to avoid that being carried out. But our position has been not just to confine it to Australian citizens but to view it very much in the broad.

I want to make it clear that the coalition’s position is that it is against the death penalty. It fully supports any moves by Australia internationally to do away with the death penalty across the world community, but this motion as it stands deals with just China. I think to suspend standing orders and have a debate in the Senate with short notice on such an important topic is inappropriate. Perhaps it is something the Senate could revisit. I agree with Senator Brown’s comment that this is something the Senate is quite entitled to look at. We do not shy away from important issues. You do not get anything more important than this, but to suspend standing orders and go into a debate on the death penalty in China in this way is inappropriate. I say that, whilst we sympathise with the sentiments expressed by Senator Brown in relation to the motion, there are wider considerations which a proper debate would have to canvass. That would engage and involve the international community, not just China. We cannot have a debate of this sort without cherry picking one particular country and leaving out others.

Through you, Mr Acting Deputy President, to Senator Brown I would say that we sympathise with the sentiments of your motion. We oppose the suspension of standing orders in that it would lead to a full debate on the death penalty being exercised not only by China but by other countries. I think that for such a debate to be brought on without notice would not give it the due regard it needs. I am not saying that the Senate should never debate this—in fact, quite the contrary—but I think such a debate should be carefully considered and one where all senators would have an opportunity to participate. You just could not do that today by suspending standing orders and, at short notice, asking everybody to participate in such a debate.

The opposition, the coalition, will oppose the suspension of standing orders. It does so stating very strongly that it is against the death penalty. It fully supports Australia taking measures to encourage other countries not to have the death penalty, and we have made some achievements in that regard. There have been some countries in our region which have done away with the death penalty, but to bring on the debate in this fashion on the death penalty just in China would be, I think, not to give this due regard, being such an important issue.

John Faulkner (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Like so many other Australian political parties, the Australian Labor Party has a principled opposition to the use of the death penalty and that is an opposition of long standing. The government has a difficulty with this proposed motion in its current form. If there were a full debate, I would be proposing that the words ‘death sentence by China’ be deleted and ‘death penalty by all nations’ inserted. I have previously long argued in this chamber about my objection to dealing with complex international relations matters by means of formal motions. I commend to the Senate my speeches of the late 1990s on this issue. The government’s view is that it is counterproductive for motions of this kind to single out one country when Australia’s opposition to the death penalty is universal. Under the previous Labor government, Australia ratified the second optional protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights on 2 October 1990. That protocol gives effect to article 6 of the ICCPR, which refers to the abolition of the death penalty, and gives effect to an international commitment to abolish the death penalty by ratifying states.

In keeping with the government’s policy of encouraging universal ratification of the second optional protocol, we encourage all states, including our dialogue partners, to abolish the death penalty. By continuing to discuss this issue, we register our position and encourage progress towards abolition of the death penalty. According to Amnesty International figures released in April last year, at least 3,861 people were sentenced to death and 1,597 known executions occurred in 2006. Ninety-one per cent of all executions in 2006 took place in six countries—China, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, Sudan and the US. While some countries in our region have abolished the death penalty—Bhutan, Cambodia, Nepal, the Philippines and Timor-Leste—many countries still impose the penalty. In United Nations forums, Australia has consistently called for the abolition of the death penalty. Australia has raised the death penalty’s use during bilateral human rights dialogues with China, Vietnam and Laos, and has joined international protests against the application of the death penalty in specific cases. Not all of these representations are made public because doing so can diminish the effectiveness of those representations.

Since the election of the Rudd government, we have foreshadowed a number of times to the Indonesian government that we will vigorously support clemency pleas by the six Australians facing the death penalty in Bali, should they pursue that course of action. The government has also given strong support to an application for clemency by an Australian man sentenced to death in Vietnam. I want to say clearly, categorically and without question that the government is committed to working with the international community to achieve the death penalty’s universal abolition, but I do say again to the Senate that it is, in our view, counterproductive for motions of this kind to single out one country when Australia’s opposition to the death penalty is universal.

Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to put the Democrat position on the record. Like all parties in this place, the Democrats have a strong, longstanding opposition to the death penalty in all circumstances. This includes support wherever possible for all campaigns that seek to abolish the death penalty around the world. That is something that is shared—or, at least, is official policy—by all parties in this chamber now, which is certainly very welcome by most people within all those parties. I understand the misgivings that Senator Faulkner outlined. As he and a number of others have said in this chamber on various occasions, there are issues and difficulties with the process of formal business and seeking a straight up-and-down vote on important issues or complex matters.

This is not a complex motion; it is a very simple motion, but with complex issues arising from it. I appreciate that. If anybody can find a solution for how to deal with that without scrapping formal business—which would be a solution worse that the problem—then I would be interested to hear it. It is one that does need examination. From the point of view of parties in opposition and parties on the crossbench, formal business provides an important way of getting issues of significance on the record and getting a position on the record, which otherwise would not be able to be done. I recommend that people read Senator Faulkner’s and others’ speeches on these matters, and put their mind to finding a solution for this particular dilemma.

But we have to deal with matters that are put before the chamber according to the standing orders as they exist, and this debate we are having now is about whether or not to suspend standing orders to allow a vote on Senator Brown’s motion, rather than a debate on the motion itself. The Democrats believe it is an important issue and, notwithstanding the concerns Senator Faulkner has about singling out a particular nation, in the totality of the context at the moment, the Democrats would support the suspending of standing orders to allow a vote to be put on the matter. By virtue of this motion, we are having a quasi-debate on it anyway, which I think is worthwhile. It is such an important issue that it would merit a matter of public importance debate, for example, in the Senate.

Can I say for the record, and in the possibility that anyone in the chamber is not aware, that there is an ongoing working group of parliamentarians looking at the issue of further advancing abolition of the death penalty. It is a cross-party working group. Its co-chairs are both in the chamber at the moment. If any of you want to get more involved in this, get involved and support their efforts.

As Senator Faulkner said, Australia has ratified the second optional protocol, the ICCPR, which gives effect to an international commitment to abolish the death penalty. As people may not know, Australia has not incorporated that in our law yet, so there is nothing to stop a state government from reinstituting the death penalty should it wish to do so—not that there is any sign that that is going to happen. We have some scope for further advancement in Australia in categorically, completely and fully and permanently removing the opportunity for the death penalty to operate in this country. I certainly support moves to do that, and I encourage everybody that is lending their support to the general principle of abolition of the death penalty through this debate to support and engage all of their various party colleagues to get their support for further advances in this area.

Wherever possible, it is important to promote the need to abolish the death penalty in all countries, particularly in our region. We should all look for opportunities to do that. As has been mentioned, China executes more people than every other country on earth combined. It merits some singling out for that reason, particularly given that the legal processes that apply in bringing down those sentences are far from ideal, particularly when you include the fact that organs from executed prisoners are routinely used for transplant. That adds an extra level of horrendousness to the process of the death penalty. There is ample work still to be done in campaigning in this way. Whilst there may be some disagreement about the best way to do it, I lend my support to all efforts to do so. (Time expired)

Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the suspension of standing orders so that there can be a full debate on this matter. I sit here somewhat frustrated that I hear the niceties of discussion about parliamentary process as being something that stands in the way of a full debate on this issue, because while we sit here talking about whether this is the most appropriate mechanism there are house-to-house searches in Tibet for people who have been involved in fighting for the aspirations of the Tibetan people.

The Chinese government has made it quite clear that if people give themselves up now they will be considered for some sort of lesser penalty than otherwise would apply. It is very clear that people will die—will be put to death—because they stood up in Tibet. We in this parliament are saying, ‘No, we cannot discuss this now; it has complex foreign affairs ramifications.’ I do not know how many times we have stood in this parliament and talked about the proposed free trade agreement with China, and said we should do what the European Union does—make sure any free trade agreements have human rights agreements associated with them, with a caveat saying that you can pull out of those agreements if there are abuses of human rights. But Australia does not do that because we would not want to jeopardise our trade arrangements by consideration of human rights. That is the position to this day.

We are quite happy to sell uranium to China without any consideration about human rights. We are quite happy to have a Prime Minister going for a four-day visit to China and leaving the discussion of these matters until he gets there. We have the Prime Minister of Britain ringing overnight to speak to the Chinese about engaging in a dialogue and stopping the violence, expressing concern about what is going on. We have the President of the European Union speaking out about what ought to happen in relation to the Olympic Games. We have people around the world protesting outside Chinese embassies, because the reality is we know that people are going to be put to death. That is why this is a matter for the suspension of standing orders. This is not something we can put off to another day.

It is true that a short-notice debate puts some pressure on parliamentarians to get their thoughts together on an issue. But isn’t it better to put the pressure on people to actually get their heads around this quickly than to use that as a mechanism for not having the debate, for not making a decision on an issue like this? Haven’t we got a moral responsibility to tell the Chinese government right now that the Australian parliament does not support the death penalty and does not think it appropriate that China is putting more people to death with the death penalty than any other country in the world today? Don’t we think that is appropriate? Has this parliamentary inquiry on the death sentence met over what is happening in Tibet?

I feel like there needs to be a bit of a rethink about the role of parliaments. We represent the Australian people. This is a democracy and the Australian people would expect us to stand up for human rights around the world. After all, we have agreed to those human rights obligations through the treaties that we have signed, and we should be representing that stand at every opportunity. This is the opportunity to say to the Chinese government that we do not support the use of the death penalty in China or anywhere else.

I would also dispute the notion that Australia has given an unequivocal message around the world, because clearly there were mixed messages sent to the Indonesian government in the not too distant past. We need to have a reaffirmation of our position on the death penalty worldwide, but in this particular instance, because we know that the death penalty is to be meted out to Tibetans because of their stand against China, we have an obligation to have the full debate, to have a vote on this issue and to convey that to the Chinese government as a matter of urgency. If there is one thing we should be doing, it is not only standing up for Australian citizens facing the death penalty around the world; it is standing up for anybody facing the death penalty around the world, and that is why I support the suspension of standing orders.

Question put:

That the motion (Senator Bob Brown’s) be agreed to.