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

by leave—I present the report of the Australian delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in London, which took place from 12 to 14 October 2019, and I seek leave to move a motion to take note of the report.

Leave granted.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

Along with my colleague Senator Carr, who I notice is in the chamber, I had the honour of representing Australia at the 65th annual session of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, which, as I said, was held in London between 12 and 14 October 2019, in that time long ago when people could still travel. Much has changed since then, but one of the constants is the ability of nations to come together where we share values and have common objectives to work together at an executive level, a parliamentary level and, indeed, at the level of agencies within governments—in this case predominantly the defence alliance represented by NATO.

The parliamentary assembly is a forum that facilitates this sort of cooperation between the parliaments of member nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Whilst Australia is not one of the 29 members of NATO, we are one of several global partners that cooperate and engage in dialogue with NATO. In fact, we're one of five countries called 'enhanced opportunities partners', with significant dialogue and cooperation with the alliance. That's in recognition of the significant contribution that Australia makes and has made to a number of activities of NATO. Probably the best known of these in recent times is our contribution in Afghanistan. At this point, I note and thank the 26,000 Australian service men and women who have served in Afghanistan. I note and would ask Australians to remember the 41 who've been killed in action and the 261 who have been wounded in action through their service in Afghanistan and, more broadly, the numbers of service men and women and their families who still feel impacts to this day because of service in Afghanistan.

Australia is represented at the annual session of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly every second year. Generally we attend with observer status and we don't have a formal role in proceedings. This year, though, I was pleased to be given the opportunity to represent Australia by presenting to the assembly's Defence and Security Committee on developments in Australia and matters of interest to NATO. This invitation came because they have noted and appreciated the steps that Australia has taken in recent years around the defence of our nation and the values that we share with the NATO members

In particular, they were interested to understand what Australia has done to respond to the threat of non-linear warfare. Traditionally people have thought of warfare as a shooting war, where two countries have declared war and militaries engage, but increasingly what we see is that there is a spectrum of activity, from foreign influence to interference, particularly in cyberspace. There is theft of IP. There is disruption of systems. There is fake news and campaigns to disrupt. We've seen some of that in the COVID environment with campaigns to create panic and cause disturbance and distrust within democratic countries by others who don't support that system of government. At the other end of that spectrum, they were interested to understand what Australia is doing with the $200 billion investment in our defence capability which we are making over the next 10 years. Central to that, clearly, is the reinvestment in our air, land and sea capability, as well as a number of capabilities in the cyberdomain.

The questions asked demonstrated particular interest in what's occurring in our region, but one of the points I noted was that, while NATO has traditionally been concerned with, originally, the Soviet Union and now with Russia and its activities, it is becoming increasingly aware of developments in Asia and the reach of developing powers in the Asian region into both North America and Europe. That was a topic of discussion through a number of the presentations that occurred during that time.

There were a number of committee meetings, and there was the plenary session. In addition to the Defence and Security Committee, which I attended, the four other committees examined contemporary issues, including the civil dimensions of security; economics and security; the political dimensions; and science and technology. Because Australia did not have a large delegation—in fact, we are limited to two, so it was Senator Carr and me—we clearly couldn't attend all of the committee meetings, but we did attempt to get to as many as possible, particularly those that were of interest to Australia. My predominant involvement was with the Defence and Security Committee as well as the plenary session. The way these run is that there are a number of bodies that work throughout the year to take topics of interest to nations who develop—

Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Sorry, Senator Fawcett. Your time has actually expired. I know you do like talking on this topic.

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

You were clearly so interested, Mr Acting Deputy President.

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I take this opportunity to endorse the report of Senator Fawcett and acknowledge the courtesy that he's extended to me this evening and throughout the work of this delegation. I emphasise the value of this parliament participating in this NATO conference and the value of us as a country being able to participate in this matter. I just would like to add a few points and reiterate some comments that I made—in greater detail, perhaps—last November, on 13 November. I was able to participate more through the Political Committee, although I did participate in some of the other committees that Senator Fawcett presented directly to.

NATO faces a range of challenges now that arms control has effectively broken down and the most powerful states of the world—namely the United States, Russia, China and India—have ceased supporting multilateralism. I particularly noted—and the point was made on numerous occasions—that President Trump's often quoted statement, 'The future belongs to patriots, not globalists' had become a slogan for more populist nationalists everywhere, and that the same rapid technological change that had transformed the structures of industrial economies was also posing new challenges for the way in which states intervene in each other's affairs. The conference also gave particular emphasis to the role of climate change and the way that the Antarctic and, particularly, the Arctic were now being opened up as new sources for exploitation of military deployment. All of this poses serious problems for NATO, which it felt was under considerable pressure to deal with the stated claim that it was a global champion of democracy.

With very few exceptions—for instance, Portugal under the Salazar dictatorship—NATO members had been democracies, but they've always sought to uphold human rights and the rule of law. That simply can't be said today. They have contrasted themselves in the past with authoritarian regimes, and that, of course, can't be said today. That discussion in the assemblies made clear that the most perplexing threat to democracy now comes from within NATO states themselves, and some NATO members, especially Hungary and Poland, have governments that are increasingly authoritarian. They're not single-party states but they are governments that curtail basic freedoms, such as freedom of the press and the rule of law. The discussion found that populist governments were taking expression from the resurgence of reactionary nationalism within Europe and that this in itself was becoming a major threat to the fundamental assumptions about the way in which NATO had seen itself as an ideal of liberal democracy, and it threatened the principles that I think were the foundations of the way in which NATO had operated. Not all of these countries are yet full members of NATO, and part of the difficulty for NATO is resolving these inherent tensions. A lot of the rhetoric that we hear to date in Europe is in fact straight out of the 1930s. Given the recent anniversary of the defeat of fascism in Europe, it is deeply disturbing that the resurgence of those forces should now be given legitimacy in some of those regimes.

I particularly welcomed the opportunity to participate in this delegation. I thank Senator Fawcett and the committee secretariat for their support. This has been a very worthwhile experience, and I think the parliament should take every effort to continue the participation in this conference.

Question agreed to.