Alex Antic (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Communism has been a scourge on humanity since its inception. It's an ideology that minimises, oppresses and brutalises human beings, and it has led to the deaths of tens of millions of men, women and children across the world, in many countries and over many decades. Last century the Chinese Communist Party won a bloody civil war and, ever since, it has been seeking to expand its control and influence on a global scale. We can't change the fact that communist regimes exist. However, we must not continue to allow ourselves to be subverted by them.

Properly standing up to the Chinese regime takes both firmness and prudence, virtues sorely lacking in the current Labor government. One must understand the tactics that are being used in what is essentially political warfare. The CCP uses more than bullets and bombs to achieve its goals; it uses economic warfare, biological warfare, cyberattacks, terrorism, public opinion and media warfare, psychological warfare, espionage, bribery, censorship, deception, subversion, blackmail, enforced disappearances, street violence, assassination, proxy forces, public diplomacy and hybrid warfare.

Today the Chinese Communist Party's global influence threatens the Western world. One example from the US is the regime's involvement in allowing the production of fentanyl for import into the US. Fentanyl now kills more Americans than any other drug in history. Drugging a population is an effective way to keep them weak and distracted while you strengthen your own forces.

Another example is the CCP's use of social media influence. In Australia our social media tends to promote highly sexualised material, while the Chinese versions of these apps promote wholesome material about education, productivity, masculinity and discipline. Social media is harming our children and our young people. It promotes narcissism and confusion about sexuality and gender. Do you ever wonder why Western countries like Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom appear to be divided like never before? Parents against children, neighbour against neighbour—you think this is a coincidence? Think again. Ask yourself: who has the most to gain? The CCP has its fingerprints all over almost every ill in our society. They actively pursue any agenda which makes us weaker. That is the Marxist way.

Another example is the way the CCP has weaponised its assets in the United Nations and the corporate sector to pursue a net-zero renewable energy agenda, which Labor is determined to race towards. This is contributing to a cost-of-living crisis that Australians are currently living through. Net zero strengthens China's economy and energy sector while weakening ours. If one wanted to subvert a nation's energy infrastructure, this would be an effective way to do it.

We need to expose the covert and overt CCP political warfare operations. We need to investigate, disrupt and prosecute these political warfare activities. We need to impress upon the useful idiots of the diversity and inclusion brigade and those of the climate-action-now narrative that they are unwittingly doing the work of the CCP for them. The tactic of political warfare is still not understood in this country. Their goal is to win without fighting. Australia, and the rest of the free world, has to decide if it's willing to lose without fighting.