Michael Danby's recent appearances (OpenAustralia.org)
Valedictory | Parliamentary Representation | House debates
Walking into this chamber representing the people of Melbourne Ports to serve the Commonwealth of Australia has been the greatest honour of my life, other than when my beloved Amanda, who's...
Walking into this chamber representing the people of Melbourne Ports to serve the Commonwealth of Australia has been the greatest honour of my life, other than when my beloved Amanda, who's sitting up there in the gallery, agreed to become my wife. We're a bit eccentric. We were married in this building just after Labor was last elected. After 100 years, I'll be the last member for Melbourne Ports. For two decades, Australian Labor gave me this privilege. I owe it and the people of my electorate everything. I gave the job my all. People sometimes disagree with me—well, not just sometimes—but few have doubted my sincerity or diligence to Melbourne Ports. I hope it was enough. I couldn't have done more. For two decades, my precious wife, Amanda, my kids, Byron and Laura, who I am so proud of, who are sitting in the gallery, my brother Simon and his wife, Miriam, our wider family, led by David and Peppy Sherr, my friends and staff, and party workers and volunteers have been there for me. Could I have persevered without the Pinskiers, Kimberley Kitching, Sylvia and Maurie Freeman, Moishe Gordon, Ari Suss, the Zajacs and Nathan Shafir or my dear mate the late Con Sciacca? Could I have persevered without the friendship of Bunna Walsh the former member for Albert Park, lately Martin Foley, and Andrew Landeryou—a blood brother from university days who has always been there for me? Without all of them, without their support, their love, their belief in me and most importantly in the cause of Labor, or at least the Australian variety of it, I would not have been preselected four times or seven times re-elected. My name's on the office door, but I've always been conscious of who put me there. I'm deeply, almost spiritually, satisfied to feel that I've repaid the opportunity I've been given by my loved ones, my comrades, my local community and my country. There are so many young people who've started their political life in my office, something I'm particularly proud of. I'm pleased that so many of my loyal and talented staff are here today in the gallery. How lucky I am that two of my Praetorians—Tonya Stevens, returned especially from Germany, and Jamie Bingham, who came back from Spain—to help me with the last eight months of transition. And young Alon has turned out to be a real gun in data and social media. God bless Kristen Barry—the Dee Dee Myers of Australia—my dear friend from the Griffo days, who moved from Sydney to Melbourne just in the nick of time to help with the last few months. A learned and respected Australian rabbi James Kennard once called me a yashar—literally 'straight'. Okay, I'm a bit unbending. Sometimes I see issues as right over wrong, however inconvenient or costly it's been to my political advancement. Since I joined young Labor 45 years ago, I've fought the good fight to ensure our party is united, centrist, progressive, economically responsible but principle driven, internationalist but patriotic—a fight that good people like Bill Shorten and the rest of this party have won. I'm an unfashionable internationalist. I stand up for human rights here and around the world provided the cause is principally non-violent. I'm here for the Kurds, the Armenians, the Uygurs, the Tibetans, the Dafuris, the Baha'is and prisoners in North Korean concentration camps. Yes, I happily wear the hair shirt, the member for lost causes. Some have tried, like Ulysses, to strap themselves blindfolded to the mast to avoid my siren calls about Beijing's aggression as it laps our fateful shores. No-one has had to alert me to confront rightist extremism in the virulent forms into which it frequently mutates. I've successfully sued LaRouchites. One Nation's James Ashby I long made infamous before his current disgraceful behaviour. Even a bigoted local Liberal, the Basil Fawlty of Middle Park, I forced his expulsion from the local Liberal Party. I remember my first speech in this chamber like it was yesterday. Then, as now, Labor was on the wrong side of this chamber. Australian Labor distinctly, unlike other Labour parties, is not interested in the purity of powerlessness. We're here to make a difference and to make the world a better place. I had worked for this parliament before the construction of this grand cathedral of democracy partially buried under a hill. In the old House, I worked for the late Barry Cohen, of blessed memory, and the equally brilliant Alan Griffiths. Their encouragement and nurturing fuelled my passion to serve. Soon after coming here, I understood the wisdom of Paul Keating's aphorism that, when you get past the mezzanine floor, past rivalries melt away. So, prior to the passage of marriage equality, every year for 10 years, Anthony Albanese and I moved legislation for the equal treatment of same-sex couples under Commonwealth legislation—good working with you, Albo. For years, since being elected in 1998, almost every week I've been tasked to host some international delegation. I take them to the little-used balconies on the second floor to gaze at resplendent Canberra. How proud my folks, Margaret and Fred, would have been to see me standing under that massive Australian flag. Nothing prepared me for the day I was elected. In my first speech, I remembered my grandparents Margarette and Bruno Danziger, both murdered by the Nazis, and my presence here today is proof that the final solution failed. All those wog kids like me who are now members of parliament on both sides intrinsically appreciate that our presence also says something about the pluralistic, inclusive nature of most Australians. We all made it. As my brother, Simon, says, 'Australia, what a country!' Let me skip through the years. Fifteen years after election, Julia Gillard picked me as junior arts minister and Tony Burke kindly let me introduce my only piece of legislation, major changes to the Australia Council. But then Prime Minister Gillard sent me to Germany to supervise, with Indigenous elders, the return of stolen remains, a process ironically handled better in Germany than in France or Great Britain. It was the most poignant moment of my days as an MP, representing our country in Germany. Our respected ambassador ambushed me. It was Anzac Day. He insisted that I, not he, was to speak at the ceremony at the Commonwealth war graves. Imagine me in Berlin, in the cemetery, with our Indigenous friends, in front of 700-plus diplomats, military attaches and soldiers of the Bundeswehr. I know that this parliament and Australians, who have always stood for freedom, would be pleased that, in a reunited German capital, I looked them straight in the eye and reminded them of the painful contrast between the treatment of two artillerymen. The first was my Australian grandfather Lieutenant John Peek, 4th Division Artillery Column of the 11th Brigade, who fought there in Amiens and all the way till the end in the first war. He was treated with honour by our country. By contrast my German grandfather Hauptmann Bruno Danziger, Iron Cross, First Class, 151st regiment of artillery, whose epaulettes are all that I have to remind me of him, was deported and murdered in Auschwitz by his own country. So an Australian minister reminded the current German state of that contrast, and that is a victory for all of us—all of us in Australia and all of those who suffered. As I left the Commonwealth cemetery, our Indigenous brothers and sisters were sitting at the gate, and they were smiling at me. One of them said to me, 'We know where you're coming from, brother.' I've never had illusions that being an advocate of my electorate's support for the Jewish state would be fashionable. I was warned of the perils of being stereotyped by the usual suspects as a Jewish MP overly concerned with the fate of Israel. I wrestled with that advice but, given my background, not for long. The truth is that, as Edmund Burke said in the days before gender-inclusive language became the norm: Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion. In this building, on both sides, in my own party, on its left and right, in my own local community—which is quite progressive and more interested in Middle Eastern cuisine than Middle Eastern politics—it's not always politically convenient to stand up for the region's sole democracy. They're having one of their all-out democratic dust-ups just before we have ours, and I wish them well. It cost me votes; hopefully, it attracted some too. Certainly the psephological evidence is that it did. But the truth is that, while everyone in this chamber is under an obligation to care about winning support, and I did, I would rather have lost every election, every preselection and every internal party contest if winning meant I had to corrupt my beliefs to the prejudices of the few who hate stiff-necked Jews like me. I've lost many platforms because I don't believe in the ethos 'whatever it takes'. Charlie Wilson was an American congressman who was able to make his imprint on history from the backblocks. Through my 21 years, there have been many events where I've felt I have successfully waged Charlie Wilson's war and made that difference. Some will find it eye-glazing, but for seven years I waged a struggle, sometimes behind enemy lines, mostly without leadership approval, to free the Electoral Commission to allow it to automatically update the electoral roll. It gives me immense satisfaction that two million more Australians will vote in this election than would if we'd allowed the older system of snail-mail validation to persist—Charlie Wilson's war. To Ukrainian Australians it was vital that this parliament resolve recognition of the Holodomor—the deliberate mass starvation of seven million Ukrainians, terribly described by Robert Conquest in his book, The Great Terror. Parliament passed a motion that I was honoured to propose. And Poland's former foreign minister Radek Sikorski made me a minor Polish count in recognition of 30 years of campaigning— Mr Khalil interjecting— Don't laugh, Peter. I've got the medallion; I can show it to you! It was for 30 years of campaigning for the restitution of Poland's freedom and independence—Charlie Wilson's war. My decade-long campaign to free Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim will only be truly successful when he assumes the prime ministership, and I hope it's soon. I'm so proud of the fact—and it's so good for all of Australia—that he fondly remembers the 62 Australian members and senators and their major act of international solidarity to demand his freedom. Again, I've championed my friends from Darfur, the oppressed African Muslim people of Western Sudan. The record will show I've made more speeches on their behalf and schlepped them to more meetings at international conferences than I can remember—Charlie Wilson's war. And who can forget Rebiya Kadeer and the brutally oppressed Uygur people of East Turkestan, occupied by China in 1949. After Beijing tried to wreck Ms Kadeer's appearance at the Melbourne International Film Festival for her film, The 10 Conditions of Love, 6,000 people held a foot-stamping tribute to her in the Melbourne town hall which I co-hosted. It created such international publicity against the authoritarian oppression of the Uygur people that The New Yorker paid tribute to our solidarity in Australia with Ms Kadeer and the Uygurs, with the headline 'We are all Melbournian'. I've always stood with the Baha'is, so terribly abused in Iran. In 2009 my little electoral office organised in Melbourne the ninth international conference on human rights in North Korea. Given my background, it was my duty to remember that there are 300,000 people in concentration camps, even as we speak, in North Korea. It was a special act of memory that I organised the first ever publication of a map detailing the names and places of these concentration camps which expose the Kim regimes for what they are. The map was published in The New York Times. Last but not least, there's my 20 years of devotion to the cause of the peaceful Buddhist people of Tibet, many of whom are sitting in the gallery. We took the first Australian parliamentary delegation to the Central Tibetan Administration in Dharamshala. I would've waged Charlie Wilson's war alone for that moment in Dharamshala where the Dalai Lama asked me to speak to 5,000 saffron-clad Tibetan monks and their families. My dear friend Tenzin Atisha is here in the gallery, as is His Holiness's representative Lhakpa Tshoko—I tell you: I'm not a Buddhist, but working for the Dalai Lama's vision of a peaceful, autonomous 'third way' has given me more karma than anything that you've received in political support from me. Thank you. Given the treatment of the Uygurs, the Tibetans, the Mongols, many dissidents, including Australian citizens unjustly jailed there, and Labor union dissidents, it's no wonder I was a happy warrior in my most current and minor official capacity as the deputy chairman of the Treaties Committee. It's no coincidence that the Senate disallowed the extradition treaty with China. I'll never regret using my capacity to articulate why it would be oppressive for Australia's 900,000 Chinese Australians to be threatened with the prospect of being extradited to the tender mercies of Beijing. Some will remember my campaigns on Huawei and other Charlie-Wilson and Don-Quixote tilts at windmills. Actually, with Huawei being banned from the NBN and 5G, it seems that someone knocked over those windmills! Nor was I the apple of the eye of the former foreign minister Julie Bishop. I placed an enormous electronic billboard in St Kilda, knocking her government's romance with Iran, but I'm proud of the fact that I forced the Turnbull government to hold an inquiry into the lifting of some of the government's sanctions on Iran despite Iran's notorious behaviour around the world. The committee conducted the inquiry, which was critical of the government's approach in lifting sanctions without adequate safeguards. Tomorrow we will welcome the new US Ambassador to this place. I've known the last seven US ambassadors to Australia. Anyone who reads my time line knows that I'm no big fan of the current US President. But whether it's early rock 'n' roll—in particular, Chuck Berry—the better products of Hollywood or the civilised debate in the high-end US media, we need our friendship with the United States. Navigating our relationship with America is a basic bottom line for an island continent like Australia. Democracies need to stick together. And I pay tribute to the US Charge' d'Affaires, Jim Caruso, who is in the gallery, for the fantastic work he has done in cementing relationships between our two great countries. I leave parliament, after nearly 20 years, a happy warrior, with my party in the best hands I've seen it. We have a well-led team, and Labor will, if elected, have the most accomplished and gender-balanced ministries in the history of the Federation. The immortal Australian actor Leo McKern, as Rumpole of the Bailey at his supposed retirement party, found his treatment so felicitous that he denied any suggestion he was leaving chambers. He accepted the clock he was being given as a moving tribute as evidence of how much they needed him. Like Rumpole, part of me desperately wants to stay. But I know it's my time. I will be the last member for Melbourne Ports. It's pleasing that my friend and former staffer Josh Byrnes, who subsequently served Premier Andrews, has stepped up, and I hope he'll succeed me in the new seat of Macnamara. So I go out under my own steam, with a successor I approve, and I believe Labor will hold the seat. How many in politics win a trifecta like that? Bill Shorten's Labor Party—his leadership—is a vindication of every fight, every victory and every sacrifice I've experienced on the battlefield of Labor politics since, as a 17-year-old, I wandered into the legendary final election rally at the St Kilda Town Hall in 1972. We can never be complacent, but this party has never been stronger, never more united, in all my years of observation. And I don't say this lightly; I've been through many struggles over the last 35 years. I believe the member for Maribyrnong will win the next election. He'll be a Prime Minister in the mould of Bob Hawke, who set a high standard that has not been matched since. In Bill, we have the last great hope in international politics for the success of social democracy around the world. I feel a deep nostalgia for this place, and all it stands for, before I walk out the doors for the last time. As I pack the boxes and farewell the hardworking people who keep this grand building working—the attendants; the drivers; library researchers like Geoff Wade; and committee staff like Jerome Brown, Clarissa Surtees and Dr Anna Dacre—I feel a longing for all the unfinished business I leave here. Although I moved a first reading of the Magnitsky Act, it is not enshrined in our law. The government has come to favour having a legislative device for pushing back against corruption and human rights abuses by authoritarian countries. I say to this parliament that Magnitsky would allow us—like the US, Canada and the UK—to tell states like Russia that you can't kill 38 Australians and get away with it. Unfortunately we seem to have run out of time. Facebook's live streaming of a white supremacist snuff movie after Christchurch is the latest excess of an out-of-control online world where social media has been weaponised by both malevolent and anonymous trolls to threaten violence and defame opponents. Worse, it has been used by states in information wars, in interfering in the recent US and French elections. My suggestion to this parliament, which I hope you take up in legislation, is that social media must have real identities behind each Twitter, Facebook and Instagram account, and that will balance the world out. Then they will be treated like the normal media and be subject to the same rules of all countries, as they should be. Our country, in my view, is still unprepared for the challenge from Beijing. But I've seen such resistance and such united action across the aisles, and in the media, that I have every confidence that, in the future, we'll handle that problem. As the clock races down, can you see I miss parliament already. I miss the opportunity to help set the nation's agenda. I miss all of you already. There's a nobility of purpose to this building, even when debate is at its most robust or the behaviour, and some attacks, are lower than community expectations of us. But there's a nobility of purpose that you don't hear the press gallery talking about much, which is a shame, because that nobility extends to them too. We're all here, a band of brothers and sisters, serving the country we love and the people who make it so worth loving. And, as I leave, I hope these words from Theodore Roosevelt are remembered by those serving in the next parliament, the 46th Parliament—they might sustain you in the lonely nights, the cold winters, after the crushing character assessments that come so freely to you from the fourth estate, the opposition and even your colleagues: It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. You know, I don't think I've changed one iota since I was that 17-year-old who walked the whole length of Balaclava Road from my grandmother's house in Carnegie—where Bill used to live too—to attend that sweaty, sultry 1972 'It's Time' rally in St Kilda Town Hall. Surely my humble career shows that each of us, each parliamentarian, can make a difference. We can strive to make this wonderful 'Straya' a better place. Now I utter my final parliamentary words to Bill and the team—go, as Honest Abe said to his generals, and get me a victory!
70th Anniversary of Australia's Formal Diplomatic Relationship with the State of Israel | Statements | House debates
What a momentous 70 years it's been, particularly with the Australia-Israel relationship. As the Leader of the Opposition noted yesterday, it was the first foreign policy decision of Australia in...
What a momentous 70 years it's been, particularly with the Australia-Israel relationship. As the Leader of the Opposition noted yesterday, it was the first foreign policy decision of Australia in the post World War II world where Australia struck out independently from Britain in foreign policy. Of course, the British abstained on the partition of Palestine and Australia strongly supported it. In fact, Dr Evatt and the then foreign spokesman of the Labor Party led the charge internationally. We in Australia supported, as we do now—both political parties—a two-state solution to the Middle East. Dr Evatt was very far-sighted back then and his policy was endorsed by the Leader of the Opposition in his speech in the House the other day. There were some correct points made by the Prime Minister, too, on the obsession there seems to be with this situation at the UN General Assembly and the UN Human Rights Council. It is incredible that the UN has resolution after resolution—tens of resolutions—dealing with issues in the Israel-Palestinian conflict, but the 300,000 people in concentration camps in North Korea, the million people in prison camps in Xinjiang and East Turkestan, the Muslim people of Darfur in Sudan and the many much worse situations around the world get little mention. It is interesting, too, that the very day the Leader of the Opposition moves that supportive resolution recognising Australia's longstanding relationship with Israel is the very day that the British Labour Party splits over this issue. Some of the people in the British Labour Party—including my friend Luciana Berger—as correctly characterised in The Times of London today, were driven out of the Labour Party by anti-Semitism because, unfortunately, the leadership of the British Labour Party can't distinguish between legitimate criticisms of a state and obsessive criticisms of a people in a state. That led the British Jewish community and great Labour MPs like Luciana Berger to say that their party has been overtaken by bigotry. What a terrible thing for a social democratic party to have happen to it. It's incredible, when you think of the British Jewish community, who have not been the most assertive political group in the United Kingdom, with 250,000 of them amongst some 80 million Britons, that they have to stage demonstrations outside Westminster that say, 'Enough is enough.' Recently, in Warsaw, countries from all around the world gathered to evaluate what was happening in the Middle East. If you looked at it from an Israeli point of view, the Arab nations, Asia and Africa all seemed to be creating a positive experience and worked together. Israel's relations with Asia and Africa seemed to be particularly productive. They all identified—particularly, very interestingly, Israel and most of the Sunni Arab states—that the threat to order in the Middle East is terrorism in Lebanon with Hezbollah, in Syria with Iran's support of the Assad regime and in Yemen, where it is providing long-range missiles to the Houthis. That is the existential threat not just to Israel but to peace in the Middle East. Unfortunately, when Iran resumes its nuclear weapons program, I'm afraid that Saudi Arabia and various other countries are going to go nuclear as well. If one's looking at the situation of Israel 70 years after its declaration, it's an amazing story. From 600,000 people at the time of independence, it has a population exceeding eight million now. In the long history of the Jewish people, the destruction of six million Jews in Europe during the Shoah, the Nazi mass extermination, has been responded to in historical terms by there being amongst the Israeli population—20 per cent of whom are Arab-Israelis, who have equal rights—at least six million Jews. So there's a really symbolic victory in the re-establishment of the Jewish commonwealth in that part of the world. In demography, it's very interesting to see too that its future seems guaranteed by its own population, something I think we need to focus on in Australia. It's a very unfashionable point of view, but I think the truth is that demography is destiny. Israelis seem so satisfied or happy with their lives that people, even secular people, have on average 3.3 children per family. That's very different to other Western societies. Australia is relatively better than other comparative societies. We have 1.9. It shows a confidence in your own society. Amongst the Arab-Israeli population, interestingly enough, as their economic prosperity has advanced, their population growth has gone down to 3.6 from about six or seven. As populations economically prosper, the traditional pattern is for their reproduction to decrease. It's not the case in that country. People in what's called the happiness index seem to be doing very well. The productivity of that society is seen in the huge contribution that it makes in technology, in its economy and in the number of doctors it has, say, compared to people in surrounding societies. It's interesting that its GDP per head is now in excess of US$45,000 per capita. There are still great inequalities there that need to be addressed, but compare that to Egypt, which has US$3,000 per capita, or Jordan, with US$9,000. It is interesting that the Israeli economy, from an Australian trade point of view, is bigger than the combined economies of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria—eight million people, with their incredible high-tech production and a productive society. It shows you the benefit of transparent, open democratic societies compared to authoritarian countries where there isn't that type of transparency. There will be an election in Israel on 9 April. Elections are always a good, cleansing democratic experiment for the soul and for the population. If I were an Israeli voter—and I am not—I would think that perhaps the current Israeli government has had its time. It is always good to have change; we can feel that in our bones in Australia as well. I might not be voting for Mr Netanyahu, although, from a security point of view, I would have to concede that he has done a very good job. From the point of view of the economy, he has done a very good job. From the point of view of ignoring the hatred of his country from societies in Europe, he has turned to Africa and Asia, which seems to have borne great fruit. However, given the fact that the Arab countries are relatively sympathetic to Israel, now seems to be the time to seize the day and grab the Arab peace plan and negotiate with them including to try and solve the Palestinian issue along the formula that Australia has long supported—a two-state solution. Of course, you have Palestinian intransigence; as the late Abba Eban used to say, they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. The Americans are offering them a huge aid package if they agree to a state alongside Israel with clear and recognised borders. All of us know, as President Clinton did when he negotiated with Arafat back in 2000, what the formulation is going to be: you can keep most of the Israeli people across the green line by including those settlements in land swaps. Let's hope for that positive and forward-looking society, that scientific and technological nation, that they have a good election and their future is bright alongside the people next to them. (Time expired)
Australian Greens | Constituency Statements | House debates
Following meticulous research by the Parliamentary Library, I published a series of advertisements throughout Victoria on the record of the Greens political party in voting against every piece of...
Following meticulous research by the Parliamentary Library, I published a series of advertisements throughout Victoria on the record of the Greens political party in voting against every piece of national security legislation since 9/11. Not criticism and not amendments; every piece of legislation and every bill since 9/11. They have voted and spoken against every bill. Recently, Bob Brown, the former leader of the Green political party, was in Sydney talking about splitting that political party in New South Wales because of its undying extremism, even in terms of the Greens political party. But I rise to speak on another, sadder matter with regard to the attitude of that political party, which was raised in a column by Janet Albrechtsen. I don't always agree with her, but she made some very valuable points following a conversation with my friend, Mr Vic Alhadeff, who heads the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies. The New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies, being good Australian citizens, have outreach Shabbat dinners. Shabbat is the Friday night meal that Jewish families traditionally have. As outreach, the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies has had a wonderful program of Shabbat dinners for Liberal Party leaders, the LGBTI community, the Young Labor union, the Chinese community and the Indian community. The only group who will not accept invitations is the Greens political party. It's really disgraceful. As Mr Alhadeff says, the purpose of these dinners is simple yet important: … engaging as Australians … and using the opportunity to explore our commonalities, beliefs and shared values. Mr Alhadeff said it was not to command agreement or to proselytise; just to speak to one another as respectful human beings. Many Jewish Australians might be drawn to genuinely green policies about the environment, but the extremist attitude of the Greens precludes engagement. It's not tolerance; it's prejudice. The bigotry of the Greens has no place in Australia. The Young Greens refused to attend a conference of the Australasian Union of Jewish Students attended by all other young political parties. To boycott under the cloak of the Palestinian problem reduces all students to one political issue 12,000 kilometres away. How unjust is that? Ms Albrechtsen wrote: If the Liberal Party of Australia refused point blank to engage with credible Muslim groups, we would banish its members as bigots. If the ALP continually rebuffed efforts to engage with Christian groups, we would out its members as bigots. This attitude is simply unacceptable. I call on the Greens political leadership to— (Time expired)
Human Rights | Adjournment | House debates
Government officials connected with authoritarian governments have gotten away with their abuses of power without sanction. These abusers use their ill-gotten gains and status to travel abroad...
Government officials connected with authoritarian governments have gotten away with their abuses of power without sanction. These abusers use their ill-gotten gains and status to travel abroad and bask in the affluence of the West, purchasing and investing in assets overseas, sending their children to expensive private schools and hiding their ill-gotten gains in offshore bank accounts for the benefit of themselves, their families and their cronies. In the late 1980s, the US Senate passed the Jackson-Vanik amendment, which pressured the then Soviet Union on the issue of human rights. Jackson-Vanik was emblematic of our Western willingness to use foreign policy to free the great Andrei Sakharov or Anatoly Sharansky. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the apparent end of communism, Russia and China were admitted to the World Trade Organization. Francis Fukuyama, in his End of History and the Last Man, said that this would 'inevitably lead to democratisation'. With China and Russia's admittance to the World Trade Organization, we lost most of our human rights leverage over these authoritarian states. Last year, Beijing contemptuously and unilaterally cancelled our already ineffectual human rights dialogue with them. The International Human Rights and Corruption (Magnitsky Sanctions) Bill 2018, which I introduced to the House the week before parliament rose last year, attempts to rebalance and reinvigorate democratic pushback, to give us, again, some instrument that will enable democracies to respond to authoritarian outrages without going to war. The Russian Federation general in the 53rd anti-aircraft brigade who shot down MH17 and the official in Khartoum who sent the Janjaweed militia to murder the Muslim people of Western Sahara won't like this legislation. At Labor's national conference in Adelaide I named Beijing's viceroy in Xinjiang, or East Turkestan, Chen Quanguo, who set up concentration camps for millions of Uygurs in East Turkestan. He won't like this legislation. Legislation has already passed in other democratic countries, like the United States, the UK and Canada. The aims of the Magnitsky legislation in Australia are threefold. Firstly, it aims to prevent prescribed foreign persons engaged in gross violations of human rights and corruption from visiting Australia and spending or investing their money here. It enables the Governor-General, on the advice of the minister, to target individuals with immigration, financial and trade sanctions. Secondly, by imposing sanctions on these individuals they are exposed to the world and the people in their countries as pariahs in the international community. Thirdly, it is hoped that such sanctions and exposure will deter individuals in these authoritarian regimes from engaging in further gross human rights violations or corruption. As we know, sunlight can be one of the best disinfectants of political or corporate malfeasance. As I recently told the Sydney Institute, it's now time that Australia joined this growing international movement and adopted a global Magnitsky law. The more countries that adopt such laws, the more jurisdictions that can be made potentially out of bounds to individuals such as those involved in the shooting down of planes over Ukraine; the expelling or killing of tens of thousands of Rohingya; or the starving, incarcerating, torturing and executing of the poor citizens of North Korea. Vladimir Putin hates these laws. Observers were astounded that Putin gave these laws such salience at the Helsinki summit with President Trump. If authoritarians are so antagonistic to such an approach, surely that is crucial proof that these laws are potentially very effective. This legislation received a great deal of publicity all over Australia. It has support across all of the political parties, including the crossbenches. I plead with the Prime Minister: give us some time in the little time that remains of this parliament to pass such important legislation; to join the sister democracies of the United States, the UK and Canada; and to match our fierce rhetoric about MH17 with action. Let's show those arrogant, insolent dictators like Vladimir Putin that they can't kill our countrymen, our citizens, and get away with it. The global Magnitsky legislation should be passed by this House because if we take ourselves seriously we cannot let 38 Australians be murdered by the Russian Federation, as was proved by the internationally respected investigation into this shoot down. The global Magnitsky legislation should be passed by this House before parliament rises.
Cooney, Mr Bernard Cornelius 'Barney' | Condolences | House debates
Senator Barney Cooney and I became fast friends in the four years we served here together in the federal parliament. I would often meet him in the most unlikely place, in the gym, and I would...
Senator Barney Cooney and I became fast friends in the four years we served here together in the federal parliament. I would often meet him in the most unlikely place, in the gym, and I would receive long lectures and long advices about what Labor's policy ought to be. These long lectures and advices repeated what he told the caucus, being probably the most inveterate question asker in the Labor caucus between 1998 and his retirement in 2002 that I can remember. Barney lived in my electorate, in Shoobra Road in Elsternwick. His son Justin I know well, and Lillian as well. After his retirement, we remained fast friends on the telephone and sometimes meeting for coffee. He was, as the member for Sydney described him, a very kind, warm person, with never a nasty word, even if you had political disagreements. I think the story that Amanda Vanstone told in the Fairfax press in an obituary for him was very typical of the kind of gentle but persistent Melbourne barrister that he was. There was a hearing where the Law Society appeared. He gently got them to commit themselves to how great they were and their commitments to this and that. He had a witness who he saw sitting at the back of the room who had been badly treated by them. After drawing them out fully, as a smart barrister would, he then got this witness to come up to the head table and asked them questions about what they'd really done to her. It was very, very effective, and it obviously impressed former Attorney-General Vanstone very much. The commonality that Barney and I had was a very strong commitment to international human rights. The more I pushed that, the more he liked it. As I said, we became close friends. He was a strong supporter. I was very grateful for his advice. I was grateful for, as the member for Isaacs said, his counsel—his wisdom, his knowledge and, sometimes, his attempts to redirect you away from a certain course towards another in order to achieve the same end in a different way. I will greatly miss him. I pass on to his family the condolences of my wife, Amanda Mendes da Costa, who served at the bar with Barney and also had great affection for him. Barney was a great Labor senator, a person who, as the member for Isaacs said, used the committee system in a way that few of the very ambitious people who aspire only to be ministers in this place ever understand. You can achieve things, as he did, through the parliamentary system, through the committee system. It's slower and it's more grinding, and you need to be persistent, as Barney was. But you can achieve things. He's a perfect example of a great senator, a great parliamentarian, who managed to achieve change for the better in Australia by using the system that he knew and that he'd perfected through his experience as a great Melbourne barrister.
Electoral Legislation Amendment (Modernisation and Other Measures) Bill 2018; Second Reading | Bills | House debates
The members for Scullin and Rankin have very ably explained why section 44(i) of the Constitution needed to be considered very carefully in this Electoral Legislation Amendment (Modernisation and...
The members for Scullin and Rankin have very ably explained why section 44(i) of the Constitution needed to be considered very carefully in this Electoral Legislation Amendment (Modernisation and Other Measures) Bill 2018—so that it restores the trust of the Australian people in candidates for parliament. They've also explained, as I'm sure the shadow minister for electoral matters has very capably dealt with in the Senate, the areas of the bill that we are going to agree on with the government. They include applying six-metre exclusion zones, forwarding and processing of declaration votes, removal of the requirement to conduct divisional returning officer Senate counts, allowing earlier commencement of preliminary scrutiny of declaration votes, removing the requirement to produce postal vote applications for preliminary scrutiny, allowing the early recheck of declaration votes and streamlining the process for counting and packaging House of Representatives ballot papers. These are all parts of the micromanagement of our electoral system that are very important. One of the reasons we do this is that constant revision of the electoral system for the maximum participation by Australian citizens in our compulsory attendance system is vital for ongoing democracy. We don't want to see in Australia, as we've seen in the United States, elections decided by hanging chads—that is, different electoral systems in different states. We don't want boundaries decided by state legislatures on the basis of political preferences or how it suits certain candidates from different political parties. We don't want to exclude people because of language or residential criteria, as happens in our great sister democracy, the United States. Our aim with all electoral legislation, including these micromanagement aims, is to include as many people as possible. I think one of the things that the opposition is most pleased about is the fundamental change that has taken place over the last few years, which is the increasing numbers of Australians who participate in a great electoral and democratic event like we're going to have in May. And that is because our Electoral Commission has abandoned the use of just snail mail to revise people's addresses. That process, where only 20 per cent of people were responding to snail mail change of addresses, was leading to a great drop-off in the number of people, particularly young people and people at rental addresses. A million people dropped off the electoral roll in the period from 2007 to 2013, and that was not in our democratic interest. I think we got down to 90 per cent of people being enrolled in the electoral process. Now, thanks to these changes by the Electoral Commission, supported by the opposition and the government, particularly pushed by us in the last period of the Rudd-Gillard government, there are now two million more people on the electoral roll. I believe that's democracy. If we have a compulsory attendance system, it's our responsibility to ensure that the rules are fair and, as the member for Scullin and the member for Rankin have pointed out, that candidates have a checklist that is acknowledged and fair so that the Australian people have confidence in who our candidates are. It's very, very important that we have the maximum number of people who are entitled to vote actually participating. Thanks to these fundamental changes that have taken place over the last few years in the way the Electoral Commission manages people's changes of addresses, I believe in the last few years two million more people are back on the electoral roll. That is a great democratic victory for the Australian people, and I think it will have some effect on the result that takes place in this forthcoming election. I commend the changes that the opposition have agree to with the government, and I look forward to the further changes that will be made in the Senate.
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide: 70th Anniversary | Private Members' Business | House debates
I want to pay tribute, also, to the Armenian National Committee for their involvement with the member for Goldstein and organising this debate this afternoon. It's a very important anniversary,...
I want to pay tribute, also, to the Armenian National Committee for their involvement with the member for Goldstein and organising this debate this afternoon. It's a very important anniversary, the 70th anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, and I'm proud to be involved in recalling its passage. It was Raphael Lemkin, a Jewish lawyer from Poland, who coined the term 'genocide' in response to the extent of the atrocities inflicted on the Armenian people—1½ million people, as the member for Berowra said. Apparently it wasn't understood or known before that. Of course, in that conflict with Turkey, many Greek and Assyrian people of the Ottoman Empire were equally badly affected. But the non-remembrance of it had a specific effect. As the member for Berowra said, Adolf Hitler told a leading group of Nazi generals, meeting in the days before the commencement of the Second World War, words to the effect, 'Who remembers the Armenians?' He said this phrase because it presaged what his aggressive plans in eastern Europe were. They were issued at Obersalzberg on the eve of the Second World War to say that Germany was going to launch a racial war in eastern Europe. It was not a war of nation against nation. He was assuring his generals and gauleiters that they could get away with it because of what had happened to the Armenians. It's so important to go back to the beginning and, as we recall what happened in the Second World War, to remember this genocide that happened in the First World War. If we don't remember these kinds of things, it leads to situations that we've seen to a lesser extent all around the world since—in Darfur, Myanmar, Syria, North Korea and now in East Kazakhstan and Xinjiang in China. For Labor members of parliament, it's great that our then President of the UN General Assembly, Herbert Vere Evatt, who was foreign minister of Australia through the passage of the genocide convention, urged all signatories to ratify the convention at as early a date as possible. Australia was one of the first. Evatt's words were, 'The vote marked the protection of the most fundamental right of all, the very right of human groups to exist as groups.' I, like the member for Berowra, have a deep personal attachment to this mission. I stand here today as a member of Australia's vibrant Australian Jewish community and the son of a refugee who fled Nazi Germany in 1939. Probably one of the proudest moments of my parliamentary career was to stand, as a junior minister, in Berlin amongst the Commonwealth war graves, and to recount, to the several hundred German and diplomatic dignitaries, the fate of my grandparents, who were murdered by the German state in Auschwitz. In 2015, I represented the opposition leader at the 20th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre. Michael Koziol, and all of the horrible journalists who follow that particular low road, can be reassured that I paid my own fare there. I thought it was important that there be an Australian who was present with Bill Clinton and others to see what Ratko Mladic and the others convicted of genocide in the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia had done there in Srebrenica. I've also spoken many times on the genocide perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and on the massacres in Rwanda and in Darfur, where international law has had some success in prosecuting those charged with genocide. There have been major inadequacies in the consistency of the genocide convention worldwide. The Armenian genocide remains unrecognised. Again, it was one of the great moments to see a son of Armenian heritage, Mr Joe Hockey, the former member for North Sydney, raise this, and I think it's great work by the member for Goldstein and by the Armenian National Committee to raise this issue. Well done. This is an issue that the parliament will continue to address, until we officially pass recognition of what happened to the Armenians.
Spinak, Mr Jeremy Mark | Private Members' Business | House debates
I second the motion. First of all, I want to thank the member for Berowra for raising this important condolence and acknowledge in the gallery the presence of Jeremy Spinak's widow, Rhiannon,...
I second the motion. First of all, I want to thank the member for Berowra for raising this important condolence and acknowledge in the gallery the presence of Jeremy Spinak's widow, Rhiannon, with whom he spent the last six, and best, years of his life. He was, as the member for Berowra said, one of the most important and influential leaders of the Jewish community in Sydney. To die of cancer at such a young age, 36, is a terrible tragedy for his family and friends but also for the Australian Jewish community and the people of Australia in general. I had a telephone connection with Jeremy, being a Victorian, and he impressed me very much, as the member for Berowra said, as a person who, in the younger generation, was able to look to a wider future, wider engagements, and to reconcile and deal with people of all different backgrounds that perhaps an older generation of leadership had lost the touch for. Jeremy's passion for the Australian Jewish community is well known. The president of the board, his successor and friend Lesli Berger, and Vic Alhadeff said: His influence on our approach to representing the community, coalition-building, legislative reform, child protection and supporting marriage equality were among the numerous achievements which will be his lasting legacy both to our organisation and the entire community. Such skills are rare. Such skills in a young man are even rarer. To have been taken at such a young age is a terrible tragedy, and we're all poorer for his passing. It's very interesting that the Premier of New South Wales actually had the cabinet—normally something that would only be done for a member of parliament—stand for a minute's silence. Gladys Berejiklian said: Jeremy was an outstanding community advocate and an amazing human being. He had a huge impact on everyone he met, including myself, and will be sorely missed. Jeremy was dedicated to forging links between our multicultural and religious communities and was a champion of an inclusive and harmonious State. Whether mentoring young Jewish leaders, advocating for policy reforms or strengthening ties with the diplomatic community, he represented our State's Jewry with pride and distinction. Jeremy's leadership was crucial to the NSW Government's passage of landmark reforms to protect our State's communities from the incitement of violence, replacing section 20D of the New South Wales Anti-Discrimination Act. He may not have been here as a member of parliament, Member for Berowra, but he certainly had an effect on legislation. Rabbi Kamins, in his very moving address at the funeral service, which I attended, said: How did a 36-year-old man come to be the person he was, achieve so much and touch so many? A suggestion is given in our tradition, in Pirkei Avot, where the sage Ben Azzai says the most important verse in the Torah is the seemingly minor, "Zeh sefer toldot Adam—this is the book of the generations of Adam." Ben Azzai is suggesting that each one of us is a product of those who have come before us; Jeremy, gracious and thoughtful, a man of the book himself, always acknowledged those who preceded him in life with shaping his life. And the amazing story that Rabbi Kamins told of the generations that preceded Jeremy Spinak and how he was such a product of them was extremely fitting and moving for that funeral. In his final public address, in August, Jeremy Spinak knew that there would be no cure for his illness. Yet, with typical self-deprecating humour, he said: If you really want to know, at all times, no matter what happens, when you bump into my children, Grace and Michael, in the future bore them with your recollections of me and bore them with just how fantastic I was. Tell them of your memories and please give them a sense of what it was like working with their dad. For someone so young to have obtained so much respect is extraordinary. His death was announced at the New South Wales cabinet meeting, as I said, and the ALP caucus bestowed on him the honour normally only provided to former members of parliament on their passing, by standing for a minute's silence. I will conclude by quoting Rabbi Kamins: Ben Azzai has taught that the most important verse of Torah is: "These are the generations of man". Just as Jeremy has been a product of the generations of those who shaped him—his grandparents, Margie and Richard, Jason and Jenny—so too will Michael and Grace be the generation carrying his memory and influence, forever into the generations to come, forever a blessing and inspiration.
International Human Rights and Corruption (Magnitsky Sanctions) Bill 2018; Second Reading | Bills | House debates
I move: That this bill be now read a second time. If you're the general who sent the military hooligans to shoot down MH17 or you're the official in Khartoum who sends the Janjaweed militia to...
I move: That this bill be now read a second time. If you're the general who sent the military hooligans to shoot down MH17 or you're the official in Khartoum who sends the Janjaweed militia to murder the Muslim people of Western Sudan or you're the Beijing official who has set up concentration camps for a million Uygur people in East Kazakhstan, you will not like this bill. For too long, government officials and others connected with authoritarian governments and kleptocracies around the world have gotten away with their abuses of power without sanction. Rubbing salt into the wounds of those they exploit—the ordinary law-abiding citizens of their countries—these abusers use their ill-gotten gains and status to travel abroad and bask in the affluence of the West, purchasing and investing in assets overseas, sending their children to expensive overseas private schools, hiding their ill-gotten gains in offshore bank accounts, and generally using such money offshore for the benefit of themselves, their families and their cronies. The aims of this bill—the International Human Rights and Corruption (Magnitsky Sanctions) Bill 2018—are threefold: Sergei Magnitsky, whose name appears in the title of this bill, was a Russian lawyer who acted for Mr Bill Browder and his Hermitage Capital in Russia. Magnitsky discovered that some $230 million paid by Browder's company in taxes to the Russian government had been fraudulently misappropriated by officials working together with organised criminals. Magnitsky, naively, testified against these Russian officials. What happened then was an outrage. In testimony before the US House of Representatives, it was explained that Magnitsky: … thought that the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, was someone who was acting in the national interest, and if this $230 million theft— of Russian people's money— was exposed … the good guys would get the bad guys and that would be the end of the story. Instead, after Sergei— Magnitsky— testified against these officials, the same officials … arrested him, put him in pretrial detention, tortured him in the most horrific way for 358 days— and he was killed in Russia on 16 November 2009. We thought the days of the Lubyanka were over in Stalin's time, but they weren't. The United States, the United Kingdom and Canada have already responded to Russia's increasing international aggression with democratic legislation called the Magnitsky legislation. These laws link Russia and other authoritarian countries' corruption and human rights abuses with bars on entry, the moving of funds and receiving family education. Partially as a response to Russia's insolent indifference to the murder of 220 people and 38 Australians, I have moved this legislation. Let's remember that the joint investigation team, in which Australia participated, reported that the Russians sent a Buk 7 missile launcher from the 53rd brigade of the Russian Federation army across into disputed Ukraine. It then shot down the MH17. Both then and now, Russia and its leader, Vladimir Putin, have displayed a cruel indifference to their role in causing the tragic and unnecessary death of citizens from around the world, including the 38 Australians, and I speak today on their behalf. Australians are still outraged, Mr Putin, and the Duma of the Russian Federation should act to respond to this. The Magnitsky acts are becoming, around the world, a weapon for democratic push-back by Western governments against officials connected with authoritarian governments who engage in serious human rights abuses and corruption in their own countries. It's great to see, all round the world, democratic push-back, legislation by parliaments like ours in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. As the international lawyer Geoffrey Robertson argues, Magnitsky laws are national laws that allow governments: … to apply targeted sanctions on any individual involved in a human rights violation, from senior officials to lowlevel officers, from judges to policemen, and even non-government actors such as CEOs and contractors— as we know them in Russia, oligarchs. They: … take the form of asset freezes for funds held in banks and other financial institutions, as well as bans on visas for entering the country. It was a very interesting article of his in Australian Quarterly. The idea of pushing back on authoritarian regimes is best explained in testimony before the US Congress: Criminal justice is based on jurisdiction: One cannot prosecute someone in New York for a murder committed in Moscow. The murder of Sergei Magnitsky, for instance, was done under the cover of theft of the $230 million from the Russian Treasury. The money that was stolen wouldn't be kept in Russia. They easily stole it there. But they keep their ill-gotten gains in the West, where property rights and the rule of law exists. This led to the idea of freezing their assets and banning their visa travel to Western democratic countries. Following democratic pressure to extend the Magnitsky laws, the United States, for instance, in 2016, passed the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, which this proposed bill of mine partially replicates. It deals with corrupt abusers of human rights and corruption all around the world, not just in Russia. In addition to the direct effects it has on individuals, the mere threat of exposure of corrupt human rights abuse is likely to have a significant deterrent effect on anyone contemplating such conduct around the world. For instance, the human rights activist and president of the World Uyghur Congress, my friend Rebiya Kadeer, in a statement before the US House of Representatives subcommittee, said: If this act becomes law, it will have a profound ripple effect, because mere listing some of the most well-known human rights violators in authoritarian states like China will send a powerful message to low-ranking officials that their criminal actions will not be immune to international scrutiny, condemnation, and consequences. I think we are all outraged—and I, particularly with my background, find it incredible—that, in these days, a million Uyghur people could be sent to concentration camps. Xinjiang—or East Kazakhstan—Communist Party viceroy, Chen Quanguo, with his monstrous plan to incarcerate a million Uyghurs in concentration camps, will not be forgotten by legislation like this if it is passed and a future federal government has a chance to name him—just as the Christian people are being persecuted in China at the moment, with their churches blown up and crosses blown off the roofs. The Global Magnitsky Act will protect the fundamental human rights of the oppressed and save the lives of people in Burma, Darfur, North Korea and Syria. According to Browder: The global Magnitsky sanctions will issue a stark warning to human rights abusers and kleptocrats around the world that no longer will they be able to commit atrocities with complete impunity. Targeted sanctions against those involved in corruption and human rights abuse will provide an immediate, tangible consequence which directly affects an individual where it hurts them the most—in their pocket. Leaders of corrupt regimes will know they are no longer able to protect their ill-gotten gains abroad, or flee to their lavish properties in foreign countries. Totalitarian dictatorships ultimately fall, and when they do, the Global Magnitsky Act will prevent those who have committed human rights abuses from claiming asylum almost anywhere in the world. It's time that Australia joined this growing international movement and adopted its own global Magnitsky law. The more countries that adopt such laws, the more jurisdictions can potentially be made out of bounds to individuals involved in the shooting down of planes over Ukraine; murdering journalists inside embassies; interning and abusing millions of Uyghurs in concentration camps; expelling or killing Rohingyas; starving, incarcerating, torturing and executing 300,000 citizens in concentration camps in North Korea; or ethnic cleansing of people in places like Darfur, Rwanda and Srebrenica—and so on and so on. Vladimir Putin hates these laws not so much because they could potentially target him directly—something that is probably unlikely, given international relations—but because they could be used to target and expose his cronies and thus make them less amenable to doing his bidding. Geoffrey Robertson, in his fine article in Australian Quarterly, concluded by saying: If all advanced democracies … adopted such laws and pooled information and target lists, the pleasures available to the cruel and corrupt would be considerably diminished. I think democratic countries around the world need to be involved in more push-back against these authoritarian regimes. This is something that should attract the support of both sides of politics. The great Australian actor Peter Finch, in the film Network, advised people to open their windows and shout, 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore'. That should be the attitude that informs democratic citizens right across the world. I urge them to support this Magnitsky bill. People who want to speak to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Senator Payne, the opposition shadow minister for foreign affairs, Senator Wong, the Attorney-General, Mr Porter, or the shadow Attorney-General, Mr Dreyfus, should do it. Email them. (Time expired)
Melbourne: Attacks | Statements on Indulgence | House debates
As it happens, the Thursday before Mr Malaspina was killed in the streets of Melbourne, I had a hearing of the Treaties Committee in the city. I don't go into the city much these days and I...
As it happens, the Thursday before Mr Malaspina was killed in the streets of Melbourne, I had a hearing of the Treaties Committee in the city. I don't go into the city much these days and I decided to flake off from the hearing and go to Pellegrini's for a bit of comfort food at lunchtime, as I have for 40 years. My late mother, Margaret, had an art gallery in Exhibition St. It's also around 40 years since her passing. As her assistant, I was paid in lasagne and would be sent up to Pellegrini's as a very sophisticated 14-year-old to have lunch there—to have, as someone said, a mocha in a glass and to have one of the wonderful apple strudels that Pellegrini's provided. Always sitting at the end of the counter was Mr Malaspina, with his signature cravat, the paper and a black coffee. Pellegrini's, symbolically, gave free black coffees to all of their longstanding customers the day they reopened after his tragic death. I can't imagine a person who's more iconic to Melbourne who is not in show business or in politics or well known on TV and who so many people had an affection for and who embodied that great postwar immigration that Australia has benefited from. It's hard to imagine Melbourne without the Italians or the Italian contribution. Mr Malaspina always had a good word for people. He was always encouraging. He was always interested in sports. He was a strong Essendon supporter, and you'd always have a conversation with him there. One of the things about Pellegrini's that's burned into the memories of Melburnians is that it has been the same since it opened. You sit at the bar there. You go there after the theatre for a gelato. You take a break during the day and have a coffee there. It was the first place in Melbourne that had a mocha coffee. I thought I was so sophisticated, at 14 or 15, having something like that there. And it was all made possible by Mr Malaspina and his partner. It's a great institution. People who don't go there for many years and then come back from overseas—they come back from travelling—and start working in the city always go into Pellegrini's and make use of it. My brother and his family often, in recent years, would go in there on a Friday night. The last time they did that was with my daughter prior to Simon's daughter, Shani, commencing work at the Royal Melbourne Hospital in the emergency department, where she's one of the leading nurses. So it's custom for the Danbys to go into the kitchen at Pellegrini's prior to Shani beginning work. It was not just our family custom; it was the custom of so many Melburnians to drop into that place for some comfort food—a signature place that embodied successful Italian migration and the wonderful culture that they brought to our state and our city. The funeral at St Pat's was incredibly moving. I and Peter Khalil, the member for Wills, stood there waiting for the Leader of the Opposition, who joined us there. We saw so many people that are prominent in Melbourne life, in business and in politics. Ordinary people who we know from sports and from community organisations all were there to pay their respect. The funeral booklet is, indeed, incredibly tragic. It has a picture of him as a young, confident man in his striped shirt and cravat next to a picture of him in a similar kind of shirt—I wouldn't say the same shirt—with a cravat, holding his baby granddaughter. As the member for Swan said, Sofia was born one week before he was foully murdered by this terrorist. Many people have said to me that he embodied the ideal type of immigrant that came to Australia in the postwar immigration—hard working, friendly, family conscious, building up their own business, bringing their own culture to Melbourne and making it a much more cosmopolitan place. I regret having to end this tribute to Mr Malaspina by noting something. I'm going to be writing about this and doing something more about it. I think it's important to say we have, in a nonpartisan way in this parliament, often done great things via the intelligence committee—that is, we've passed laws that have prevented mass casualty attacks. Of course, this attack was a paradigm of what these jihadists do all around the world—drive a vehicle full of gas bottles to try and blow it up amongst pedestrians, and then jump out and stab people. This happens in Kabul. This happens in London. This happens all around the world. We, here in the Australian parliament, have been very responsible, working together to try and minimise these problems, and I don't underestimate it. And because of the nature of the Australian Senate, the government and the opposition have to vote together in order to see these kinds of laws passed. There have been, some people say, 80 bills—I say it's closer to 50—that have dealt with this since 9/11, since 3,000 Americans and more than 10 Australians were murdered in the Twin Towers in New York. Unfortunately, there is one group of people which hasn't supported that serious concern with the welfare, security and safety of ordinary Australians, and that's the Greens political party. In every piece of legislation since 9/11, the Greens political party have voted against measures taken by both the opposition and government, and no-one holds them to account. They have their secret state and national conferences. They have a very low bar that they're judged by. But I think there's no more sacred right of Australian citizens to have safety and security. That's the most important human right that this parliament guarantees for the citizens of this country. An iconic person, who literally hundreds of thousands of Victorians, of Melburnians, or people who visit Pellegrini's from around Australia would have known through the decades since he took over ownership of that establishment in 1974, was murdered in the streets of Melbourne by one of these people who we've all done our best to prevent having success and killing even more people. We've been very successful, with legislation for foreign fighters and for 14- to 18-year-olds who were not previously catered for by the law who involved themselves in terrorist incidents, such as the terrible event that happened in Parramatta where a 15-year-old boy murdered a Chinese-Australian police accountant. We've done everything we can to prevent this. But we are not joined in our responsibility by people who are irresponsible, and they should be held to account. You can't live in a beautiful cosmopolitan, pluralist society like Australia and not do things to protect it. The vast majority of people here are very tolerant, very intelligent and determined to make sure that we continue to live in the kind of society that we do. The parliament embodies it by the sensible legislation that it has passed. We always do everything we can to protect people's civil liberties and human rights, and we have sunset clauses et cetera. I'm all in favour of that; but when we're faced with these dangers, we must act. It's very unfortunate that in every piece of legislation—and I have research from the Parliamentary Library to show that—that the Greens political party is totally irresponsible and does not want to protect the safety of Australians, the primary human right of every citizen in this country.
Australian Parliamentary Delegation to the United Kingdom, France and Ireland | Delegation Reports | House debates
I present the report of the Australian Parliamentary Delegation to the United Kingdom, France and Ireland, 3 to 14 June 2018. I ask leave of the House to make a short statement in connection with...
I present the report of the Australian Parliamentary Delegation to the United Kingdom, France and Ireland, 3 to 14 June 2018. I ask leave of the House to make a short statement in connection with the report. Leave granted. I was part of a very illustrious delegation led by the President of the Senate, Senator Scott Ryan. The other members included myself; my colleague and friend Mr Steve Georganas, who happily returned many times; the member for Hindmarsh; Senator Pauline Hanson, who I had my first opportunity to get to speak to in detail; Mr Tim Wilson, the member for Goldstein; and Jason Wood, the very active local member for La Trobe. The delegation was ably supported by Duncan Pearse, advisor to the President; and David Sullivan, the delegation secretary. We went to the United Kingdom, France and Ireland, and had many focuses of our visit, including trade and investment policy, particularly the UK's future trade relationship with Australia after it leaves—it is still trying to—the European Union; counterterrorism and security policy, including the security of parliamentary precincts; LGBTI policies and program; approaches to healthcare administration; youth and gang violence; energy policy; and policies to address foreign interference and the spread of misinformation and fake news via new and emerging social media platforms. Our visit to the United Kingdom was, for Australians, as usual, very engaging. We, of course, remain an enormous economic partner with what many Australians used to call the motherland. The UK is Australia's fourth-largest inbound market by arrivals and third-largest by tourism expenditure. The UK is also Australia's fourth-largest short-term destination, with 632,000 short-term resident departures from Australia to the UK for the year ending 2018. The strength of the bilateral relationship is difficult to comment on. We were received very graciously by all kinds of people. Of course, there were many visits by prime ministers and foreign ministers. In our case, we had just been to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting before we were there. Trade and investment between the countries is immense. The UK is Australia's fifth-largest two-way trading partner, worth $27 billion in 2016-17, and our third-largest service trading partner. Interestingly, with all of the interest in investment by Beijing, the UK remains Australia's second-largest source of total foreign investment and the second-largest destination for foreign direct investment. While we were there, the United Kingdom was transfixed by the Brexit debate. Our visit to the trade committee was extraordinarily divisive, with, particularly, members of the Conservative Party fighting each other throughout the meeting. It was in a very polite way and done very pleasantly, but it demonstrated to us how deeply divisive that issue was within the governing party. We were extremely graciously received by the high commissioner, the former Attorney-General, the Hon. George Brandis QC, who was kind enough to take me to visit Karl Marx's grave. I think the pictures of the two of us there were quite extraordinary. I think we were both establishing that he had indeed passed. That was at Highgate Cemetery, of course. It did surprise us that his grave was surrounded by the tombstones of many minor Socialists who sought to associate themselves, even in death, with the honourable Karl Marx—well, 'honourable'? I don't know. The UK's exit from the EU will fundamentally change the framework of Australia-UK trade and investment. I'm sure the delegation is confident that we're not going to have our economic relationship affected by the Brexit issue. In fact, it may enhance, in an odd way, Australia's relationship. We met the intelligence committee, headed by the Right Hon. Dominic Grieve, who is currently conducting major inquiries into historical detention and rendition, drone strikes into Syria against IS, and recent terrorist attacks in London and Manchester. We were able to attend the commemoration of the first anniversary of the attack on London Bridge, which was held at Southwark Cathedral on 3 June, and that was extremely moving. I was very pleased, as was the whole delegation, to meet with friend of Australia the Right Hon. Mark Field, Minister of State for Asia and the Pacific. He was able to remark, and we were able to agree, that Britain's interests in this part of the world were being re-cemented. British interests in the South Pacific and in the Asia-Pacific area more generally were being enhanced. We had just seen the first visit of a British ship to the South China Sea, which enhanced international navigation rights by making free transit of that ocean as guaranteed under the international Law of the Sea treaty. It is pleasing to see that a number of European powers, including France and Britain, have sought to associate themselves with transit of that international sea. We had fascinating meetings in Paris, including the most moving breakfast with deputies of the French National Assembly from the Somme, where my grandfather fought in the First World War. I just thought it was an amazing piece of serendipity to have breakfast with them and to just sit opposite people from the area that my grandfather actually fought in. At a broad level, Australia and France share a common vision and work cooperatively in global security to combat terrorism and violent extremism. I was particularly pleased to introduce Senator Hanson to a young female Muslim deputy of the National Assembly. She had made a brilliant presentation to us about how, in France, they are legislating to prevent fake news influencing presidential elections. It appears that Russia tried to do this at the last elections, and influenced the election against Mr Macron. In France, what they're going to do is have an independent judicial group make judgements within 24 hours about fake news interventions on social media during the election period. That independent judicial group will make a deliberation about those issues and stop them, if necessary. I've seen that Mr Zuckerberg is in trouble in a number of jurisdictions around the world—France, Britain, the United States and even here—and it's particularly over the issue of the use of Facebook algorithms to increase division in society and to interfere in democratic political decisions. There was one thing that I really wish we'd had an opportunity to do more of, and that was to discuss the bilateral relationship with France on the Future Submarine program. We could have done a bit more on that. But, altogether, the visit to France—the impression of its magnificent historical settings for the French Senate and the National Assembly, and it's archive—really make you understand the great history of that country. The delegation was interested to learn about the policies and procedures in place for France's parliamentary precincts. They're even stricter than they are here. Terrorist attacks in 2014 and 2015 and public order disturbances have become a focus of attention, with the security system for the parliamentary precinct upgraded, as Senator Ryan reports, to include high levels of surveillance, the arming of security guards with weapons and protective jackets, and restricted access to the building. However, the French parliament's buildings, some of which date to the 17th century, create many practical constraints on implementing security measures, most of which aren't faced here. Our visit to Ireland focused on issues of Brexit, electoral reform, data protection and standards of public office. We were most graciously received by people in the Dail. Everything they say about the Irish—their hospitality and their warmth—I found to be accurate. Apart from thanking my colleagues who were on the delegation, I want to thank, in particular, John Bercow, the Speaker of the British parliament, and the High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, George Brandis—our visit to Highgate Cemetery was particularly memorable. I want to thank the President of the Senate, Scott Ryan, for the organisation of the visit and the very intense program that was prepared for us. I found it extremely worthwhile; in particular, in the area of data protection and intelligence sharing.
Defence Amendment (Call Out of the Australian Defence Force) Bill 2018; Second Reading | Bills | House debates
and their others are important. The safety of all Australians is important. While the member for Melbourne calls me a grub, I'm proud to stand up for the 95 per cent of Australians, in my seat...
and their others are important. The safety of all Australians is important. While the member for Melbourne calls me a grub, I'm proud to stand up for the 95 per cent of Australians, in my seat and in all the rest of Australia, who think antiterrorist legislation, including this bill, is important.
I rise to continue the opposition's responsible support for the Defence Amendment (Call Out of the Australian Defence Force) Bill 2018. I was particularly interested in the very specific...
I rise to continue the opposition's responsible support for the Defence Amendment (Call Out of the Australian Defence Force) Bill 2018. I was particularly interested in the very specific suggestion from the member for Canberra that this bill should actually be wider and take into consideration other critical infrastructure, apart from the four mentioned in the bill. I thought it was very wise of her, having concentrated so much on the effect of cybersecurity attacks in Australia and cybersecurity warfare generally, to mention the electoral systems as being critical infrastructure. We have seen claims from many countries that their electoral systems have been interfered with various hostile non-democratic powers. I was recently in France and had the great pleasure of introducing Senator Pauline Hanson to a young Muslim member of the National Assembly who was moving responsible legislation to restrict the Russian Federation from interfering in the French elections in the future as they had done recently to try and influence the candidacy of Mr Macron. It was a sort of piquant moment to point out to someone who was 'so uncritical' of all Muslims that here was a young responsible member of the National Assembly doing her bit for the security of democracy in France. Other countries have similar systems to that that is being legislated at the moment in relation to the ability to call out members of the defence forces in specific circumstances. There are countries in Europe which, regrettably for them, have to access the power of the military more often because they've had terrible terrorist attacks on their citizenry. Other countries that have similar legislation to this that I have been able to discover at short notice are Canada, Italy, Denmark and the United Kingdom. The United States has very longstanding laws against the US military which serves overseas being called out onto US streets. But, of course, the US has the National Guard, which can be, and indeed has been, deployed in terrorist incidents. That's the American way of dealing with their quaint constitution and the burgeoning issue of terrorist attacks in the United States. I also took very seriously the comments of the members for Lingiari and Herbert—which, in most part, answer the member for Melbourne's criticisms—that there are very specific rules that govern the military's behaviour if they are called out in these circumstances. These are restrictions which democratic countries like Australia would support. The member for Canberra pointed out the context locally of this and other laws on counter-terrorism. They include the fact that there are 80 people currently being charged with terrorism and that the level of terrorist attacks in Australia is probable. These are all circumstances that we haven't brought about, that we don't like and that we wish never occurred but that responsible governments of all kinds have to face up to. There's a further piece of context to this particular amendment that's quite regrettable. That is the report of the coroner and the widespread media reporting of the New South Wales reaction to the Lindt cafe siege. Frankly, I would think that most Australians would have much preferred the highly professional Australian military to have handled those circumstances. Can you imagine circumstances in which the commander of the terrorist situation went home to sleep? Can you believe that stun grenades were thrown by the police forces against closed doors? Can you believe that there were no operational telephone lines operating between the commanders and the people at the coalface? Can you believe that there was failure to have modern breach equipment to get into the cafe to save all of the poor Australians who were there, including the two people who were killed, who were just doing their normal business and should not have been victims of that person who should have been arrested and long been in jail? Given the member for Melbourne's comments, this has further context. The member for Melbourne represents the Greens political party, which has voted, as far as I can work out, against every proposal in this place and in the Senate to protect the safety of Australians against the threat of terrorism and Jihadists in and out of Australia. Currently, we have the problem of the return of former foreign fighters, and that's determined by the rule of law, and a consideration, of course, is given to children who are returning from a declared war zone. We also have a non-partisan concern, or maybe it's a bipartisan concern, about the few Australians, probably about a hundred, who are seeking to leave Australia to fight in Iraq or Syria. They're being denied a passport, I think with support of both sides of parliament, and, therefore, denied the right to travel to those countries. We've got to be tough on these combatants seeking to return, to protect the safety of all Australians, which should be our No. 1 priority. As I said before, the Greens party, as with their opposition to this legislation, has fought every attempt in this parliament over the years that I have been here to face up to these responsibilities. As I said again, we did not seek these circumstances. Australia or Australians are the potential victims. We did not seek this increase in terrorist circumstances, but we as a responsible parliament must face up to it. Even before the Batman by-election, which the Labor Party thankfully won, you would have thought that the Greens political party would have been a bit more cautious and shown a bit more responsibility. No. Their leader, Senator Di Natale, insisted on the ABC's Q&A that foreign fighters and jihadists be allowed to return to Australia. The Greens party chief described these people as 'good people who've made mistakes'. They are not. They are the enemies of Australia and people who are a risk to ordinary citizens who want to go about their lives in peace and security. The most fundamental human right that all of us have is the right to safety and the sanctity of human life. If anyone, for some gratuitous overseas political reason or some ideology that goes back to the 6th century, says that they have the right to kill Australians, I say this parliament has to do everything possible to make sure that we address those new circumstances and defend our fellow Australians. I want to make this point particularly clear to my electorate. During every weekend hundreds of volunteers in my electorate work to protect the safety and security of local institutions. These people are selfless. They work very closely with the Victorian police and they've been highly successful—I won't go into details—in preventing even attacks in Melbourne. We've seen recently—there is a court case ongoing at the moment—that three people planned a terrorist attack on Flinders Street station and St Paul's Cathedral in Christmas 2016. These threats are ongoing, extant, and very, very local as far as we're concerned. It should be crystal clear to the voters of Melbourne Ports, which will be renamed Macnamara, that there is a key difference between the Labor Party and the Greens political party at the next election. One is a responsible party that has, of course, a huge range of views on domestic matters that are different from those of the government but is responsible and wants to protect their circumstances, their safety and their lives. Unfortunately, we must address, and we do address with this amendment bill, circumstances that Australia and Australians didn't generate. We need this Defence Force legislation for the reasons that they have such legislation in so many countries overseas, because of changed circumstances. In my electorate, if you want to vote for a responsible political party at the next election, it's absolutely clear that anyone who does not support this or other antiterrorist legislation cannot be voted for without it saying that the lives of people whom they live amongst are unimportant and only the political ideologies of the Greens political party—
Treaties Committee; Report | Committees | House debates
by leave—I want to join the Chief Government Whip in expressing my appreciation of this important visit by JSCOT to India and Indonesia. Unfortunately, I was only able to participate in the...
by leave—I want to join the Chief Government Whip in expressing my appreciation of this important visit by JSCOT to India and Indonesia. Unfortunately, I was only able to participate in the Indian section of the visit. I think that as Australian MPs we learnt a great deal of important things, particularly from my point of view, about India. We observed the Indian parliament in action, and it was a particularly interesting session that we attended. There was a debate on a proposed amendment to their constitution, with a 123-amendment bill. The bill sought to grant constitutional status to the National Commission on Backward Classes. That sounds a pretty arcane term in this parliament, but it refers to castes which are socially, educationally and economically disadvantaged. It is very interesting to see, as part of India's progress, that the disadvantaged castes are being legally addressed by the Lok Sabha and are being brought into equality—a very, very good thing from India's point of view. We had a chance, as the Chief Government Whip said, to observe economic reform in that great country and to look at the possibility of a free trade agreement with Australia. I have to report—I think it was the view of the delegation—that that FTA is going to take a great deal of further work, because most of the Indian economic policymakers were interested in focusing on their huge economy rather than even trade with the outside world or the importance of FTAs with Australia or, indeed, other countries. I would say, however, from our meetings with Australian businesspeople operating in India, that the abolition of different GSTs by states and the consolidation of them by the Lok Sabha has had an amazingly productive effect—just like the change in the Indian currency. The Indian government is to be congratulated on doing this, and it's made the doing of business between states in India—some of which, of course, are bigger than Australia, certainly in population size—a great deal easier, and we heard many commendations from Australian businesses about the benefit of that. We had an extraordinary insight into Indian culture. We had a tour of the National Gallery of Modern Art in India under the auspices of Adwaita Gadanayak, who was a great host. Also, in Mumbai, we met the Governor of Maharashtra, C Vidyasagar Rao, who took us through the governor's palace. The last point I would make is that we also gained an extraordinary insight into the political developments in Pakistan, being very close to them at the time of their national election. The widespread view was that the new Prime Minister of Pakistan is very close to the Pakistan Army and that little progress can be expected of the new government of Pakistan, in engagement on security issues with India and the rest of the world, unless the Pakistan Army is involved in those discussions, because the impression, certainly throughout India, was that they were the people strongly behind him.
China | Constituency Statements | House debates
On Monday in the business section of The Australian the Chairman of Anglo American mining denigrated democratic systems in Australia and around the world by saying that leadership in Australia...
On Monday in the business section of The Australian the Chairman of Anglo American mining denigrated democratic systems in Australia and around the world by saying that leadership in Australia was incompetent compared to the leadership that he has seen in China. That's a very unfortunate remark, no matter how badly behaved people here were a couple of weeks ago. It does not reflect well on a major Australian businessman, born in Wollongong, to prefer the authoritarian system in China to the system here. I'm sure it doesn't reflect the views of most people in Australian business. It has brought to mind yesterday's well-written column by the international editor of The Sydney Morning Herald, Mr Peter Hartcher. He pointed out that former Treasurer of Australia Mr Hockey had been importuned by a very arrogant Beijing-based businessman, who lit up a cigarette in his presence without permission, put his feet on the chair and demanded the right to buy Rio Tinto and a number of other leading Australian companies. The theme of Mr Hartcher's column was that there is an atmosphere in the Australian political sphere and in the Pacific and East Asia of arrogance from the regime in Beijing. Of course, we've seen the incredibly cruel crackdown on a million Muslim people in East Kazakhstan. They are virtually living in concentration camps. They are forced to eat products and drink alcohol that are not au fait with their religion. That's extremely regrettable. Mr Hartcher pointed out that, at the Pacific Islands Forum, the Prime Minister of Nauru had to actively sit down an official of Beijing who wanted to interpose himself and demanded to speak before ministers of the Pacific Islands Forum who were there on an invited basis. I and Mr Hartcher have noted that a leading Chinese academic in Beijing has said that Beijing's diplomacy needs to be improved. We in Australia have a good commercial trading and economic relationship with the People's Republic of China. We've had in the last five years $200 billion of Chinese direct investment, according to the Foreign Investment Review Board. We should cling to that good trading and economic relationship. As the Beijing academic observed, they need to improve their diplomacy.
I want to renew my appeal today for Australia not to allow the Huawei company to bid for the 5G network. I remind people that some months ago I said to the House: I'm talking about Huawei and...
I want to renew my appeal today for Australia not to allow the Huawei company to bid for the 5G network. I remind people that some months ago I said to the House: I'm talking about Huawei and ZTE. Both these telcos are subject to government … dictates. In Beijing. I went on: Both Huawei and ZTE must report to a Communist Party cell at the top of their organisations. Let me issue a clarion call to this parliament … Australia's 5G network must not be sold to these telcos. Whatever instructions might be issued for Australian sovereignty— if they were to get the bid— … they will be compromised if we sell the construction of our new central communications 5G network to companies effectively controlled by an authoritarian government whose leader has recently been made dictator for life. The Beijing lobby have been very active in the meantime, with full-page ads. It's been a great shame to read on the front page of the Financial Review that some of the other bidders, Nokia and Ericsson, are now fully produced in China and are also subject to having this cell of the ruling party at the top of their organisations. It is a clear example of corporate irresponsibility and greed, thinking that producing some telecommunications equipment for a dollar lower than you might be able to produce it in your own country is some reason for producing it in China. Companies really need to consider the national interest of their own countries before just going for the lowest dollar value. When I talk about the Beijing lobby, I notice that Jennifer Hewett and Glenda Korporaal have said that the Huawei ruling will be a test of bilateral relations. Jennifer Hewett even highlights some of Huawei's laughable investigation of itself as a suitable company for the 5G network. The July 2018 report to the National Security Adviser of the United Kingdom says that the Huawei's Cyber Security Evaluation Centre Oversight Board said: … identification of shortcomings in Huawei's engineering processes have exposed new risks in the UK telecommunication networks and long-term challenges in mitigation and management. And: … Huawei’s processes continue to fall short of industry good practice … The report said: Technical issues have been identified in Huawei' s engineering processes, leading to new risks in the UK telecommunications networks … Also there was the announcement of the US Senate Committee on Armed Services on 23 July 2018. The John S McCain National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019 enacted, amongst many other provisions, section 889, titled 'Prohibition on certain telecommunications and video surveillance services or equipment'. That section expressly prohibits the federal government from procuring or obtaining— (Time expired)
Joint Standing Committee on Treaties; Report | Committees | House debates
by leave—I welcome the tabling of this report and I join the member for Cowan in welcoming the excellencies from the Ibero-American bloc, who are so much a part of this proposed treaty....
by leave—I welcome the tabling of this report and I join the member for Cowan in welcoming the excellencies from the Ibero-American bloc, who are so much a part of this proposed treaty. Negotiations on the original Trans-Pacific Partnership, as we know, began under Labor in 2010. As we're all aware, the United States withdrew from the agreement, which was signed in March this year. This is a new agreement and against the tide of opposition to free trade around the world. That's why it's so important. There are modest economic benefits for Australia in this agreement, and it will remove 98 per cent of tariffs in the region. According to independent economic modelling, of which the member for Cowan spoke so fondly and which was commissioned by the Victorian government, Australia gains market access and eliminates tariffs on Australian goods, including nickel, iron ore, copper, steel, auto parts and machinery. Open markets lift people out of poverty and create higher-paid, more secure jobs. There is also a strategic benefit to Australia in being involved in this regional agreement after the US withdrawal. It just shows that all of the countries who participate in this do understand that democratic cooperation, including in economic areas, is very important. Multilateral agreements like the CPTPP or, as it's better known, the TPP-11 establish the rules of the road for trade within our region. Deeper engagement in our region is key to securing Australia's economic future. Tying the economies of the region together also makes us more secure in this country. The opposition has long recognised that it is in Australia's national interest to engage more and play a bigger role in our region. That is why Labor has announced a suite of policies under the Future Asia banner in recognition that it is in Australia's economic and strategic interests to deepen engagement in the region. There are issues with the agreement that Labor members raised in our additional comments presented with this report, a particular focus on the investor-state dispute settlement arrangements and the waiver of labour-market testing, which I will come to in a minute. I also want to draw attention to the prospective benefits of this agreement for Australia's universities. As Gabriele Suder, a professorial fellow at Melbourne Business School, argued recently: Free-trade agreements linking Australia to south-east Asia, Latin America and the European Union will help break our reliance on international students from China— and lead to prospective benefits of the treaty: … greater access to overseas students and smoother facilitation of international research projects. On their own, the agreements won't necessarily lead to a shift in the number of international students studying in Australia, but they could dramatically change where they come from – alleviating … over-representation of Chinese students in local classrooms. Let me say something quickly about the investor-state dispute settlements. The opposition is reluctant, if it becomes government, to sign an agreement that includes ISDS provisions. We have already committed to negotiating to remove these clauses from existing agreements in government. This was a commitment made in the 2016 election and recommitted by the current shadow minister for trade in October 2017. If we look to New Zealand, we see that Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was able to remove this clause by signing side letters with four countries with whom the previous conservative government had negotiated ISDS clauses. On labour market testing, the opposition agrees that the waiver of labour market testing in trade agreements does not make sense. We agree that, before any employer brings in a worker from overseas, the employer should be required to first check and see if an Australian can do the job. As with ISDS, Labor in government also does not want an agreement that waives labour market testing for contractual service suppliers. In addition, a Shorten Labor government—which seems more likely by the day—will strengthen existing labour-market-testing provisions. We've already been successful in forcing the government to adopt several of these measures. The opposition is also committed to improving the way that trade agreements are negotiated, by commissioning independent economic modelling for each new free trade agreement before it's signed and after an agreement has been in operation for 10 years. Labor supports quality trade agreements that benefit Australia. Although we're a large economy, we are—many Australians are too modest and forget this—the 12th largest economy in the G20. With a population of only 25 million, we are an economy larger than Russia, with 140 million. It's very important that we be involved in free trade because we are relatively small, and trade with the rest of the world helps benefit the people of this country and raises their standard of living. I commend Japanese Prime Minister Abe on his initiative in reviving this treaty after it seemed sunk by the current President of the United States and the current US administration. I commend this report to the House.
Treaties Committee | Committees | House debates
by leave—The member for Fadden, the chair of the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties, of which I'm deputy chair, has this morning tabled additional information about extraterritorial...
by leave—The member for Fadden, the chair of the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties, of which I'm deputy chair, has this morning tabled additional information about extraterritorial jurisdiction. This document, now public, entails the following: Jordan's antiterrorism law is subject to its own Penal Code No. 16 of 1960. Article 10 of the Penal Code No. 16 applies extraterritorial jurisdiction to all acts that are considered as felonies under Jordanian law, including acts under the antiterrorism law, where such acts are committed by a Jordanian citizen or foreigners residing in Jordan, even if they take place outside Jordan. So apparently, thanks to the Attorney-General's diligence in questioning his own department's advice, Australia would not have difficulty in extraditing foreign terrorists to Australia. Through the making of this clarification and the member for Fadden adding this erratum in parliament, we are making it clear that Australia and Jordan can address such difficult extraditions. This is particularly relevant for me, as any fair-minded interpretation of article 3 of Jordan's own laws on antiterrorism would see the arrest of Ahlam al-Tamimi. The member for Fadden read article 3 out, I will just read it out again: Joining or attempting to join any armed groups or terrorist organizations, recruiting or attempting to recruit people to join such groups or organizations or training such persons for the said purpose, whether inside or outside the kingdom— That would see, in my view, the arrest of Ahlam al-Tamimi, a Jordanian national convicted—but released in a prisoner swap—of assisting a particularly obscene act of terrorism at a pizza shop in downtown Jerusalem on 9 August 2001, in which 15 civilians were murdered, including seven children and a pregnant woman, and 130 people wounded. Tamimi has publicly admitted that she planned this attack and that she drove the suicide bomber to the target. One of the people killed, I regret to advise this parliament, was my constituent Malki Roth, daughter of my constituents Arnold and Frimet Roth. Under Jordan's own law we should see Tamimi surrendered in response to the US FBI most-wanted-terrorist warrant issued last year. Now, thanks to the Attorney-General's clarification and the member for Fadden's erratum in this parliament and clarification, there's a possibility that Australia will also deal with this individual that the FBI issued a warrant for last year.
Telecommunications | Constituency Statements | House debates
A few days ago 'Big China' were up in parliament, like big tobacco, whingeing and whining about how they'd been misunderstood. One of their particular whinges was about the 5G network and the...
A few days ago 'Big China' were up in parliament, like big tobacco, whingeing and whining about how they'd been misunderstood. One of their particular whinges was about the 5G network and the concerns about their company Huawei, which were first raised in The Economist, in the legendary article 'Huawei: the company that spooked the world'. Some years ago, under pressure from Labor, which demanded a security briefing, the then communications minister, now Prime Minister, was forced to bar Huawei from bidding for the new core of the Australian telecommunications network, the NBN. Now we have that situation again, with 5G. Since my previous remarks, the chairman of Huawei Technologies, Admiral Lord, has denied Beijing's influence over the company, stating to the ABC: There is no ownership by the Government whatsoever— basically implying that they are a workers collective. This directly contradicts the testimony that he and his company gave to a public hearing of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security on 14 September 2012. In it, Admiral Lord and his associate admitted that Huawei, like other large Beijing enterprises, has a legally mandated Communist Party committee at the top and stated that, yes, all the big organisations have a party committee. There's nothing unusual with all of these Beijing companies having to report to the Communist Party committee, but don't tell the Australian public that you don't have to.
Melbourne Ports Electorate | Adjournment | House debates
I notice that the Australia Institute reports that my electorate is the fifth-ranking electorate to benefit from the government's proposed 2018 tax cuts. I suppose that ranks Melbourne Ports as...
I notice that the Australia Institute reports that my electorate is the fifth-ranking electorate to benefit from the government's proposed 2018 tax cuts. I suppose that ranks Melbourne Ports as one of the high-income seats in Australia. It's no surprise to me that it's the fifth-ranking electorate by per-capita income according to the Australia Institute. In 20 years of standing up for Melbourne Ports, I've made sure, when we were in government and when we were out of government, that I was a fierce representative and remain a fierce representative for that seat. Many people complained about Building the Education Revolution in other electorates; they didn't in mine. I was there when the programs were set up, halfway through to supervise them and right at the end when we delivered them to 32 schools in the electorate. It's a great pleasure to go through the Catholic school system, the Jewish school system and the government school system, including two high schools, Elwood College and Glen Eira College, which have absolutely boomed because of some of the infrastructure that we put in in those days. Also when Labor were in power, Melbourne Ports was very unusual in that we secured two childcare centres. Every other electorate only got one tranche of funding. We got two, one in Port Melbourne and one in St Kilda, both of which are an adornment to the work of the previous Labor government. I was also pleased to work with a colleague of the member for Dawson, Mr Larry Anthony, when he was minister, to secure the existence of Centrelink in South Melbourne so that the 11,000 social security holders who live in that area were able to continue to access—particularly, close to the housing commission—the important facilities and assistance that Centrelink provides. We also got, during the Labor period, $2.3 million for the Salvation Army crisis centre and opened a St Kilda Community Housing project which enabled 34 units of special emergency shelter for homeless people to be erected. Perhaps three of the things that I'm proudest of and that lead into future projects that I'm going to be pushing in Melbourne Ports are in the area of the arts and in the area of veterans' affairs. First, in veterans' affairs, there was a curious situation where, at the Melbourne General Cemetery, there was a memorial to the Jewish servicemen who fell in World War I and World War II. One of the 'stronger Australia' grants that we had for the centenary enabled us to re-establish that important memorial in Ripponlea, right near the Ripponlea shopping centre. The federal government support was leveraged into two very important philanthropic organisations who also took up supporting the relocation of that important memorial. Two things that I remember the most and I'm going to continue to be pushing include the Australian National Academy of Music. Once, during our period of government, the previous arts minister didn't see the wisdom of continuing Paul Keating's great Melbourne equivalent of the Juilliard School of music there in South Melbourne, at the South Melbourne town hall. I think the former minister got a real surprise when people stood up in the Labor Party caucus and really got stuck in. Anyhow, the Australian National Academy of Music is strongly preserved. During this government, we had to confront the current Minister for Education, Senator Birmingham, when it seemed that all of the great young actors, drama workers and ballet students of a very high calibre at the National Theatre—a very famous institution, which is on the corner of Barkly and Carlisle Streets in St Kilda—were going to have their VET courses taken away. All of the young people, some of whom are top stars in their artistic professions, wouldn't have been able to continue without that fierce representation. I'm going to continue speaking out in favour of the Pride Centre, women's football and security for the George community centres in Melbourne Port for the next round of funding—(Time expired)