Alan Griffin (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I join with other speakers in commending the member for Reid for bringing this motion before the House. When we look at the circumstances around North Korea, often when we see it portrayed in the international media—with films like Team America: World Policeor even more recently The Interviewit is seen as a source of fun because, frankly, what is occurring there and has occurred there goes beyond the ridiculous. However, the commission of inquiry that the UN conducted actually highlighted that, although it is increasingly bizarre, the fact is it is also horrific. The circumstances faced by the people in North Korea, the nature of the regime, the way that it perpetrates crimes against humanity with respect to its own people and the nature of how it relates to the rest of the world lead, in fact, to an incredibly serious situation that requires international focus and international condemnation but also, on from that, international efforts to try and engage and to try and ensure that a way is found through the madness that is the regime that is in place in North Korea.

As some members know, I spent three months late last year at the United Nations in New York. One of the highlights of the time that I was there was a seminar sponsored by the Australian mission to the UN, which had Michael Kirby, the distinguished jurist and member of the commission of inquiry, there and actually going through the detail of the findings. Part of that was also to meet and hear from some dissidents who had in fact escaped the clutches of the North Korean regime, but also—and this was farcical—to hear the representatives of North Korea seek to defend the position of their government with respect to the findings of the commission.

I encapsulate that in a few basic points. Justice Kirby made it clear that the horror of what he had seen and had been told was, frankly, horrific and it was something which required international action. He made it clear that the commission of inquiry had done everything that they could to engage with the North Korean authorities, but that those attempts had been to no avail. He made it clear that there needed to be action taken on an ongoing basis to ensure that the issues in North Korea were not just forgotten and swept under the carpet. The thing that you find with the UN is that it is actually dealing with so many horrific issues at any one time that it is not hard to have a situation where matters such as this do not get the time and scrutiny that they deserve.

Certainly this report was detailed and complex and it went to the very essence of the evil that is the North Korean regime. The report had some 400 pages; some 80 witnesses in Seoul, Tokyo, London and Washington; more than 240 confidential interviews; and 80 formal submissions from different entities. It was comprehensive, and its findings were absolutely terrible. The crimes committed against the people of North Korea by their government know no bounds, and they are based in a philosophy and an ideology which is perverted in the extreme and actually impacts directly on the wellbeing of the people that they aim to say that they seek to protect but clearly do not. Facts such as that the average North Korean is an astounding six inches shorter than their South Korean counterpart, which goes directly to issues of malnutrition, to access to health care and to the actual basis of what people need to live a decent life; that there are something like 80,000 to 120,000 political prisoners currently detained; and the that those camps are totalitarian horrors that ensure that people are treated in conditions which are absolutely inhumane.

I commend the fact that the UN Security Council has put the situation of human rights abuse in North Korea on the agenda as a watching brief for the future. I think it is important that these matters are reviewed on an ongoing basis and they are highlighted. I am at a loss to know the way forward in terms of how we would get change in North Korea. The one thing I am certain of is that we will not get change if we do not, as an international community, focus on what is occurring there, if we do not raise those issues publicly, and if we do not ensure that that regime has to answer for the crimes that is committing.

Debate adjourned.

See this speech in context