Jason Falinski (Mackellar, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

More than anything else, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea reminds us of who we are by what they are not. Led by Kim Jong-un, North Korea stands as an alternative universe of what happens when you don't have democracy, you don't have individual freedoms, you don't care about morality and you don't have any of the principles that we have based our society upon. North Korea's abuse of its own citizens and its active destabilisation of the world order serve as a reminder that all of us are tied together on this same planet. More and more of the challenges we face can only be resolved through international cooperation and agreement.

Undisputedly, one of the worst places to be born, the North Korean regime's crimes against its own citizens have been flagrant, systematic and widespread. Any critique of the regime is swiftly and harshly punished. Executions are often public, detentions are arbitrary and horrible punishments are regularly intergenerational. Former High Court Justice Michael Kirby was appointed to the United Nations Human Rights Council in 2013, where he found that human rights violations in North Korea went so far as to constitute crimes against humanity, equating them to some of those committed by the Nazis in Germany.

The gravity, scale and nature of these violations revealed a state that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world. The UN Human Rights Council estimated that 80,000-120,000 prisoners are incarcerated due to political crimes. They are subjected to forced labour, physical abuse and execution. In this day and age, these atrocities are being perpetuated by a dictator on his own people, his own countrymen. Freedom of speech, freedom of movement, a free press—all sometimes taken for granted in our own country—are all unimaginable for the people of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. What an ironic name, indeed. The thing about civilisation is that, first, you need to be civilised. When you remove civility, what do you have left? What is left to such a regime but bullying, threats and brutality?

In North Korea, endless energy is dedicated to rallying against the perceived threat of the Western world, when endless resources should be dedicated to taking care of its own people. What threat is the West to the North Koreans, if they were to stop threatening nuclear annihilation and take care of their own? As it stands, Kim Jong-un continues to test his missiles, increase his nuclear strength and throw rhetorical tantrums during which he threatens our nations so he can protect his people against the supposed, imagined threat we pose. Like the bully that he is, he blames the suffering of his people on others and threatens with violence those who would see his people prosper.

I ask myself what lessons we must draw from this escalating conflict. The truth is that we have provided the North Korean regime with rice and wheat and had hoped that their own economic self-interest and survival would make them see reason, while they have continued arming themselves, silencing their opponents and starving their population.

Finally, and I applaud the government's role in doing so, the world community has sharpened its rhetoric and acted on its words. UN resolutions are imposing strict sanctions and embargoes that show how serious we are about the stability of our world. It is time for China to act. I lend my voice to those of my colleagues and the government in arguing that the Chinese government, close neighbours to North Korea, play its role on the world stage and do more to resolve the current conflict peacefully.

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