Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

It is one of the fundamental responsibilities of nations around the world to protect the sovereignty of their country. Indeed, it is enshrined in our Constitution. And it is a principle of international law that nations do not seek to interfere in the domestic political processes of other countries. This morning there was an extraordinary development when it was revealed that the Leader of the Opposition had plumbed new depths in his underhanded behaviour when it was found that the Australian Labor Party was colluding with the New Zealand Labour Party, a foreign political party, to ask questions in the New Zealand parliament, a foreign parliament, designed deliberately to undermine confidence in the Australian government. Indeed, the New Zealand Leader of the Opposition herself admitted that the questions came from a member of the Labor Party in Australia.

The Leader of the Opposition must come clean on his role in this tawdry affair. While we were used to seeing the Leader of the Opposition do backroom deals and grubby negotiations while he was the leader of the union movement, it's quite another thing to bring his lack of ethics into international relations. It was the Leader of Opposition's party who sought to recruit members of the New Zealand Labour Party to ask questions in the New Zealand parliament that were deliberately designed to undermine confidence in the Australian parliament. The Leader of the Opposition has shown that he has no interest in the true concerns about section 44. Uncertainties are awash on his side of the parliament. There are so many members of the Labor party whose status is uncertain—

Mr Dreyfus interjecting—

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