Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is an important motion. I thank my friend the member for Fremantle for bringing this debate to the House today and the speakers, government and opposition, who have spoken on the motion. I think there's a lot of commonality. We note the deteriorating human rights and labour rights situation in the Philippines under President Duterte. I say at the outset 'under President Duterte' quite deliberately, because we should also recognise that this deterioration is of great concern to all countries that value human rights and labour rights standards, to those that consider themselves friends of the Philippines—and I think Australia is certainly one of those—and to the Australian Filipino diaspora.

I'm proud to represent many Australians of Filipino heritage. Indeed, when I step outside the front door of my electorate office, across the road is the Dandenong Uniting Church. The minister there over the last 12 months or so, Berlin Guerrero, is a Filipino Australian who sought asylum in this country some years ago having previously been abducted, held hostage and tortured under a previous Filipino government for standing up for labour rights and democracy. He's a fantastic chap.

I've also learned that, when you put any speech like this on Facebook, out come the Duterte trolls. So we'll get that bit out upfront. As one of the 10 members of ASEAN and a bilateral partner with whom Australia has a respectful and cooperative relationship on regional development, maritime security, disaster risk reduction and so on, we do value our relationship with the Philippines. But it's in that context of friendship that I echo the sentiments of the motion and say that I'm deeply alarmed by the June report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. It was an alarming report. It reported that President Duterte has been using the cover of COVID-19 to introduce even more draconian security laws, with phrases like 'shoot the protesters on sight'. That, of course, comes on the back of President Duterte's campaign against drugs. At least 8,600 people have been illegally killed, and it's probably three times that number.

I note that that report was considered by the United Nations Human Rights Council in October 2020. It's disappointing that Australia failed to show leadership in that exercise. We did not raise our voice loudly and push for stronger investigative mechanisms. It was a weak resolution that was passed and the situation continues to worsen for human rights activists and lawyers. I was sent a list by my local community of 60 lawyers, judges and prosecutors who have been killed in the last four years alone, and that is just those who are known. There were 44 lawyers, seven judges and nine prosecutors and, as the previous speaker rightly said, there is media suppression.

This is all a worrying trend towards authoritarianism and illiberalism in a country that has been democratic and has fought for its democratic rights. I remember the revolution some decades ago in the Philippines in support of democracy. Democracy is fragile and must be protected, so I share the growing concerns, echoed in the motion and by my friend the member for Fremantle, regarding labour rights and workers. The International Trade Union Confederation has ranked the Philippines amongst the 10 worst countries in the world for working people. Fifty union members and officials have been extrajudicially killed, and the antiworker climate is now fuelling fears more broadly across society and is further undermining democracy.

It was good to hear the previous speaker express support for the work of the International Labour Organization, because I hear scepticism at times from government members about the role of trade unions. From visiting developing countries, I know that, in many cases—Cambodia is a case in point; I was there a couple of years ago—trade unions are the only truly democratic organisations in a country. They do such an important role of building civil society and fighting for the values of democracy and for a free civil space where people can express their views, so support for trade union organisations, and active support, by the Australian government in developing countries is especially critical. It's a pity that, under this government, a lot of that support has been cut from our international aid and development as a result of some kind of weird ideological crusade that holds that, when we see the word 'union', that must be bad. Unions have such a critical role to play in supporting democracy.

I go back the last part of the motion, which calls on the government to support the upholding of labour and human rights, in line with international standards, by endorsing the ILO's resolution to send a high-level tripartite mission to the Philippines to conduct an open, transparent and robust investigation of the human rights situation and—I'll repeat this; I've spoken in the parliament about it before; the government has just been silent—any auditing process of Australian security engagements in the Philippines to make sure that, in our engagement with the police, the security and the defence forces, we are not inadvertently supporting any human rights abuses, given, unfortunately, the shameful record of those forces in suppressing human rights in recent times.

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