James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) | Hansard source

I've never met a colleague who doesn't share my view that one of the most enjoyable parts of our role as members of parliament is to attend citizenship ceremonies. Obviously it's a very proud day for those taking the pledge, but, for us as local community leaders, it also fills us with a great pride in our country that so many people make the decision to choose their future in Australia. In my view, we are the greatest multicultural success story on the planet. Long may that continue into the future.

One of the experiences you have at those ceremonies, when you're speaking to the successfully pledged citizens, is to talk with them about their background: how they've come to be a part of our community and why they made the decision to come to Australia. Regrettably, some of those stories are not very pleasant. They're certainly happy and grateful and excited about their future in our country, but, in some cases, they had to flee the country that they left. So it's an additional source of pride that we provide, in this country, a safe haven for people in that circumstance and have for many, many, many decades.

This motion really goes towards us defending that vital principle around accepting people who have fled their nation and providing them a future and protecting them here in this country. That is why I'm sure we welcome with unanimity an opportunity to condemn the fact that there are reports that people living in Australia within the Cambodian community are being intimidated and threatened by members of the regime that they have fled. We equally understand, and this point has been made, that one of the worst elements of that intimidation is that people who come to this country after leaving in those circumstances probably almost never bring the entirety of their families and their loved ones with them. They have this terrible, awful exposure that people they care about have been left behind and are still under the influence of a regime that may mete out some kind of retribution against the family members of people who have come to this country and are making their future in this country and who are exercising their free, democratic rights in this country. I certainly commend the member for bringing this issue to the chamber and thank the unanimity of members in pointing out the solidarity that we have in backing the government to do everything they possibly can to investigate and prevent this kind of behaviour from occurring.

The motion also touches on criminal activity, including money laundering. Again we wish the government and the agencies at the front line of this all success in undertaking investigations and finding people who are engaging in this conduct. We know money laundering is a problem. We know human trafficking in the sex trade and underage human trafficking are enormous challenges in some of these regime countries and for their diaspora here as well. We need to protect them. I wish the government well in that.

I serve on the electoral matters committee. We of course have been looking very seriously at some of the future risks around foreign interference in our democracy in the cyberage. We know now that with AI and other technology all kinds of nefarious tactics can be used to disrupt and influence our democratic elections and that foreign actors, particularly those that are state sponsored, are probably in a much stronger position than ever before to undertake interference in our elections, from the comfort of their host nation perhaps, and use emerging technologies to potentially disrupt and in fact change the outcomes of our elections. We have to be very vigilant about that.

The broad topic of foreign interference needs to have bipartisanship. I commend the member for McPherson for bringing this motion to us so that we can talk about and ventilate these issues. I conclude by saying how proud we are to have such a multicultural society. The loss to a regime of their youngest, brightest and most capable people is the gain of our society here in Australia. We welcome those people. We want to make sure that we're using every resource of government to protect them here so that they can have the best future that they dream of here as Australians.

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