Cory Bernardi (SA, Australian Conservatives) | Hansard source

In offering my support for Senator Patrick's motion, there is a note of caution which I want to put on the record. Of course, it is that Australia's national interest always has to come first, and the government must make judgement calls in areas of national security, defence and intelligence. In my history and my experience in this place, governments of both political persuasions have been quite diligent about advising and updating those of us who have been on the crossbench or, when I was part of a major party, on the back bench with appropriate briefings, marked by the requirement to keep things confidential.

I support this motion because I think there are a whole range of areas in which our relationship—our business partnership, in some respects—with China needs some scrutiny, and there are a raft of them. You could talk about foreign students in this country. You could talk about tourism. You could talk about our trade relationship, of course, and our foreign investment. There are issues such as human rights, which have been canvassed by Senator Patrick earlier, but ultimately it comes back to this: if you don't know how much influence your major customer has—and China, quite frankly, is our major customer—then they can effectively control your business. My deep concern is that if the Communist Party of China decides to pull the pin on the Australian economy by not allowing any more foreign students to come here because we're asking them to actually study rather than be political activists, or if they say, 'We're going to punish you and not buy your iron ore or your cattle because you're not pursuing our policy intentions or you're challenging us in the South China Sea,' or if they say, 'We're not going to have Australia on the approved tourist limit,' effectively our economy—and I truly believe this—would be crippled. I don't want to see that happen. But I don't know whether that is the case or not because I don't know the full extent of the Chinese diaspora, the Chinese trade or the Chinese investment and how important these sections and elements of the industry have been to our national wellbeing.

When it comes to aspects of human rights, let me put this on the record: the disruption in Hong Kong is because those who are perhaps most familiar with the Chinese system of government outside of mainland China itself didn't want to have an extradition agreement. They know the rule of law does not apply in China as it does in this country, or as it does in many Western democracies. There is a 99.9 per cent conviction rate. You don't even have to go to trial; you can just be locked up in the gulags. It astounds me that a previous coalition government, led by Malcolm Turnbull and Julie Bishop, wanted to pursue, and were prepared to ratify, an extradition agreement for Chinese Australians to be sent over to face a 99.9 per cent conviction rate. It was one of my proudest moment in this Senate when a disallowance motion was moved and the Greens got on board very early, the crossbench got on board very early and the Labor Party got on board and, essentially we disallowed that instrument.

But what was the fathoming by the Australian government at the time—the Malcolm Turnbull-Julie Bishop government—that they were going to send Chinese Australians off to face the 99.9 per cent conviction rate? They wouldn't do it with North Korea and they wouldn't do it with Cuba. But why? What happened? How did our politics become so influenced and captive to them if it's not just about trade?

Another proud moment was on 7.30 when I was asked about former Senator Dastyari's begging of a billionaire to pay his $1,500 travel bill. It unravelled a can of worms—a thread that we can keep tugging on today because we do not know how deep the influence goes.