Cory Bernardi (SA, Australian Conservatives) | Hansard source

It's not my greatest legacy, Senator Whish-Wilson, it's one of the many legacies I will leave here! And I will go through those for a very long time in my valedictory speech. In fact, it could go for several hours, Senator Whish-Wilson! You will feature prominently in it.

But there are serious issues at work here, and unless we can get to the bottom of them and confront the relationship we have to have then we are essentially flying blind. And so my interest is not so much in knowing how many times the Chinese government and other governments try to hack into the Parliament House computer system. I'm a big boy; I know these things happen all over the world. It's about the integrity of our system. How reliant are we, as a government and as a nation, on a foreign country? How influenced are we in our affairs being predetermined by the actions of someone somewhere else?

This is a universal concern. There are those on the Liberal coalition side, there are those on the crossbench and there are those on the Labor side who are concerned about this. One of them, of course, is former senator Stephen Conroy, who was trying to push the Labor government to have freedom-of-navigation exercises through the South China Sea. But too many politicians bought the whole idea of, 'No, we're not militarising, we're just sort of colonising a couple of atolls.' Now they've parked guns, bombs, railways and airstrips there. It's a direct challenge and a direct confrontation to our wellbeing.

I understand that the government is sensitive about it and I understand there are areas where they don't want to discuss it; they don't want to upset the Chinese government. But we have to bell the cat on this; if you only have one customer, or if you have a customer that effectively controls your whole production and the wellbeing of your business, then they own your business. Australia shouldn't be for sale, and this is one way we can get to the bottom of just how much of our sovereignty we've outsourced to another nation.