Marise Payne (NSW, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr President. As I said, we never accepted the charges upon which Dr Moore-Gilbert was purported to have been detained and ultimately convicted and sentenced. In that context, we continued our negotiations. We will not go into the nature of diplomatic discussions with other countries. Our role is to protect the rights, freedoms and safety of our citizens in the national interest and that is our absolute focus. We consistently advocate in favour of the international rules based order and we fundamentally oppose coercive diplomacy in any of its forms.