Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Actually, Senator Stacey, I was responding to the first part of your question, so I respectfully suggest that I was being relevant. You were dismissive of the Prime Minister's trip to China, and I was saying to you that whether or not we agree with many of the positions of the People's Republic of China—and we don't; we have areas of fundamental disagreement—they are a great power in the world and in our region, and the responsible thing for the leader of the country to do is to ensure that we engage. You would have heard the Prime Minister and I and other ministers speak about cooperating where we can, disagreeing where we must and engaging in the national interest, and that is what the visit was about.

In relation to the port of Darwin, the Prime Minister has made clear that we don't think the port should have been sold in the first place by the previous coalition government, and we want to see it return to Australian hands. I think that has been made very clear and public. That is clear diplomatically as well, but those are matters which will go through the appropriate commercial consideration.