Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I present the following responses to various Senate resolutions:

(a)   from the Minister for Trade (Mr Emerson) to a resolution of the Senate of 7 July concerning Burma and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi;

(b)   from the Premier of Queensland (Ms Bligh) to a resolution of the Senate of 17 August 2011 concerning the Burdekin Falls Dam; and

(c)   from the Head, ABC Audience and Consumer Affairs (Ms McLiesh) to a resolution of the Senate of 15 September 2011 concerning the broadcast of the South Australian National Football League.

Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek leave to move a motion in relation to the response by the Minister for Trade that has just been tabled.

Leave granted.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

This document has been provided to the President on behalf of Craig Emerson, the Minister for Trade. It relates to a motion that I put to the Senate a number of weeks ago, in July, around the ability of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to move about Burma on one of her first field trips since being released from house arrest. Under the enormously difficult political and human rights circumstances that she and her allies face, and the people working for democracy in Burma face, conditions have barely changed since the brutal crackdown of 2008 in which thousands of people were arrested and killed, and many still remain behind bars. The world celebrated—as did, I think, all of us in this place—when Daw Suu was released from many, many years of house arrest in Rangoon. But we are very well aware that the situation in that country is still extraordinarily tense and that people who are doing the kind of work that in Australia we would simply take for granted are subject to harassment, brutal treatment, imprisonment, arbitrary detention, torture and extrajudicial killing. The establishment of a so-called parliament, which remains a parliament in name only, last year after a flawed election, based on a corrupt constitution, has changed nothing. In fact, senators in this place would be horrified if they realised how their colleagues in the so-called Burmese parliament are actually treated and if they knew the kinds of things that they are subject to, such as not being able to speak to the media and not being able to organise, as we do freely in this place. It is really difficult to even conceive of it being called a parliament.

We appreciate the tabling of this letter by Dr Emerson and also the work that Mr Rudd has done on his visit to Burma, in subsequent correspondence and in meetings that he had with Daw Suu while he was there. The advocacy that is occasionally undertaken by the Australian government on behalf of the pro-democracy movement in Burma and its diaspora is greatly appreciated.

However, the main reason why I wanted to rise and add a few comments as to the tabling of this letter today concerns a recent report by the Kachin Women's Association of Thailand which documents human rights violations carried out in Northern Burma between June and September 2011. This document is utterly hair raising, giving us a bit of an idea of, or a bit of an insight into, the internal civil war that is still occurring in the north-eastern part of Burma against the backdrop of what I think most of us believe is a gradual process of democratisation. This report tells us that we should not be fooled, that we should not ease trade sanctions and that we should not let up on our campaign, which we have been pleased to see the Australian government join, to establish a United Nations commission of inquiry to investigate crimes against humanity and war crimes that have taken place and war crimes that are taking place in Burma. This particular study highlights the issues that are occurring in a quite remote part of the country bordering Thailand and China. It is difficult to get to, and I am not sure that senators would be all that aware of the kinds of horrific abuses that are being perpetuated there. But what we are still seeing and what this report documents is the systematic use of rape as a weapon of war against women and girls, with the youngest victim documented in this study being nine years old and 15 of those victims being killed; villagers being forced to be pack animals and human minesweepers as they are forced to go in advance of the army to set off any landmines that might have been laid in the area; and unarmed civilians being killed or driven out of their villages.

I understand that people here working for Democracy in Burma have written to the foreign minister but I think it is certainly not well understood within the Australian population and perhaps not well understood within this parliament just how bad the situation is there. The reason I put these remarks on the record tonight is to reinforce the actions that the Australian government has taken but also to urge the Australian government not to relax but to press the case and not be fooled by talk of release of political prisoners, talk of democratic elections and talk of parliamentary assemblies, because all of these things are simply talk at the moment.

The international community is called on in this study:

To condemn the … regime’s atrocities against the Kachin people as well as against other ethnic nationalities and to call on the regime to put an end to such human rights violations.

To provide urgently needed humanitarian assistance to internally displaced persons and refugees fleeing the conflict—

and, as we understand that the Australian government is reviewing this issue, there is an important role here for cross-border aid. This is undertaken by many of our aid partners on the Thailand-Burma border and up and down that particular part of the world, that extremely troubled zone. Australian aid could actually fund food and medical equipment being taken across into the war zone on the Burmese side of the border where no other aid groups can go and where no help—no form of primary health care or any other assistance—can go. That is one very important thing that the Australian government could do.

The study also called on the international community:

To impose an international arms embargo to avoid supplying the Burmese regime with weaponry that can be used against civilians.

Again let us acknowledge that the Australian government got on board with this campaign, as we did sign on, but since then we have done nothing. Every three or four months I get to ask the senior bureaucrats during budget estimates hearings this: 'As we have signed on to the arms embargo and we have signed on to the commission of inquiry, what are we doing? Who have we spoken to? What diplomatic initiatives have we launched? What have we done on the margins of the General Assembly?' They always come back and say: 'Well, we've done nothing. We just signed on. We thought that was the whole point.' It is not enough to put our name on a list when these kinds of horrific human rights violations are occurring right now as I speak. We take more or less for granted the democratic freedoms that brought each of us into this place. The people working in Burma and their colleagues on all sides of that border who are working on that campaign internationally do not take those things for granted.

Lastly, I turn to cracking down on trade with Burma, an area on which we have found the Australian government to be simply intractable. It is absolutely unacceptable for a company in my home town of Perth to be profiting from oil and gas deals with the regime. It is unbelievable. There is less than $50 million in two-way trade between Australia and Burma. We are not even going to be offending the kinds of interest groups that periodically terrorise Australian governments when we talk about sanctions with particular regimes. This one is dead easy. Twinza Oil, operating out of an office in Nedlands in Perth, is doing deals with the Burmese regime for oil and gas extraction. That is how the regime funds the civil war that it is conducting against its own people. It is horrific to imagine that Australia could even be complicit indirectly. So I think this direct complicity would be horrifying to most right-thinking Australians. One thing that the Australian government could do right now is simply cease two-way trade between Australia and Burma, whether it be in gemstones, forestry or, indeed, oil and gas. Burma is being pillaged at the moment, and it is appalling that Australia would consider being part of that. I thank the Senate for leave to raise these important issues.

Question agreed to.