Rex Patrick (SA, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I seek leave to table an explanatory memorandum relating to the bill.

Leave granted.

I table an explanatory memorandum and I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

The purpose of the Customs Amendment (Banning Goods Produced By Uyghur Forced Labour) Bill 2020 is to ban the importation of goods from Xinjiang Province in the People's Republic of China as well as goods from other parts of China that are produced in whole or part by forced labour.

The Australian Parliament has expressed strong support for international efforts to suppress modern slavery. Consistent with that the Australian Parliament needs to take a strong stand against the well documented abuse of hundreds of thousands of Uyghur people in Xinjiang in the People's Republic of China.

It would be a grave human rights failure if Australia, under our Free Trade Agreement with China, were to turn a blind eye to profiteering from what amounts to the massive use of slave labour.

The Chinese Communist regime's persecution of the Uyghur people is undeniable.

More than one million people have been rounded up and put in internment camps across Xinjiang. Mass surveillance, restrictions on free movement, and widespread persecution of the Uyghur people have been confirmed beyond doubt. Torture, other forms of gross abuse, coercion and population control have been widely reported and confirmed by credible witnesses and sources.

This terrible situation is widely recognised for what it is – nothing less than genocide.

The United States Government and the House of Representatives of the United States Congress have both acted in relation to the exploitation of detained Uyghur people.

The US Government has ordered the banning of imports of cotton, clothing and computer components from four companies and a manufacturing facility in north western China because of their suspected reliance on forced labour.

The US House of Representatives has voted by an overwhelming bipartisan majority in favour of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Bill to ban imports from China's Xinjiang region.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) has recently launched a data project mapping Xinjiang's detention system with 380 sites of suspected re-education camps, detention centres and prisons that have been built or expanded since 2017.

In a previous research report published in March 2020 ASPI identified 83 Chinese and foreign companies, including many well-known international brands, benefiting directly or indirectly from the use of Uyghur detainees transferred to locations outside Xinjiang.

ASPI estimated that at least 80,000 Uyghurs were transferred out of Xinjiang and assigned to Chinese factories in a range of supply chains including electronics, textiles, and automotives. The report identified at least 27 factories in nine Chinese provinces that are using Uyghur labour transferred from Xinjiang.

The Canadian Parliament has also gathered much credible evidence of the gross human rights violations against the Uyghur people.

On 20 October 2020, the Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the Canadian Parliament's Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development released its findings from a major inquiry into the human rights situation in Xinjiang.

The Subcommittee's report observed that the Chinese Government's mass detention of Uyghurs is "the largest mass detention of a minority community since the Holocaust."

The Subcommittee's report documents extensive and compelling evidence of gross human rights abuses including torture, extensive repression, mass surveillance and population control.

With regard to forced labour, the Subcommittee made the following observations and recommendations:

Witnesses noted that, starting in 2018, detainees from concentration camps began being transferred into different types of coercive labour, both in Xinjiang and to other regions of China, as part of a "poverty reduction" initiative. They warned that this forced labour is integrated into the supply chains of many large international corporations and contributes to the production of many products sold in Canada and other western nations. The United States of America recently issued a notice to companies warning that their supply chains potentially contain goods manufactured through the forced labour of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims. The Government of Canada should issue to Canadian companies, whose supply chains are potentially exposed to the forced labour of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims, a notice similar to the one issued by the Government of the United States of America for that reason. It is also important for the Government of Canada to investigate potentially problematic sources of consumer goods and to take a strong stand against the use of forced labour, particularly when it involves Canadian companies.

The Canadian Human Rights Subcommittee unequivocally condemned the actions of the Chinese Government and expressed the view that the actions of the Chinese Communist Party constitute genocide as laid out in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

The Canadian Human Rights Subcommittee further emphasised that the international community has a responsibility to protect Uyghurs under the international norm of the Responsibility to Protect, of which the objective is to ensure the international community prevents mass atrocity crimes of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.

The Human Rights Subcommittee of this Parliament's Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade has also received extensive submissions and testimony from members of the Uyghur diaspora in Australia and human rights organisations relating to human rights violations in Xinjiang and elsewhere in China that are entirely consistent with the findings of the Canadian inquiry.

The massive and systematic oppression of the Uyghur people by the Chinese Government is undeniable. The exploitation of detained Uyghurs as a captive labour force is clear.

If Australia is to be true to the democratic values we hold, we need to leave the Chinese Government in no doubt that its conduct is unconscionable and unacceptable.

This Bill will achieve that objective through the imposition of an absolute prohibition on the importation of all goods produced or manufactured in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China, and all goods produced or manufactured in China through the use of forced labour as defined by the Criminal Code Act 1995.

Section 270.6 of the Criminal Code definesforced labour as the condition of a person, the victim, who provides labour or services if, because of the use of coercion, threat or deception the victim would not consider himself or herself to be free to cease providing the labour or services, or to leave the place or area where the victim provides the labour or services.

That definition will fully cover China's exploitation of Uyghur forced labour. The importation of any goods found to have been produced in Xinjiang, or elsewhere in China by forced labour, will then by subject to the same penalties that apply to the importation of other goods designated as prohibited imports by regulations made under the Customs Act 1901.

This is a very necessary measure that supports Australia's longstanding commitment to internationally recognised human rights.

It would be a grave failure on the part of the Australian Parliament if we do not call out and act to limit the massive abuses of human rights by the Chinese Communist regime.

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.