Senate debates

Tuesday, 23 November 2021

Adjournment

China, Australian Broadcasting Corporation

8:53 pm

Photo of James McGrathJames McGrath (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | | Hansard source

Over recent months, China has continued to defy the sovereignty of Taiwan and many other nations in our immediate region. Earlier this year, both China and Russia sent a chilling message to the rest of the world in staging war games in north-western China. This display of strength not only demonstrates the increasingly close ties between Beijing and Moscow but shows the culpability between the two powers, with Russian forces seen firing Chinese weapons. Communist China has grown arrogantly comfortable, to a worrying degree, in showing its preparedness for conflict. This new show of strength is the next step in China's strategy to assert their dominance and expand their influence in the region.

Communist China is a bully. It comes as the rest of the world turns a blind eye to the fact that China's pressure in Hong Kong has completely overthrown the one country, two systems agreement. Hong Kong has gone. Hong Kong is one of the many tragedies arising from COVID-19 pandemic. Indeed, it was the first casualty. I think it is very clear who will be next, and, if the time comes, it will be one of the greatest tests for the free world. Will we come to the aid of our democracy-loving friends in Taiwan or sit idly by and let it happen, like Chamberlain succumbing to 'peace in our time', only to find what comes down the track far worse?

The threat to Taiwan is ever reflected in the gradual rise of soft-power China in influencing the rest of the world to maintain authority over the language around Taiwan. Back in August, Beijing spectacularly expelled the Lithuanian ambassador and withdrew its own envoy from Lithuania because that nation moved to set up diplomatic ties with Taiwan, while, in recent days, China has further reduced the level of its diplomatic relations with Lithuania to below ambassador level for allowing Taiwan to set up an office under its own name in Lithuania. Either way that China is increasing its pressure on both Taiwan and the rest of the word cannot go unnoticed. This mostly unfettered expansion and the ability to make demands over so many nations mean that Communist China is not only strategising for global leadership—or, better put, dictatorship—but seeks to position itself as a price-taker, not a giver, when it comes to trade.

I have previously warned about the United States's concern about China's Coast Guard Law that explicitly allows its coastguard to fire on foreign vessels in pursuit of China's claims and ongoing territorial and maritime disputes in the East China and South China seas. In addition, China flexed their muscle by sending multiple spy ships to observe this year's Talisman-Sabre exercise off the coast of Rockhampton, all the while performing their own military drills off the coast of Taiwan in what is widely seen as a dress rehearsal for an invasion of that country, despite Washington's interventions. This assertive and provocative behaviour from the Communist Party in China has fast become their default reaction to any decision that they do not favour. It will continue to be used to intimidate China's maritime neighbours, especially in asserting its unlawful maritime claims in the South China Sea, and that is why our government has turned to our strongest, oldest and most steadfast allies in the United States and the United Kingdom. I cannot stress enough how significant the new trilateral security pact, AUKUS, is. As China grows more aggressive by the day, this partnership is crucial to ensuring enduring peace, as well as ensuring that free and open trade continues in our region.

We should always endeavour to work with China. However, we cannot be ignorant of their continued efforts to coerce and intimidate other countries. Communist China is the greatest threat to peace and the rule of law since Stalin's Soviet Union. We must be pragmatic, yet realistic, about the actions of China and what they mean for us and our allies. We must always stand up for our values as a liberal democracy. We cannot pretend that the regime in China today or tomorrow is the same as the China we have dealt with in the past. Economic war has already been declared on Western nations around the globe, and here in Australia we've already felt the effects of that on our wine, our barley and our beef. We must carefully consider how we continue to deal with China and the exemptions we sometimes afford them. As China continues to exert this subtle yet ever-present force, it is important that the rest of the free world continues to take a strong stance on China. We need to hold China to the same standard on issues of trade, law and human rights. We must be careful and we must be aware.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation needs to be reformed to be saved from itself. The ABC is a $1.1 billion organisation funded by the taxpayer, yet the ABC, along the track, has wandered off course, leaving us in the unfortunate position we are in now, wondering what we should do with the ABC. We saw that today in the Senate where Labor and the Greens combined to stop an inquiry into something as innocent as the complaints process within the ABC. What we're seeing is a grotesque, left-wing, back-scratching orgy of flatulent arrogance from the ABC and those on the Left. This ABC who sneers at us is led by an arrogant chair who sees the ABC as a country apart from Australia. And that is quite sad.

The inevitable result of decades of free rein, of grossly excessive budgets and diminished accountability is that we've ended up with an inner-city hive of woke workers, hiring woke friends to do their woke work in their quest to wokify the world. But in conjunction with the first-night crowd, the chair of the ABC and her fellow first-nighters are at the opera, chinking their champagne glasses, sneering at middle Australia and at those who believe in a pluralistic, diverse media market. It is time for there to be reform of the ABC. It is time for the recruitment process to be opened up. It is time for their inner-city headquarters to be sold and for their staff to be shifted to regional Australia. It is time for there to be a proper review of the charter of the ABC.

But it needs to go beyond that. I have written to the minister for communications calling for an inquiry into the future of public broadcasting in this country. We have the ABC model, which is essentially an old wireless trundling along, yet we have a pluralistic, diverse media market. And the ABC, this taxpayer funded monolith, is not fit for purpose in the 21st century. So we need an inquiry into the future of public broadcasting in Australia. We need to determine whether there is a need to fund triple J and all these different TV and radio stations. I will say, as someone who lives and spends a lot of their time in regional Queensland, there is a place for a taxpayer funded broadcaster in regional Queensland and regional Australia because there is not a diverse media market there. But in terms of the rest of our country, it is time for a royal commission into the future of public broadcasting in this country. It is time that we stood up for the taxpayers of this country who are not getting value for money, and it is time that the board of the ABC—that most arrogant organisation—realise they are losing middle Australia because we have choice. There is so much diversity in our media market and it would be sad if the ABC were to fail and fall over. I want the ABC to be saved. I want it to be reformed so it can be saved from itself.