Jessica Collins (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee's report on democracy and human rights in Myanmar. I want to reflect on the significance of this particular report for me.

For me, one of the huge motivations to get into politics was that I did my PhD research with refugees from Myanmar, from Burma, who were being resettled from the Thai-Burma border to Australia. I really wanted to be able to give them a voice, and the very first hearing I chaired on the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee was for this particular inquiry into the humanitarian situation in Myanmar. This is something that has been particularly special and significant to me but also the people before me in being able to give them a voice. I commend the people who also worked hard on this hearing and on this report. It's an excellent report. It has excellent recommendations for supporting the humanitarian situation in Myanmar.

The very first thing we did in this report was establish that the legitimacy of the 2025-26 general election in Myanmar—it was an absolute sham. It has been five years since the coup. They had the three-phase election over a few months. They excluded whole townships. They killed people. They forced people to vote. They didn't get a legitimate election out of that, and yet the so-called government there is trying to claim a victory on that. We call on the Australian government to stand up and call this a sham election. It is not a legitimate government. In my view, it never really has been. In its constitution, 75 per cent of the seats are reserved for the military in that parliament. Until that constitution is changed—I don't think it's a real government at all.

We also looked into the current state of human rights in Myanmar. They are worsening. They are worsening in a very bad way. There is violence against the civilians. There are continued air strikes, artillery attacks and whole villages burned down. There are no services. There is no safety for the good people of Myanmar. There is torture and there are mass arrests even after these so-called elections. The air strikes continue against vulnerable families on the ground. We call on the government to help the good people of Myanmar by imposing harder, faster sanctions on the sources of money that continue to feed this evil war and on the central banks that the military, the Tatmadaw, are getting their funds through. The experts have said that it's not going to affect the people on the ground because the services don't exist for them anyway.

We call for sanctions on the jet fuel to disrupt the supply chains so we can stop those evil air strikes on the good people of Myanmar. We call on the Australian government to help strengthen civil society. It's a really important way to be able to get aid into the country and into the refugee camps. It's really difficult to do that at the moment, but it is absolutely needed, especially with the withdrawal of USAID. We have tens of thousands of good new Australians, people from Burma, or Myanmar, living here in Australia helping the good folk back at home. I just want to thank everybody who participated in this hearing and everybody who I have grown to know over the past 15 years or so. Every weekend these people go out and they raise money for the people back at home, trying to get money to send there. They are giving everything out of their own pockets and their own time to help everyone back at home. I just want to thank everybody for all the beautiful work that they do to try to support the good people of Burma.