November 20, 2023
Thank you to the Lowy Institute and the National Foundation for Australia-China relations for bringing us together for this dialogue.
To our guests, welcome to Australia.
Our discussions here this week could not be more timely.
For Australia, our bilateral relationship with China is one of our most consequential.
It is also one of the most complex.
I believe at the heart of a functional relationship is a genuine understanding of the perspective of the other party.
That can only be achieved through honest dialogue.
So it is a good thing we are meeting here tonight.
I am grateful for this opportunity to share my perspective.
But I am equally interested to hear yours.
I don’t just welcome the resumption of dialogue on a political level, but a personal one too.
As you may know, I ran into some difficulties obtaining a visa to visit China in 2019.
But at the top of my bucket list of things to do before I die is to visit Chengdu in Sichuan Province, because I love Sichuan cuisine.
I’ve eaten it in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taipei, Singapore, San Francisco, Melbourne and just about every other China town I’ve visited around the world.
But we all know there is nothing like the original.
The stabilisation of our relationship offers me some hope one day I will be able to enjoy the real thing.
The Opposition has welcomed the resumption of Ministerial and Leader level-dialogues between the Australian and Chinese governments, and we have provided bipartisan support for the Albanese government’s objective of stabilising our relationship.
We always believed it was unproductive and unfortunate that this dialogue was not possible when we were in government.
Because it is when we disagree that dialogue is most important.
The reality is that China is not going anywhere, and nor is Australia.
The Chinese Communist Party will never resile from its interests, and I assure you neither will Australia.
Although Senator Ayers and I will disagree on many matters domestically, I know we are in heated agreement on that.
So the task we have on behalf of each of our people is to find a way to coexist peacefully in the Indo-Pacific region.
Conflict would be enormously costly for both of us, as well as the entire region and the world.
Now is a good time to have a stocktake of where we are in the bilateral relationship.
The Prime Minister’s mantra that we should “cooperate where we can, disagree where we must, and engage in our national interest” offers a useful framework for that assessment.
There is no doubt that there are many areas for fruitful cooperation between Australia and China, most obviously, on the economy.
Australia does not only trade with countries who share our worldview, or who have the same political system as ours.
We trade on the basis of comparative advantage.
It just so happens that Australia produces a great deal of what China needs, and China produces a great deal of what we need as well.
That is a mutually beneficial exchange, and one that both of our people have benefited from immensely in recent decades.
We are proud to have played a part in assisting the Chinese people to lift themselves out of poverty through their own entrepreneurship and ingenuity, something I celebrated in my maiden speech to the Senate in 2016.
We largely leave it to businesses to make their own risk assessments about where they seek export opportunities, and from whom they import.
We are an open economy and a free trading nation.
We impose very few formal restrictions on our international trade and that is part of the reason for our prosperity.
Like China does, we of course reserve the right to ensure that foreign investment in our country is consistent with our national interest, and will continue to do so.
It is a good thing that many of the barriers to trade between us are now being removed to the benefit of Australian exporters and Chinese consumers.
But the lesson most Australian businesses have taken from the last few years following China’s unjustified sanctions against our economy is that China is a risky partner.
It’s why many businesses are seeking to diversify their international markets and supply chains.
There are of course other global challenges in which we have a shared interest with China and all other nations in solving, including climate change and development, particularly here in the Pacific.
Our development assistance must always respect the sovereignty and self determination of the people of the region, not be used as a tool to obtain strategic advantage.
Australia and China have very deep cultural and interpersonal links.
There’s no question this has enriched our nation.
Chinese migrants first came to Australia more than 200 years ago, and have made significant contributions to our economy and society in that time.
Australians greatly admire the contribution of Chinese civilisation, culture and cuisine to our country and the world.
And we jealously guard the rights and freedoms of our Chinese Australian community to exercise their freedom of speech and engage in political activism, whether they share my perspective on our bilateral relationship or completely disagree with it.
Unfortunately, the treatment of Chinese Australians is one of the many areas for disagreement.
Our intelligence agencies assess that foreign interference, espionage, state-backed cyber attacks and intellectual property theft are at record highs.
And the Chinese government is the number one source of each of them.
We can never accept transnational repression of our citizens or foreign interference in our democracy.
While we were delighted to welcome home Australian citizen Cheng Lei, we remain deeply concerned for the welfare of Dr Yang Hengjun, who we believe is unjustly detained and who should be freed to reunited with his family here in Australia.
China’s actions in the region matter to Australia and many other nations.
The reports of unprofessional and unsafe conduct by the People’s Liberation Army-Navy towards HMAS Toowoomba in international waters last week are deeply concerning.
Actions like these, and the ones we saw in 2022 from the PLA Air Force and Navy towards Royal Australia Air Force assets in the region are not conducive to the ongoing stabilisation of our relationship, let alone friendship.
As a liberal democracy, it is consistent with our values to be outspoken about human rights challenges, wherever they arise in the world.
We remain troubled by the treatment of Uyghurs, Tibetans, Hong Kongers and others in China.
All we ask of the Chinese government is that it live up to the obligations it voluntarily signed up to and continues to claim to uphold, including the international declaration on human rights.
We acknowledge the importance of the One-China principle to the Chinese government, and we continue to abide by our own One China policy, which has deep bipartisan support and dates back decades.
We don’t accept attempts to redefine our policy to be something it is not, and we remain resolutely opposed to any non-peaceful changes to the status quo across the Taiwan Straits.
Growing up I went to a public school in Melbourne along with many Chinese Australians.
My first paid job was working in a $2 shop nearby for a Chinese Australian family of one of my classmates.
I was the first non-Chinese employee they hired.
They gave me my first sense of financial independence, and I learned from them a new appreciation of the virtues of hard work, sacrifice and commitment to family.
Since then I have had a deep affection for the Chinese Australian community and a fascination for China.
I haven’t seen them for years, and I don’t know what their views are today about our bilateral relationship or whether they agree with the stances I have taken on these issues.
But it is families like theirs that motivated me to speak out on these issues, and who I often think about when confronted with the complex reality of the engagement between our two countries today.
For their sake and everyone else in both of our countries it is important that we get this right.
Thank you.
ENDS
