July 9, 2023
AMANDA STOKER: To help us understand what these two developments mean for Australians with ties to China as well as at trade relationships, I'm joined by Victorian Senator James Paterson. Senator Paterson, welcome to the program tonight. What's been the response that you've received from the Chinese Australian community to the Hong Kong authority’s decision to put a bounty on Kevin Yam and Ted Hui?
JAMES PATERSON: Amanda, it's great to be with you, and no disrespect to my other friends at Sky, but on my new favourite program on Sky News. This was a very chilling threat made by the Chinese Communist Party through the government of Hong Kong, through its proxy. First, as you say, to issue arrest warrants on an Australian resident and an Australian citizen, then to issue a bounty for information about them and finally to publicly say that they would be pursued for the rest of their lives and monitored wherever they are in the world. This is a very threatening attack on an Australian citizen and an Australian resident, and their rights to free speech, to campaign politically and to say what they feel in a liberal democracy like Australia. This is nothing less than the Chinese Communist Party trying to reach into the heart of Australian democracy and impose their political system on ours and impose their values on us. And so quite rightly, it has been strongly rejected by the Hong Kong exile community in Australia, as it should be, and roundly condemned in politics, which I really welcome.
STOKER: Does the imposition of the bounty increase the danger that these men face even while they are resident in Australia?
PATERSON: I think you made two really good points in your introduction, Amanda. Yes, a bounty on their heads means they can never sleep soundly at night, fearing that an agent of the Chinese Communist Party or frankly, just someone looking to make a buck won't be feeding information back on them to Beijing. Now, that would be a crime in Australia, and I know the Federal Police and ASIO would take that very seriously. So, no one should think they can get away with that. But the other point you made was really important, Amanda. Neither Ted nor Kevin can safely travel anywhere in the world that has an extradition treaty with either China or Hong Kong. And I'm ashamed to say today there are still dozens of countries around the world who have not yet done what Australia did back in 2020 and tore up our extradition treaty with Hong Kong. They should do so as soon as possible, because otherwise it's not a safe place for anyone to visit who has a disagreement with Beijing.
STOKER: Well, Australians should know you were a big part of the reason why Australia doesn't have an extradition treaty with China. Have Australian businesses who deal with or in China been briefed by the Australian Government about the impact of the changes that have been made to the espionage law?
PATERSON: That's a really good question. We don't know Amanda, but there was a report in The Australian last week which suggested that some Australian businesses who do business in China were in the dark about the implications of this new anti-espionage law, the reforms, so-called, in Beijing. It really has very profound implications for anyone operating in China, for anyone who has personnel that they employ in China that were already at very significant risk. And that's why the official travel advice from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade was that they should exercise extreme caution if they intended to travel to China because they're at risk of arbitrary detention and arrest. And that has been increased by this law because it effectively criminalises the commercial practice of engaging in business intelligence that is trying to assess the trends of the Chinese economy, the trends in legislation and law, and how that affects business interests and advising clients of that overseas is now potentially a crime in China. So I think the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Foreign Minister should consider, in fact, increasing our travel advice another step and advising people to reconsider their need to travel, which is the next level up, because I don't want to see another Australian detained like Yang Hengjun or Cheng Lei, and I don't want to see what happened to the so-called two Michaels from Canada, who were detained for a number of years for no reason
STOKER: It seems to me those risks recently increased substantially. How should Australia manage a trade relationship with a partner whose approaches to free speech, arbitrary detention, human rights and the justice system threaten the interests and freedoms of Australian citizens?
PATERSON: This is a really tricky issue, Amanda, because as you know, we don't trade with other countries in the world because we approve of their political system. We trade with
them because we have things we want to sell, and they have things they want to buy from us. And politicians shouldn't really intervene in that unless there's a really good national interest and national security reason to do so. But I think we have to be very cognisant of these risks. I think we need to manage these risks. We need to provide as much other options for Australians as possible to diversify their international trade so they're not reliant on a country which sees our trade as an opportunity to economically coerce us and as a weapon to hold over us. Most of our other trading partners don't do that to us and therefore trusted suppliers and trusted trading partners are a much better bet than an authoritarian regime that wants to weaponise trade against us.
STOKER: I'd like to think that smart operators in a free market would find partners who are less inclined to engage in those coercive behaviours. A more attractive destination for their goods. I want to get your thoughts on a different topic. The federal government agencies owning over 3,000 drones and other devices that have been manufactured by a Chinese company believed to be aggregating the data collected by each of its drones first. How does something like this possibly happen, particularly when we're involving the Australian government?
PATERSON: Amanda, this is a very good example of the risks that we engage in when we trade with authoritarian countries, particularly when it relates to technology, which is sophisticated, as is the case of these drones or previously in relation to CCTV cameras or software like the platform TikTok and WeChat. They are dangerous because they're internet connected, and they're control by a company which is beholden to the Chinese Communist Party and is assessed by our friends in the United States to be controlled by the People's Liberation Army. And so, they shouldn't be in any federal government departments, let alone the Australian Defence Force, the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Border Force, where my survey of the federal government identified them. They shouldn't have been bought in the first place, but now that they've been identified, we have to get rid of them and we have to make sure that this does not happen again. It shouldn't be the case that an Opposition Senator has to lodge questions on notice for the Senate to find out about these things. There needs to be proactive policy from the Albanese government to go out and identify those risks and remove them before I think of it.
STOKER: Quite right. But what is now being done to make sure this is made right?
PATERSON: Well, the first good step, which I give the government credit for, is when I started lodging these questions, when I started pursuing them over this, the drones in the Australian Defence Force, the Federal Police and the Border Force were grounded. Having said that, they are still operational in many other government departments and agencies, including the CSIRO, who has over a thousand of these, and in the ABC and SBS. I think they should think carefully about that because these drones are not just a cyber security risk, they're also a moral risk. This is a company which has been sanctioned for its involvement in the oppression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. I've called for the government to go the next step though, and establish a national security technology office within the Department of Home Affairs so they can start proactively assessing, identifying and mitigating these risks and getting rid of them.
STOKER: Sounds like a good move. Senator Paterson, thank you very much for your time on this Sunday night.
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