Page 2744 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 21 November 1989
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problem. Members, I wished in the adjournment debate that was to occur to address, as I called it, the failure of the Australian Government to respond positively and humanely to the situation of overseas Chinese students in Australia.
MR SPEAKER: Mr Collaery, you need to seek leave to make your statement.
MR COLLAERY: I seek leave to make a statement on that subject.
Leave granted.
MR COLLAERY: Members will recall an article in the Canberra Times last Sunday suggesting that this Assembly was somehow wrong in its priorities in addressing, in the adjournment debate, the question of human rights, foreign policy concerns, the Holocaust and the Berlin Wall. We should not be deterred, in my view, by the pressures that this one daily newspaper town places upon us as elected representatives of a people with conscience. Canberra is the seat of government; the source of our national aspiration; and the home of the Australian National University, the future University of Canberra, the TAFE system and the many community groups which work towards student exchange and cultural interchange.
Recently in this house we reached a bipartisan agreement that Canberra should become a centre of excellence in, amongst other things, education, and in other fields of endeavour. Excellence and a place in the international order do not come without their price, and that price is an unyielding acceptance of fundamental values, an adherence to basic civilised values and the recognition of fundamental human rights. We would do well to recall these words spoken by Bill Hayden, the then Leader of the Federal Opposition, on 29 September 1977. He said:
If Australia is to play a useful role in international affairs, then we must have a balanced view of our place in the world. It will be necessary for us to resist the temptation either to overplay our importance or to underrate it. We should see the real world clearly and not settle for some blurred perspective, distorted by rigid ideological preconceptions. In doing these things, it is important not only that we be morally inspired, but also that we distinguish between moral inspiration and the unhelpful self-righteousness of moralising.
He went on to say:
Underlying the Labor Party's approach to international relations is a firm commitment to moral values. It was because of this commitment to moral purpose in international relations that the general thrust of the American Carter
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