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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 9 Hansard (7 September) . . Page.. 3028 ..

MS CARNELL (continuing):

Government is an important part, but the bottom line here is friendship and relationships at school level, community level, organisation level and business level; in other words, relationships that can lead and will lead to a greater regard for human rights, to more openness, to better long-term discussions and engagements and to serious benefits for both cities.

MR KAINE (5.17): I will be quite brief. I do not support this initiative on the part of the government. I do not believe that we can stand aside and ignore the international reputation that the People's Republic of China has in the area of human relations. We cannot just put all that aside and say that we will go into this sister city relationship.

The Chief Minister has outlined all of the good things that have been happening. They have happened without a sister city relationship with Beijing. I have no doubt that they will continue to do so, because China sees them as valuable in themselves. It is reasonable to do all of those things as part of a program of influencing China through those initiatives-technological, educational, art and cultural-to bring China to a different way of thinking about human rights.

But when you go a step further and set up a city sister relationship, I think you are going one stage too far at this point in the developing relationship between China and the rest of the world. We are not isolated from the rest of the world. We have to be concerned about those major issues.

The Chief Minister read out a lot of testimonials about how great this relationship is going to be. I note that there were not too many testimonials from local organisations. They were almost all from associations with Chinese affiliations.

Ms Carnell: They were all local.

MR KAINE: If you want to get into a private debate, we will go outside and do it. I did not hear, for example, any testimonial from an international human rights organisation. Where was the testimonial from Amnesty International? There was not one, nor is there likely to be in the foreseeable future.

Given the international climate, I cannot conceive how the Chief Minister could have taken this proposal this far without testing public opinion. I believe that if she took even the first step towards testing public opinion she would get a resounding no.

I said that I was not going to take too much time. I do not think I need to. I just want to make my position quite clear. I do not think that one has to go any further to examine and consider the sort of relationship we should enter into with China than to look at China's record in Tibet. Tibet is a country that was invaded in 1949. The whole national system has been suppressed and destroyed. The system is run by China, for China.

China is exploiting the country, removing the natural resources. As I said, China has suppressed all of the national institutions of what was formerly an independent nation. China has virtually destroyed Tibet's religious practices. It has imprisoned and tortured thousands of people in that country alone. That is all on the public record. I am sure that the Chief Minister is as aware of it as I am. Yet she says that we are justified in going into this close, intimate, one-to-one relationship.

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