Topics: Australia should reopen embassy in Kyiv; Assasination attempt on Trump; Quad meeting; Albanese needs to give up bad policy; Senate sitting week;
04:15PM AEST
16 September 2024
Greg Jennett: Just on a different front, though, with the Senate sitting, that means Labor’s Senate Leader and Foreign Minister Penny Wong is in Canberra. There’s been further bombing and bloodshed in Ukraine in recent days, and Senator Wong has addressed the recent call by her opposite number, Simon Birmingham, for Australia’s mothballed embassy in Kyiv to be reopened.
[EXCERPT]
Penny Wong: We have always said that we would reopen the embassy when it’s safe to do so. You know, I recognise the symbolism of reopening the embassy, but the safety of Australians is of paramount importance, and you know yourself as someone who follows this very carefully, that we’ve seen some very heavy attacks on Kyiv in recent times. I’m certainly not interested in letting politics compromise official’s considerations of workplace health and safety assessments, and it’s disappointing that this is being used for political purposes, frankly.
[END OF EXCERPT]
Greg Jennett: Well, Shadow Foreign Minister Simon Birmingham joined us here soon after Question Time in the Senate. We covered the situation in Ukraine as well as on the home front. Simon Birmingham. It’s a senator’s only week. And with that noted, it’s a pleasure to have you with us here for a rather unusual sitting of the Parliament.
Simon Birmingham: Highlights.
Greg Jennett: Highlights. Yeah, I’ll take that. Look, a quick one on Ukraine. Penny Wong, you may have heard this morning suggested that politics shouldn’t compromise the safety of DFAT officials in Ukraine. Now, what’s your response to that? And who did you consult before landing at the position that Australia’s embassy in Kyiv should be reopened?
Simon Birmingham: Well, Greg, we have pursued this issue in terms of asking government officials through Senate estimates and other means, many questions to try to explore the detail behind the government’s reasoning. Of course, politics shouldn’t play a role, but nor should bureaucracy impede the ability of Australia to have an embassy open like all of our partners do. From Ireland to Indonesia, from Canada through the United Kingdom and so many other countries. Around 70 countries have managed to reopen their embassies in Kyiv, whilst the Australian one has stayed shut. So, what is it about the advice going to minister Wong and her department that keeps the Australian Embassy shut when everybody else around the world is managing to do so with appropriate safety and regard for their diplomatic staff?
Greg Jennett: Do you not accept that safety is the basis on which we’ve arrived at this position, where it remains mothballed?
Simon Birmingham: Well, that is the argument being put by the government. But you’ve got to ask, why is it that Australian diplomats or Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is incapable of structuring safe working arrangements for us to have officials in Kyiv getting real time briefings, face-to-face briefings, accurate intelligence and information that we can’t get from another city in the same way. Why is that impossible for Australia, yet possible for everybody else, including most notably Canada, with whom we share the same building. So Canadian embassy staff and Canada’s ambassador are working out of the building that still has Australia’s sign out the front has an empty flagpole for the Australian flag. Canada’s there. Why can’t we manage to come up with the same type of safety protocols and standards as Canada or others to meet our laws? What’s wrong with our department or our laws that is prohibiting this when other nations can do so?
Greg Jennett: Okay, now, thank you for responding to that. We wanted to hear it and thought it fair to ask, why don’t we stick on foreign affairs matters? There’s been another attempt or, if you like, plot unsuccessful to assassinate Donald Trump. It’s been thwarted, of course. His rival, Kamala Harris has said violence has no place in America. Clearly, gun violence has an established place in America. Even so, do you hold fears for the remaining conduct of this presidential campaign and the safety of it over the next eight weeks?
Simon Birmingham: Greg, gun violence does have too big a place in America, and it is one of the sharpest contrasts between our country and America. We are both great democracies. We champion many similar values within our nations and on the world stage. But tragically, the gun culture and the gun violence is a problem. When you see these types of incidents, then yes, you have to have concern that copycats or others who may be motivated or mobilised by them could be spurred on not just against former President Trump, or against Vice President Harris, or indeed against any other officials campaigning for election in the US.
Greg Jennett: Could that be a threat to the conduct of the campaign and arguably to the legitimacy of the result?
Simon Birmingham: I see no reason to believe it will impact the legitimacy of the result. America is a robust democracy. They have demonstrated time and again the resilience of that democracy through many troubling times, not just in recent years, but in decades past, when we go back, of course to incidents that occurred during the 1960s, including tragic assassinations. At those times, their democracy withstood those challenges. But I suspect many Australians would share my views that we all wish that that the great country of America had a very different gun culture that meant we weren’t having such conversations.
Greg Jennett: Of course. Now, separately to that, quite separately, is it right for Prime Minister Albanese to be going to Delaware for the Quad talks, and should he seek out any other candidate or political leader other than Joe Biden and the Quad membership while there?
Simon Birmingham: Well, it’s absolutely critical that Australia is at Quad leadership discussions. The previous Coalition government worked hard to restore the Quad. If you recall, the Labor government under Kevin Rudd walked away from the Quad, which importantly brings geographic diversity in our region together India, Japan, the United States, Australia gives us a crucial forum for critical dialogue that touches on regional stability and can help to underpin the security and safety of our region. We made sure the Quad was brought back to life, we elevated it to leaders’ level, and we look to make sure that there is strong, effective engagement in the Quad by the Albanese Government and they don’t repeat the mistakes of the previous Labor government.
Greg Jennett: Would you see it noting that, would you see it as a lost opportunity to go all that way to the eastern side of the United States and not seek some engagement with candidates, Trump or Harris?
Simon Birmingham: Look, it’s a sensitive time. Obviously, if the opportunities are there, I would hope that the Prime Minister would seize the opportunities and that I would hope that Ambassador Kevin Rudd is looking to find those opportunities if they can be made. But candidates are going to be very busy in the last few weeks of this critical election campaign for the US. So, we would hope to see that. And equally that the Prime Minister, knowing the importance of other congressional discussions to upholding AUKUS and will not just be meeting with President Biden, but will certainly be reaching out in other ways to cement Australia’s position as he should be.
Greg Jennett: I’m sure they’ll be trying to cram in whatever they can on what is a very brief trip, as far as we can tell. Bring it back to domestic politics here. There’s quite a list of ambitions the government is having trouble fulfilling in the Senate housing being debated there today. RBA reform, Future Made in Australia. Is the Coalition now in that phase of the parliament, where it’s pursuing the deliberate frustration of the government’s agenda?
Simon Birmingham: No, Greg, these are things for which we have either been very clear about having fundamental disagreements with the government around the policy, or we’ve tried to negotiate and have been unable to get the type of outcomes we want from the government. And the risk this week now is that Labor, in wanting to pursue far reaching reforms to the Reserve Bank, to environmental laws, to spend billions of dollars in terms of industry subsidies and housing policies that mean government funds take a stake in people’s own personal homes. The risk is that Labor will end up doing desperate deals with the Greens. And rather than that type of desperation, Anthony Albanese should be clear and should let his policies stand or fall on their merits rather than run the risk of huge extra taxpayer spending and great big, counterproductive intervention in the economy that could come from yet more Labor-Greens deals on.
Greg Jennett: Any of those measures I listed or which you mentioned. Are you prepared to give them the first phase of what could become a double dissolution trigger by failure to pass those bills?
Simon Birmingham: Well, we’re past the point of double dissolutions being possible in the Parliament. So, we will now, in terms of the normal run of the Parliament, see it either an early election, if that’s what Anthony Albanese decides, or it will run its normal term with a normal election. You know, we are clear in our positions. We don’t think the country needs big new interventionist environmental laws. We don’t think the country needs to see the independence of the Reserve Bank undermined. We don’t think it’s in Australia’s interests for billions of dollars of industry subsidies to create a whole new rent seeking industry out there, and we don’t think it’s in the interests of Australians to have the Albanese Labor Government co-owning their homes with them, rather than actually getting the fundamentals right for people to own their own homes themselves and for our economy to grow and flourish in the private sector without such heavy handed government intervention.
Greg Jennett: All right. That’s the parliament we’ve got. Let’s see what the Senate gets done this week. Simon Birmingham, we’ll wrap it up there.
Simon Birmingham: Thanks, Greg. My pleasure.
[ENDS]