Page 2748 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 21 November 1989
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house tonight, is not justified in seeking refugee status? Could it be proposed that that person will ever be safe from retribution? Why is the Australian Government refusing to process refugee applications from high-profile PRC citizens currently in Australia? I stress that the example given is far from being the highest-profile example here at the moment.
I call upon the Australian Government to acknowledge the number of PRC students who have applied for refugee status and who are seeking a determination of their present situation so they can get on with their studies or their future lives or seek refugee entry to other countries. It will be a great shame to this country if they now commence applying for refugee entry to other Western democracies.
I ask the Prime Minister, consistent with intelligence objectives, to proceed very firmly with identified Chinese intelligence activity in Australia. In particular, as soon as the full structures and identities of the purification units, as they are known, and their correspondents, who are also known, are identified, I ask that they be rounded up and removed from this country and from the campuses and the halls of residence of our places of study.
The Government of the People's Republic of China is using video films of demonstrators in Canberra in political re-education classes in some purification institutes in Beijing. That is a great shame. If that claim is correct, then I ask the commercial film media to be careful in the distribution of duplicate film tapes and the security of their archival material. Much of what the channels have not shown may have been procured and is being shown in Beijing at the present time.
Finally, Mr Speaker, I seek leave to table a chronology of what is perceived by the Chinese students in Canberra to be a history of harassment by their embassy against themselves and their current democratic movement at the present time.
Leave granted.
MR HUMPHRIES (8.14): I wish to briefly add the support of my party to the thrust of Mr Collaery's comments. Certainly it is a matter of pride to me that our country has been a place of hospitality to people who are refugees from, in particular - - -
MR SPEAKER: Order! Mr Humphries, I would request that you seek leave to speak. I have overlooked the point that there is no motion before the house.
MR HUMPHRIES: I seek leave to make a short statement in the same vein as Mr Collaery.
Leave granted.
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