Senator KITCHING (Victoria) (10:32): Clearly, when we look at the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, we see a prime minister who is out of his depth on foreign policy. We saw it on full display at the G7, where he was Nigel No Mates on the phone, and what we also see is a prime minister who has failed upward his entire career. The problem, of course, is that he now has serious responsibility. He has little comprehension of that with which he is dealing. His colleagues know what it means when the most virulently nationalist and tabloid propaganda newspaper outside of North Korea praises an Australian prime minister's rhetoric. His blind repetition of the talking points of a foreign government is cause for grave concern. Let's look at the Global Times. Let's look at some recent articles that they've published. One is headed 'China urges US to stop malicious hyping on South China Sea'. Another is 'US bellicose stance cannot jolt China'. It goes on to talk about Huawei and divisions within the US administration. There is 'Be wary of US intervention in China-ASEAN cooperation.' We all know that China has sought to interfere in ASEAN, of which they are not a member, through initiatives in ASEAN countries. That has raised concerns about how ASEAN is going to progress. Another is 'China should hasten defence system deployment in the South China Sea: analysts'. Then they go through and quote them. You won't be surprised to know that all of those analysts believe in hastening defence system deployment in the South China Sea. Of course, we don't really consider it 'defence'. Another is, 'Xinjiang policy is justified', for an article that talks about the Uyghur Autonomous Region. But my favourite has been, 'Reuters fake report on Hong Kong is a stain on global journalism'. The article talks about the fake news on the Hong Kong government. It says: When a crisis erupts in a developing country— that is, Hong Kong; I'm sure most Hong Kong people would not consider their region to be 'developing'— some Western media agencies have played a disgraceful role by taking advantage of its communication influence. It then goes on to say that the Reuters report: … is typical of Western news agencies that purposely set out to create maximum change at minimum cost by shaping public opinion at critical moments. In light of this action, Reuters has severely deviated from the bottom line of journalism ethics that all news agencies should follow. It has carried out what US and British intelligence agencies usually do. I am sure Reuters will love that! The Prime Minister has made himself to be a useful idiot, and that's the most generous interpretation one can have on that. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Bernardi ): Order. Senator Kitching. I ask you to reconsider the phraseology there. I don't consider it parliamentary. Senator KITCHING: He has made himself useful to another government. It's not that he's been ignorant of Ms Liu. Let me tell you a story from a Victorian Liberal Party fundraiser from when the Prime Minister was the Treasurer. They were at a function and there were questions afterward. Mr Morrison had given a speech, presumably about what an excellent economic manager he's turned out to be—doubling federal government debt to more than half a trillion dollars, stagnating wages et cetera. So he'd given a speech about that. Then there was a question and answer component to the evening, and Ms Liu was there. Ms Liu repeated the Chinese Communist Party line on the South China Sea and asked Mr Morrison to validate that line. Mr Morrison afterwards asked the organisers of the function: 'Oh, is Gladys now the member for Chisholm? Is Gladys a member of the CCP?' Of course, he was only half joking. So Mr Morrison cannot claim ignorance about Ms Liu. He has known for a very long time about her disposition on these matters. But, of course—and I will come to this—Ms Liu offers something that is actually quite rare in political parties, and that is the ability to raise a lot of money. There is a real problem in that. As Prime Minister, one of Mr Morrison's main purposes—other than ensuring national prosperity, which, as we can see he has totally and abysmally failed at—is to ensure national security. He sees everything through the prism of a party political prank. As the Australian Prime Minister, he has no higher duty than being our representative, and that includes representing and communicating the values of our system to the nation and to the world. He has proven himself incapable of doing so. Mr Morrison's being praised by that particular publication, the Global Times, is a prize he will wear like a crown of thorns. On social media he is now being denounced as ScoMao. He is being denounced at ScoMao by Australians who are gravely concerned by his handling of Ms Liu. No wonder the Liberals don't want her to explain herself in the chamber. Mr Morrison is highly experienced—I was going to say that Mr Morrison is often referred to as 'the liar from the shire', but I won't, and I'll withdraw that immediately. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Thank you, Senator Kitching. Senator KITCHING: But he is highly experienced at defending the indefensible. We've seen that over the course of his entire career and, in fact, before he came into politics, when he was at the tourism board. Of course, his own preselection raised many questions in the New South Wales branch of the Liberal Party. The truth that we need to recognise is that Australians of Chinese descent love Australia. They love this country, they love being here and they love living here, and this is because they have a direct comparison with the way of life that they experienced as younger people. That is why they love living here. They love our freedom. They are very realistic about the government in the country from which they came, which doesn't offer its own citizens the same freedoms that they have here, although the Prime Minister seems to think otherwise—an ignorant view and a typically simplistic view from the least qualified, worst credentialed, most clueless Prime Minister on foreign policy in our history. The only thing in all of this that gives me comfort is knowing that there are many Liberal MPs who see our foreign policy and our role in the region with much more realism than the Prime Minister does. They worry about his delusional view and they worry about Ms Liu the most. In amongst Ms Liu's other questionable behaviour, the latest of which we saw today, is Ms Liu offering references in exchange for being 'volunteers' on her campaign—that is, she was going to give people references if they volunteered. But do you know what Victorian Liberals have been hearing about since Ms Liu gave that interview on Andrew Bolt's program and what they are most concerned about? They are most concerned that Ms Liu has passed on electoral role or data feedback to another state actor. The people who live in Melbourne in the Chinese Australian community are concerned that their information is being passed on to the Chinese government and the CCP. And the reason they are concerned about that is that they make their own money there, and they would like to bring that money here. They have to declare how much money they are moving out of the country, and this has been recently tightened by the CCP. What has happened is they might declare that they're taking some of their money out, but, in fact, they are living in residences that are of far higher value. Those Chinese Australians are concerned that their electoral information—where they reside here—is being passed back to the CCP, and the problem with that is, of course, that a lot of these people still have family members in China and those people are in danger of being detained. The reason we did not pass the extradition treaty with China was that we know there is a system of collective responsibility in China. So even if they can't reach the person who is now a citizen of Australia, those people still have families back in China. And, of course, we've recently seen on some of the Australian university campuses that this has been a significant issue. Senator McKenzie talked about Ms Liu's activities in her local community and that she worked closely with the local community. That's true, and that local community is now very concerned that their private details are being shared in an inappropriate way. The creation of victimhood status around Ms Liu is unbelievable. Instead of acknowledging that Ms Liu is up to her neck in this, Mr Morrison, now with the backing of the CCP, is running interference for Ms Liu by claiming that she's done nothing wrong and that everyone is out to get her because of her ethnicity. This is patently false. As Senator Patrick has pointed out—and as I pointed out earlier in the week—there is no way that our security agencies would be passing on their concerns to a political party about a potential candidate up for preselection unless they had valid concerns. If anyone is suggesting that the former Director-General of ASIO is racist, then they are making a grave mistake. It is actually totally inappropriate for someone to suggest that our security agencies act with anything at their heart other than the very best interests of this country. They would not have made that visit lightly; they would not have done that lightly and taken that course of action lightly. They did it because they were concerned about Ms Liu. There are many other concerns that people have about Ms Liu, apart from what's gone on in the past week where, firstly, she failed to declare her membership of wings of the Chinese government propaganda machine, memberships she had for over a decade. Secondly, she denied she was ever a member of them, before backflipping and saying she didn't know how her name got on these lists. Thirdly, she bragged to colleagues about raising more than $1 million for the Liberal Party, before it was exposed that large amounts of this went undeclared. And, fourthly, she then denied having to return $300,000 in donations. We also know the security agencies made contact with office holders in the Victorian Liberal Party about her nefarious associations. She was pre-selected anyway. We also know that she lobbied for the Victorian branch of the Liberal Party to ease foreign investment laws. And now we have today's story about her offering references to volunteers for her campaign. We know that Mr Morrison knew all of this, because we know, from the Victorian Liberal Party, that at fundraisers Ms Liu had raised issues of Chinese foreign policy. What I would say is that the standard you walk past is the standard you accept, and we now know what Prime Minister Morrison's standards are: (1) he repeats foreign propaganda lines, not even thinking through their implications for our national security; (2) he permits his own backbenchers to raise millions from sources so dubious that they cause justifiable panic from security agencies; and (3) he falsely presents criticism as racism, despite having a history of being willing to engage in the very worst form of race-baiting himself. We have a Prime Minister who is turning a blind eye to a monstrous scandal, and in the process he has revealed himself to be a—I was going to say a 'dupe', but you might say that's a breach of standing order 193, Mr Acting Deputy President Bernardi, so I will instead say he has proven himself to be ignorant of foreign policy concerns. What I would say is that you don't know what you don't know, and there are more things that will come out about Ms Liu. I will leave it there.