Australia: Clarifying the Truth at a Government Open House in Brisbane

On Sunday, February 2, 2003, the Queensland Premier, Mr. Peter Beattie, and his Cabinet held their monthly public open forum in the Brisbane suburb of Corinda. Whenever these public forums are held in the Brisbane area, local practitioners attend to update and clarify the facts to Mr. Beattie and his Cabinet members.

After the question period, those in attendance can go and speak with Mr. Beattie or any of his Cabinet members or secretaries who are present about any issue they choose. Also, leading up to these meetings, people can apply in writing for deputations to meet for 15 minutes with Mr. Beattie or any of his Cabinet members. This time, we applied for deputations to speak with Mr. Beattie and Ms. Edmund, the Minister for Health and Women's Affairs. When we arrived, we were told that we would be meeting with Mr Beattie's chief adviser Mr. Briskey instead of Mr Beattie. Because we needed to clarify certain facts to Mr. Beattie directly. We strengthened our resolve and decided to be determined in seeing Mr. Beattie in person.

After the question period, one of the practitioners approached Mr. Beattie's appointment secretary to make sure we could see Mr. Beattie informally. After several attempts to sort this out with three different aides, four of us ended up as the third group in line. It took a lot to get to this point. Because our deputation to see Mr. Beattie's chief adviser came up while we were still waiting for Mr. Beattie, two of us went to that meeting while the others remained in line to see Mr. Beattie. As we were waiting to speak with Mr. Briskey, two other practitioners joined us. As our meeting began with Mr. Briskey, the other two practitioners were able to speak with Mr. Beattie.

Queensland does a huge amount of business and trade with China and the Premier doesn't want to do anything to jeopardise this situation, as he is also head of trade. Thus, he will not openly support us. So this time we focused on another aspect of the persecution. Instead of discussing this from a human rights angle, which the Queensland State Government isn't much interested in, seeing this as a Federal concern, we approached both them from the aspect of business and ethics. This appeared to have a better reception and actually got them to deeply think about these issues. We discussed how business and trade without ethics and morality simply lead to corruption. This was very well understood as several major corporations in Australia have collapsed this past year due to unethical practices and trading. This made it easy to discuss the corruption in China and how no major corporation has actually made a profit there because of the rampant corruption. When dealing with such corruption in China, all business is on very shaky ground.

Another issue discussed was the 20 family members of Australian practitioners that need rescuing from Chinese labour camps. Nancy Chen's release was used as an example of how speaking out and putting direct pressure on the Chinese authorities can have a major impact in obtaining the release of detained practitioners. Quick intervention by the Australian Government in this case prevented a potential tragedy. This came about due to media reports, with MPs and practitioners contacting the Department of Foreign Affairs to act on this matter, as Nancy is an Australian citizen and hadn't done anything wrong. It was pointed out that the Queensland State Government also needs to speak out at appropriate times and not use trade as an excuse for not doing anything. This is an issue of every level of government because it is an issue of conscience and morality.

The other deputation was for the Minister of Health and Women's Affairs, Wendy Edmund, and two of her aides. Wendy is a member of Amnesty International, so she has some understanding of the persecution issues in China. However, the tremendously positive health impact of the practice of Falun Gong was the main point of discussion. Health surveys in China were brought up along with the positive changes of many practitioners who had formally used drugs and other substances of abuse. Mr. Beattie had discussed problems with Medicare and they were told how practitioners don't require medical services. One of the practitioners pointed out that she hadn't used her Medicare card for over three years. There was also some discussion about the plight of female practitioners in China and a copy of "Women of Conscience" [booklet with persecution cases of female Falun Gong practitioners] was left with her. The main point practitioners wanted to make was the positive effect following the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance has on one's daily life and how this directly impacts one's health. This, in turn, saves not only that one person but it also saves the government huge amounts of money.