Australia's Foreign Relations (State and Territory Arrangements) Amendment Bill 2026

Mr MATT SMITH (Leichhardt) (16:14): I rise to speak on Australia's Foreign Relations (State and Territory Arrangements) Amendment Bill 2026. Australia and Australians more broadly are pretty bloody good. The flag that's flying proudly above this place right now means something right around the world.

Across the luggage of backpackers, people see that flag and they smile because they know that attached to that flag is an Australian. Walk into any pub all across the world and lead with, 'G'day.' You're going to strike up a conversation. You're going to find some new mates.

People are interested in us. They want to be around us. They want to invest in us.

And why wouldn't they? Our sport's amazing. We export our best leagues to New Zealand.

They're not very good at it, but it's fine. They get to play along sometimes. We are becoming more and more the hub of the South Pacific and the hub of South-East Asia.

The opportunities that are being presented to us by improvements in travel, improvements in technology and the way the world is becoming more and more interconnected are really putting Australia in the box seat going into this century. Our critical minerals in abundance, right throughout the far north and across the west, are going to make us a world leader. This is something to be excited about.

This is something to really get behind, which we can do as a nation. But we need guardrails because so many people are interested in us. It's coming across at all different levels of government now, as well as public universities and public institutions.

Everybody wants a piece of Australia. Everybody wants to be on our team. It's a good problem to have, but the guardrails are important.

Sometimes you lose sight of things. Stuff can slip away. Occasionally—hopefully not often—there are bad actors trying to infiltrate us.

This bill seeks to improve the existing legislation to ensure that things move smoothly, with better coordination and better cooperation right across so that we can all take advantage of the opportunities that are presented to us. That includes public universities. Cairns and the far north are home to two world-class institutions: CQUniversity and JCU.

Both have overseas campuses. That's great, because we are training, from the South Pacific to Asia, the future engineers, the doctors and the nurses. The leaders of those countries will have been educated by an Australian institution, and that's exciting.

We already train a large part of their defence forces, particularly from the South Pacific, and policing. Everybody comes here. We send our knowledge back out into the world, and that's something to be proud of.

It's something about which, as a nation, we can hold our head up high. People talk about middle powers. We are a strong middle power, and we are a leader in our region.

We lead through kindness, through generosity, through training, through identifying where our relationships can get stronger and stepping into that breach, and through being the shoulders or the ears and then being able to promote the voice of the South Pacific—in particular, very small islands. They need somebody there. We are that person.

We are the superpower of the South Pacific. It's not a bad place to be. So, when we're out there promoting ourselves, providing this opportunity and showing the world what Australia is, we can do it with confidence that everyone is singing from the same song sheet and that, right across the country, everybody knows this is what Australia is and Australia stands for.

These things are in our national interest. Things like the sister cities are fantastic. They show the world what we're capable of.

They show our compassion, our friendship and our ability to take people in from all cultures right around the world and give them that time and that mateship. Mateship is more than a word to Australia. When people have an interaction with Australians, they understand that mateship is almost a state of mind.

It's a place where you go where the friendship is deeper. It means: 'I'm with you no matter what. I'll support you through thick and thin.' That's what it means to be Australian, and that's what is so attractive to the rest of the world.

When this was commissioned in 2024, led by Rosemary Huxtable, the complexity and the unclearness of it were really what held it back, and that's why we're in this position today. It's why we are speaking on this bill. To simplify things, particularly when you're dealing across governments and across organisations, is tricky.

We as the federal government have entire departments to speak to—Foreign Affairs and Trade, DFAT. Amazing. We can get advice from anybody at all times.

The mayor of Cook Shire doesn't have that opportunity, but they want to reach out. They want to expand their horizons. They want to bring people into Cook Shire to work on the farms, to work in the pubs, to work in aged care and to develop that understanding of what it means to live in outback and rural Australia, to understand the regions, so that someone from Beijing might have an idea of what it means to live in the proper bush, in the cape, where the roads are dirt and the rivers get up real fast.

I've been to Beijing. I was there playing. You can't see the stars.

If you come from a place like that to the outback, to the cape—or really anywhere in Australia—and you look up and you see the Milky Way for the first time, what an opportunity! What a gift! I was out Yass way on the weekend—no light pollution.

You can reach up and touch the stars. I've grown up with the stars, and it was beautiful. If you've never seen them before, if you've never experienced that majesty, you can do it here and you can do it by us improving our relations with countries and letting them understand.

A lot of people are looking to us for leadership. They want to bring their money here. They want to bring their economic values here.

They want to bring the world to Australia, and Australia needs to go out to the world. We are an island, but we can't be an island anymore. Economically, that doesn't make sense.

Culturally, that doesn't make sense. Socially, that doesn't make sense. But to make it a free-for-all in a world that's changing so rapidly, with tech giants, with bad-faith actors, with a couple of wars going on—without guidelines, without guardrails, it leaves us open to problems, open to things that we didn't anticipate, and we can't compromise our sovereignty in such a fashion.

The sovereignty of Australia is paramount to our position in the rest of the world. The uniqueness of the Australian way of life, the uniqueness of the Australian attitude, has to be protected. Our intellectual property and our infrastructure have to be Australian.

This sets down those clear guidelines so that, right across the country, everyone understands where the no-go zones are. And it sends a message not just locally but internationally as well. With those guardrails legislated and put down in law, other countries know where that no-go zone is as well, and they will steer clear of it.' People watch this.

People see us. Our words in here matter, our actions in here matter, not just locally but on a global scale. Be we backbenchers, ministers or prime ministers, everything we say is out there, able to be picked up and disseminated across the world in record time.

Everyone watches, whether they be good or indifferent or seek to do us harm. By putting forth these rules, those who maybe do seek to do us harm know we're not to be messed with. 'These are the rules. These are the rules that we play by.

These are the rules that we expect you to play by. And, if we do so, then we can have a truly mutually beneficial arrangement. You will give us your best and brightest, and we will return to you doctors, engineers, leaders, nurses, governance.

You give us your best and brightest, and we will develop technologies, we will cure diseases, we will make a difference.' The work being done in the Far North around tuberculosis and with Wolbachia bacteria—which deal with dengue fever—is world leading. It saves lives. That's something that we should be proud of.

That's something that we should give to the world. That's something that we need the world to help us with so that we can ensure that our world-leading intellectuals, our world-leading scientists, have access to all sorts of different things. I spoke today with Southern Cross University, and they're working on a program right now for cloud brightening.

Cloud brightening is essentially sucking up seawater and putting in nanocrystals of salt—74 trillion, I'm led to believe. I don't know who counted them. They spray them up into the clouds.

The light then reflects off the salt crystals back into space. What that does is provide a cooling mechanism for the Great Barrier Reef in times of stress. This is being partially funded by Southern Cross University, but it's also partly funded by ARIA, which is from the British government.

They see Australian ingenuity, and they want to be a part of it. They don't only see what it does for the Great Barrier Reef; it can protect the Arctic, the Antarctic and the glaciers. We can get the world looking at what we've got.

They want to invest. This is just one of the thousands and thousands of success stories celebrating what we're capable of. Wi-fi—that's Australian.

I'm celebrating Australian stuff right now. You know what? I love it.

We do some really good things. Something as simple as making the clouds brighter thought up by an Australian—his name's Dan. He's great.

He lives down at Coffs Harbour. He likes to go diving, and he likes to go surfing. He found a problem.

There were a whole bunch of other different ideas. He's worked through them all. He's decided this is the one, and the world is investing in it.

We talk about the cultural cringe that used to be a part of the Australian culture. That's gone now. We're world leading in all sorts of things.

I'm so proud of that. We should all be so proud of that. I think we should all occasionally take stock of where Australia sits in the world and why Australia sits in the world.

It's because of people like Dan, and it's because of people like that who came before him. It's because of the outreach done by the Prime Minister and the Minister for Foreign Affairs to make sure that Australia's reputation is solid in the region and solid right around the world. It's giving us a chance to be the best version of ourselves.

If we become insular and take our eyes off the world around us, we don't necessarily get the benefit. I know that the world's looking to us, and I know that we're looking back out at the world. This is just going to make it so much easier for everybody to do so.

You don't want people out there unable or unsure because, if they go too far and they make a mistake, the book gets thrown at them. That's a very real fear for a lot of people. This simplifies that.

Everyone will have a clear, precise understanding of exactly where the guardrails are. Get up to them, but don't cross them. That's a really important part, giving that flexibility and that compassion, because people do make mistakes.

Legislation is complicated, and—if you are coming from a smaller council, a university or any public institution and you don't have that experience in foreign affairs or foreign diplomacy—it's easy to make an error. People shouldn't be punished for that, because all they're trying to do is take what makes Australia great and show it to the rest of the world. I'm excited by what this bill means, and what it means is Australia being shown off.

I think everybody in this House is excited by the prospect of this country being shown off. I know how proud every single member in here is because they wouldn't be here if they weren't. They've put their hand up, and they've said: 'This is my country.

This is our country. We're damn proud of it, and we're going to show it to the rest of the world. We are going to take what makes Australia special and give that to everybody else.' I commend the bill to the House.