Thank you, Chair. It's a real privilege to join this conversation with the committee.
I want to provide, really, two sets of observations to assist your inquiry. The first is to speak a bit about Australia's relationship with China, particularly the very difficult experiences we've had over the past eight years or so. This is something of a parallel to the Canadian experience. It would be useful to draw lessons from that for both sides.
Secondly, I want to situate that relationship within the Indo-Pacific strategic context, which I know has been somewhat discussed already today. I'd like to add an independent Australian perspective on that, because, of course, our bilateral relations with China, just as your bilateral relations with China, are not in isolation. They intersect with the great power of politics of the Indo-Pacific and the world. They intersect with China's strategic ambitions with regard to many other players in the international system.
It's a mistake to be measuring the success or the stabilization of the bilateral relationship in isolation. It's certainly a mistake for a middle power like Australia or Canada to effectively be blaming itself every time it has a problem with its relations with China.
A factor across all of these conversations, of course, is the authoritarian nature of the Chinese party state, and the particularly hardline positions that the Chinese leadership has taken over the past decade.
To begin with, here are a few thoughts about Australia-China relations. I'm speaking to you in February 2024 at a time when the Australian government, and really Australia as a nation, has been going through, for more than a year now, what I would call a stabilization process in relations with China.
It's really important to emphasize the qualified and limited character of stabilization. It is not a reset. It is not about strategic trust. It is not about anticipating a glorious future for the relationship. It's really about limiting and managing the damage we've had in terms of economic coercion, in terms of self-defeating Chinese policies toward Australia and in terms of a freeze on diplomatic dialogue, but we are in a stabilization phase.