Mr. Speaker, I hope the minister and her government will support this motion. We are in a minority Parliament and parliamentary scrutiny of the decisions the government make and effective debate are very important. Hopefully, the government will not seek to stymie that from happening.
I have two specific questions for the minister.
As she and those watching will know, she chose her words very carefully on the issue of Hong Kong. Does she and her government support calls for meaningful universal suffrage and true democracy in Hong Kong, which is one of the key asks of the protestors?
The second question I want to ask is about the appointment of Dominic Barton as our ambassador. He is a former executive of McKinsey & Company, a company that has advised at least 22 of the 100 biggest state-owned companies in China. He was part of a corporate retreat in Kashgar, four miles from a Uighur concentration camp. He has, in his own words, “drank the Kool-Aid on China”. Dominic Barton has no prior diplomatic experience.
Therefore, I wonder what the minister thinks. A signal was sent about the government's views of the Uighur Muslims' situation, its commitment to human rights and its view of state-owned companies building artificial islands in the South China Sea. One of those companies was advised by McKinsey. What signal does the appointment of Dominic Barton send about those issues?