16.
was very upsetting to the Tibatan Autonomous People's Congress that we weren't factual.
Question: Did they specify what facts you had wrong?
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Senator Schacht: No, just a description of the situation in Tibet where we were very critical of the general atmosphere in Tibet, the living conditions, the oppressive nature of what we saw, the presence of the military, and so on. I think that's considered the worst section of the report last year. The rest of it, they just said, "Well, we agree to disagree. I also had one senior official say to me only a couple of days ago, that he had read the report and found it a very good report because: "It showed you had worked hard as a delegation; you had made a strong effort to put together information, a good basis for debate and discussion; of course we don't agree with much that's in the report but it is a good part of the bilateral relations between China and Australia. And another official made it very clear that he found this delegation a bit different from most delegations because he said: "You always want to go and have meetings and discuss with people and you don't want to go and see the Great Wall and you don't want to go to the Ming Tombs, you really are serious about having meetings." He said: "This is a bit unusual for delegations; you're not tourists." And he then said, "But this is very good, this is very good dialogue and we want it to continue. So this is informal comment - and you might say, "Well, he's just slapping-us-on-the-back and sucking-up to us and generally trying to make us feel good", but it is true that wherever we went most people were surprised and I must say the other two Members of Parliament would back me on this our advantage as a delegation is that we're not just Parliamentarians. We have other members on the delegation who are experts in specific areas of law, of minorities, of language, and of background in China, and that is what has impressed the Chinese officials, that they discovered that someone in the delegation would have specific detail, a specific knowledge.
I mean I've said about Alice Tay, I think she knows more about the Chinese Constitution and administrative law than 1,100 million Chinese do, and she could always ask a question: "But, clause so-and-so of your Constitution says this; paragraph of administrative law so-and-so says that; how does this fit in?"
And being able to zero-in in detail meant that they couldn't get off the hook in discussion in a more general response, and we would encourage any other delegations going to China on human rights, to have a similarly mixed range of expertise/politicians, because I think it works very well.
Mr MacKellar: But in answer to your specific question, there was a senior judge in fact, who had gone through the
The session was a report and had written comments on it. fairly lively one and so we didn't have time to go through
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