Oct 22, 2025, 15:35

What the Falun Gong practitioners had said to me about what was happening in China was actually true. And it's a matter of fact that those, the reports which originally were somewhat fragmentary have been confirmed more strongly as time has gone on. And there are even people, formerly citizens of the PRC, of the People's Republic of China, now living in Australia, who themselves were imprisoned as a result of the persecution of Falun Gong. What I want to do is just to turn away from that for a moment and to talk a bit about the Chinese Communist Party, the ruling party. Unlike in countries like Australia, where the government, the ruling party, has to subject itself every three or four years to elections, in China, the Chinese Communist Party, which has ruled China since about 1950, in other words for 75 years, has never once subjected itself to a vote of the Chinese people. It is a party which, in every sense, totally lacks legitimacy. And it is very important, therefore, that they should be called out. They should be asked, we should ask them, to behave the way that they say they are. They say that they run a people's democratic government. If you are popular and you have a democracy, you would let people vote for the Chinese Communist Party and for alternatives which were able to operate in that environment. But, as we have seen recently in Hong Kong, where Hong Kong had some of those freedoms under an agreement between, originally, the British and the Chinese government in Beijing, that Hong Kong's freedoms, freedom of expression, freedom of the media, freedom of speech, would be protected up until 2047. That's another 22 years away. The Chinese Communist Party used its power to effectively end the freedoms which Hong Kong endured and had for very many years. So anyone who believes that the Chinese Communist Party is easily going to relinquish power really does not know what that party is really on about. It is a party which is based upon repression and the principal victims of that are the Chinese people themselves. Now when you look around at the posters around here, you might think the issue that the Falun Gong practitioners have raised is just an issue which affects people from China. And I want to say to you, as a non-Chinese Australian, as I obviously am, this is an issue of importance to all people. To all people in Australia and, in fact, to all people around the world. And that every effort which can be made to end the control of the Chinese Communist Party should be and, in fact, must be supported. Now what about this campaign to end, encourage Chinese people to resign from the Chinese Communist Party? What practical effect will that have? Well, I want to suggest to you two very important consequences of that. The first is that it destroys the illusion that the Chinese Communist Party actually represents the people of China. It does it now and it actually never did. But what the resignation of millions of members of the Chinese Communist Party and its front organisations shows is that the Chinese people themselves are saying to that party, you do not represent us. And many people who have resigned have suffered enormously from it because if you were to obtain a position, a job in China, particularly in middle to senior levels in the bureaucracy or even in corporations in China, you have to be a member of the Chinese Communist Party. So people who are resigning from the party are also, in many cases, taking a hit to their own careers and their own futures. And we have to stand alongside those brave people as we do alongside Falun Gong practitioners here today. So the first effect of people resigning from the party is it breaks the party's monopoly. Secondly, resigning from the Communist Party also helps to create some space in the Chinese world, in the life of people in China, to leave space for other organisations, non-communist organisations to gradually emerge. So that eventually this evil regime will die as every other evil regime has died. It's our responsibility, I think, to stand alongside those who have opposed, often at great personal cost, the Chinese Communist Party and to support them and to say, we are with you in this great struggle. Thank you. Thank you, Peter. As, just so you should know, Peter Westmore is the former president of the National Civic Council and we really, really thank him over the years with Falun Gong and Falun Dafa and his support with NCCP's regime. Next we have a little bit of entertainment for everybody. We have our waist drums, they will be performing Falun Dafa Hao and NCCP March.