Mr BARRY JONES(1.21 p.m.) —I am happy to second the motion about Daw Aung San Suu Kyi moved by the right honourable member for New England (Mr Sinclair) on 19 June. Since the first part of the motion, as he said, congratulates her on her 52nd birthday, that would have been the ideal time to have debated it. However, two of us, the honourable member for Gilmore (Mrs Gash) and I, spoke about her that day in the adjournment debate.

Aung San Suu Kyi is one of the most remarkable leaders of our time—unusual in being a leader who has never held office. She has been a role model for millions of women and it is a sad irony that we should be talking about Suu Kyi on the day that millions are mourning the unexpected death of another role model, Diana, Princess of Wales, who contributed so movingly, in what proved to be her last years, to important public causes such as changing community attitudes to sufferers from AIDS and leprosy and for the banning of landmines.

Aung San Suu Kyi—the name means `bright collection of strange victories'—was born in Rangoon, Burma, or, to use the names supplied by the current government of that beautiful country, Yangon, Myanmar, on 19 June 1945. She was the youngest of three children of Aung San and Khin Kyi. I appeal to Hansard and the organisers of the parliamentary database to index her name under `A' for Aung, not `K' for Kyi. Her elder brother, an American citizen, lives in the US. The middle child died in boyhood.

Her father, Aung San, born around 1914, was an important nationalist politician and soldier who became the recognised leader of Burma after World War II and formed its first government under British rule. Suu Kyi never knew her father because, just six months before Burma became fully independent, Aung San, together with eight of his colleagues, was assassinated at a cabinet meeting on 19 July 1947 by a right-wing political group.

In 1960 her mother was appointed ambassador to New Delhi, the first senior female Burmese diplomat, and she enjoyed a privileged life in India. However, in 1962, after years of ineffectual civilian rule, there was an army coup under General Ne Win, leading to the imposition of an army based authoritarian rule in which Burma, in effect, withdrew into isolation. In her years in India, Suu Kyi studied the works of Mahatma Gandhi, whose life and example had a profound impact. To that must be added the pacifism and respect for all forms of life of her Buddhist faith and her exposure to the Western liberal tradition with its openness to new ideas. She is a fascinating mixture of traditional and radical thinking.

From Delhi University in 1964 she went on to St Hugh's College in Oxford to study politics, philosophy and economics. In 1972 she married Dr Michael Aris, an English scholar of Tibetan civilisation, and lived with him in Oxford. I have not had an opportunity to meet Suu Kyi as I was turned away three times from her house in Rangoon on 19 March this year, but I claim Michael Aris as a friend.

I express some concern that clause (4) of the motion might overstate the case in the light of the statement of the Minister for Foreign Affairs (Mr Downer) last week which, in effect, gave a lower priority to environmental and human rights issues in our foreign policy and a far higher priority to trade: if there is a dollar to be gained in a particular area, you do not offend people by saying what you would like to say about issues like human rights. If there is a dollar to be gained, that is where our interests lie. Commercial values are given priority over human values.

When I was on the executive board of UNESCO I was the chairman of the mysteriously named Convention and Recommendations Committee, which was really coded language for the human rights committee of that organisation. We spent a lot of time talking about the problems of Suu Kyi. We called in the ambassador for Burma. We had an absolutely memorable discussion where he said that, in the view of his government, they were not prepared to throw Burma open to democracy because, in their view, democracy was an experiment which, after 200 years in Europe, could not be seen to have succeeded. I said, `How long before you think you can form a judgment?' He said, `Perhaps another century.' I said, `And in the case of the lady?' He said, `Thirty or 40 years. Who can tell?' Suu Kyi is, for practical purposes, still under house arrest. Although she is not formally under house arrest, for practical purposes access to her is denied. (Time expired)