"This country prides itself on values of openness and upholding freedom of speech, and if people want to come to Australia, they are our laws, that's who we are and they should abide by them."

Opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman Penny Wong backed Ms Bishop, saying freedom of speech and the contest of ideas at universities should be safeguarded.

"We would not want any group to seek to silence another in the contest of those ideas, regardless of race and regardless of their ethnic heritage," she said.

The comments by Ms Bishop and Ms Wong follow an unusually hard hitting speech by Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade secretary Frances Adamson, who told the Confucius Institute at Adelaide University earlier this month that universities had to be resilient against attempts to influence them and the silencing of anyone was an "affront" to our values.

Ms Bishop's and Senator Wong's comments followed separate speeches they gave to the Australian Institute of International Affairs.

Rapid change

Ms Bishop said the forthcoming foreign policy white paper was being prepared in the context of rapid change in the Indo-Pacific region as other countries enjoyed rising wealth and power in addition to China.

This rapid economic growth could potentially see Australia slip out of the G20, while the combined military budgets of Asian countries were soon likely to match US defence spending for the first time in at least 100 years.


"This means the Indo-Pacific will become an increasingly congested space for great powers and their formidable military capabilities," Ms Bishop said.

"The United States will likely remain the world's only superpower although we have never seen or been in an era where there has been a powerful China, Japan and India at the same time.

"Additionally, the strategic composition of nations will be qualitatively different from the past, as the majority of the emerging great and regional powers in the region are not allies or long-standing security partners of the United States."

Senator Wong said uncertainty remained over how China would use its power or how its ambitions would play out globally.

"China is becoming more assertive, and more inclined not only to demand a place at the table, but also a say in which table and what design," she said.

Senator Wong said the challenge was to construct a China policy with a clear-eyed view to Australia's national interest and sovereignty instead of seeing the relationship as a contest between security imperatives and economic opportunity.

She emphasised Labor's policy of being open-minded on collaborating with President Xi Jinping's signature infrastructure funding Belt and Road Initiative, which some have criticised as a vehicle for Beijing to exert regional influence.

"We simply cannot afford to underestimate the economic consequences of this major Chinese initiative. Equally, we cannot afford to be blind to its strategic consequences," she said.