Former prime minister Scott Morrison is demanding Australia step up its pressure on China’s human rights abuses while praising his own efforts to call out “bullying” by Beijing.

Mr Morrison is due to give a speech in Tokyo on Friday to the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, an international group of lawmakers working to reform how democratic countries approach the country.

The former PM is expected to urge the Albanese government to consider using Magnitsky-style targeted human rights sanctions laws to hold Chinese government officials accountable, according to multiple reports. He imposed no such sanctions on Chinese officials during his term as Australia’s prime minister.

Mr Morrison will also accuse Western nations of “appeasing” China’s ambitions in the South China Sea and not advancing global concerns about the nation’s human rights record.

In speech extracts distributed by the event organiser, Mr Morrison apparently draws a parallel to 1938 – the year before the outbreak of World War II – when the then British PM returned from talks with Adolf Hitler.

“The benign and accommodating view of China has proved to be, arguably, the most misplaced assumption in international relations since Neville Chamberlain proclaimed ‘peace in our time’ on his return from Munich in 1938,” he will say.

“It has led the West to appease China’s ambitions, including the conversion of island atolls into military installations in the South China Sea, and partitioning global concerns about China’s human rights record from the main track of strategic dialogue with and about China.”

Friday’s speech comes as Australia enjoys a significantly improved relationship with China – including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s meeting with Chinese premier Xi Jinping in November, breaking a years-long drought.

“I am pleased that diplomatic dialogue has resumed between Australia and China. It should never have been terminated by the Chinese Government in the first place,” Mr Morrison will say according to the draft of his speech.

On Friday, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said while Australia had a good relationship with China, there would always be tensions.

He said the government was standing up for Australian sovereignty in a respectful way.

“Equally, there are human rights abuses … and the Australian government would be making representations to Beijing on a constant basis and we have done that as a country for years,” he told Nine’s Today.

“The human rights abusers are there and it is right that they are called out.”

Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles agreed with Mr Dutton and said the government was pressing concerns on human rights abuses in China.

“We need to stabilise the relationship with China, which is what we are seeking to do,” he said.

“But it is really important that we advocate on behalf of human rights around the world and we call it as we see it.”

Mr Morrison is also expected to talk about how he “rallied like-minded countries” in Quad and AUKUS meetings to “call out the bullying of the Chinese government”.

It is not Mr Morrison’s first speech on China since he lost the 2022 federal election. Last July, he skipped the first week of the new Parliament to give a speech to the Global Opinion Leaders Summit, also in Tokyo.

He used the talk to defend his government’s handling of China, saying his government took “a strong stand in response to the PRC’s assertiveness”.

“We chose to resist, not provoke the PRC,” he said.

-with AAP