Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to take this opportunity to speak today in remembrance of the victims of the events 10 years ago on September 11 in the United States. I pay respect to those who lost their lives in the attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania and those who died or were severely injured as result of assisting in the aftermath of the attacks.

At the time of the attacks I was working in the UN peacekeeping mission in Kosovo and I recall watching with other colleagues the footage of the first plane strike, with people thinking either that it was an elaborate hoax or that it was a freak accident and then seeing in real time the second plane strike the other tower and the joint realisation it was no hoax and no accident. UN colleagues from New York were understandably distraught and remained so for a long time afterwards, yet they never lost their dignity or their sense of perspective about the necessary response to such an horrific assault.

There is no doubt that the events of September 11 had profound ramifications for much of the world, among other things the heightened focus on security and counterterrorism and corresponding reductions in personal liberties. Many countries, including Australia, have also been engaged in war for the past decade in Afghanistan and Iraq, at enormous cost to civilians and to soldiers. I want to pay tribute to all of those lives as well and to offer the hope that the next decade will see greater peace, prosperity, tolerance and global cooperation in tackling not only the perpetrators but also the root causes of terrorism.