David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

So we have this situation. David McBride, the whistleblower, the truth-teller, not only blew the whistle but had his actions vindicated by an independent inquiry detailing dozens and dozens of incidents of war crimes. I know the government doesn't want to hear this. I know they'd rather this debate didn't happen in the Senate. They would like to just quietly see David McBride put in jail for telling the truth, because that's their action. We say this: there is one person who can stop this, one person who can actually listen to the truth and listen to all of that rhetoric that we got from Labor when they were in opposition. That person is the Labor Attorney-General, Mark Dreyfus, who with a flick of his pen could end the prosecution of David McBride, who faces the very real prospect of years and years in jail simply for telling the public the truth about war crimes.

While David McBride is facing trial today, not a single member of the ADF who committed the war crimes has been brought to trial. There is one pending prosecution, but the first person to face trial, the first person to face jail, is not those who disgraced the uniform of the ADF and committed war crimes but the whistleblower, David McBride. The voices that have been forgotten in this debate, which are written out by the Attorney-General when he refuses to take this action—the most powerful voices, the ones we should listen to first and foremost—are the voices of those Afghan families and communities who saw their brothers and their sons murdered and have not received an apology, have not received respect, have not received a cent of compensation. They look at the Australian government trying to put in jail the whistleblower, and they look with disgust and are right to do that.

What does Australia stand for when we have compelling evidence of troops committing war crimes and the person we prosecute, the person the Albanese government wants to jail, is the lawyer and the whistleblower? I commend this motion to the Senate.