Fatima Payman (WA, Australia's Voice) | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I seek leave to table an explanatory memorandum relating to this bill.

Leave granted.

I table an explanatory memorandum and seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

This Bill is being introduced alongside the Genocide Risk Reporting Bill 2024 and the Defence Trade Controls Amendment (Genocide, War Crimes, and Crimes Against Humanity) Bill 2024.

Together they represent a baseline measure to ensure Australia complies with its international legal obligations, including UN Security Council resolution 2334 (2016), the Fourth Geneva Convention, and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Passing these three Bills is an essential step in ensuring comprehensive action to uphold human rights, foster accountability, and bring about an end to the era of genocide.

This Bill implements Australia's international legal obligation to abstain from 'economic or trade dealings' with Israel with regards to illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The Bill, and the amendments it proposes, ensure that investments by the Future Fund, and money from registered Australian charities do not support companies who are providing for, or profiting off, illegal Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian land, as per Australia's international obligations.

In doing so, the Bill operationalises and gives effect to the policy position of the Australian Government regarding illegal Israeli settlements which deems Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories illegal, consistent with UN Security Council resolution 2334 (2016).

The world has watched in horror at the genocide, and as the horrific violence throughout the entire Palestinian Occupied Territories increases. Israel has continued to expand its illegal settlement enterprise across the West Bank and East Jerusalem-an enterprise which denies Palestinian peoples self-determination, and which guarantees further bloodshed and intractable conflict throughout the region.

Increased illegal settlements bring increased violence against Palestinians. This was the finding of a report from early 2023 by the High Commissioner for Human Rights, which found that over the past decade, the United Nations verified 3,372 violent incidents by settlers, resulting in injuries to 1,222 Palestinians. Last year, incidents of settler violence reached record highs. In the last quarter of 2023, over 535 violent incidents involved settlers in the West Bank. According to the United Nations, in nearly half of all settler attacks documented in 2023, Israeli Defence Forces were either accompanying or actively supporting the settler perpetrators. On 4 June 2024, the United Nations reported that 505 Palestinians and 23 Israelis had been killed in the West Bank since 7 October 2023.

As of November 21, 2024, reports from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) indicate that over 34,560 Palestinians have been killed and 77,765 injured in Gaza since the marked escalation of conflict on October 7, 2023. These figures include thousands of civilians killed due to Israeli airstrikes and ground operations, with many still unaccounted for.

G iving Effect to A ustralia's Existing Policy Position

This Bill aligns with, and gives practical effect to, the existing Australian government policy position. Australia refers publicly to Israeli settlement activity as illegal under international law, as does the EU and UK on a regular basis. This is all consistent with UN Security Council resolution 2334 (2016). Indeed, in December 2023, Australia joined a joint statement calling on Israel to take immediate and concrete steps to tackle record high settler violence in the occupied West Bank. That statement reiterated the commonly held position that 'Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are illegal under international law', and signatories 'remind Israel of its obligations under international law, in particular Article 49 of Geneva Convention IV'.

This Bill provides a set of practical measures which will give effect to this existing policy position and in doing so, will demonstrate Australia's commitment to the international rules-based order and opposition to actions that undermine lasting peace in the region. Because to date, Australia has failed to implement any concrete consequences for this illegal activity.

Clear Position of A ustralia's International Legal Obligations

This failure to address the illegal settlements has become even more problematic since July 2024, when Australia's international legal obligations were made abundantly clear by the International Court of Justice. The Court delivered its Advisory Opinion on the 'Legal Consequences Arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem'. In that Opinion, the Court affirmed that Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the regime associated with them, is a violation of international law. The Court noted the rapid and significant expansions in recent years. The Court determined that Israel has a legal obligation to put an end to its illegal acts, and 'immediately cease all new settlement activity'.

In this Advisory Opinion, the Court was very clear about the obligations of states such as Australia. The Court called on all states to, amongst other things, 'abstain from entering into economic or trade dealings with Israel concerning the Occupied Palestinian Territory or parts thereof which may entrench its unlawful presence in the territory'; and 'take steps to prevent trade or investment relations that assist in the maintenance of the illegal situation created by Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory'. Money coming into Israeli illegal settlements from states like Australia and charities registered here, entrenches these settlements.

This Bill will bring this into effect, by ensuring that assets from the Future Fund, are not invested in companies who are involved in illegal Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory.

It also ensures that registered Australian charities are not inadvertently or purposely sending funds or resources to illegal Israeli settlements or any companies that are listed on the UN Database of companies operating in illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land.

The Future Fund and Australian charities will be instructed to divest themselves of current assets and will be prohibited from any investments in companies that operate in illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land.

No Funding Apartheid and Other Human Rights Abuses

Under article 3 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), states parties particularly condemn racial segregation and apartheid and undertake to prevent, prohibit and eradicate all practices of this nature. It has been made very clear by the International Court of Justice that Israel's policies and practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territory—including the illegal settlement regime—amount to segregation or apartheid. In an earlier Advisory Opinion, the Court stated that third states like Australia have an obligation 'not to recognize the illegal situation … [nor] render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation'. The Bill ensures that Australia does not violate its obligations in not rendering 'aid or assistance' in maintaining the situation of apartheid that currently prevails in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, by preventing the support of illegal Israeli settlements by the Future Funds or through Australian registered charities.

Similarly, Palestinian people have the right to self-determination, namely the right to freely determine their political status and to pursue its economic, social and cultural development. However, these illegal Israeli settlements throughout the Occupied Palestinian territories violate that right for the Palestinian people. Israel illegally appropriates Palestinian lands and water for the sole benefit of its settlements and destroys Palestinian infrastructure to further expand their illegal settlement enterprise. The International Court of Justice found that the prolonged character of the unlawful settlement enterprise aggravates the violation of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination even further. Because Israel's policies and practices have spanned decades, this has deprived the Palestinian people the right to self-determination over a long time. The Court noted that any further prolonging of these policies would undermine the exercise of the right to self-determination into the future.

The Bill recognises Israel's illegal settlement activity as a key barrier to the Palestinian people's right to self-determination and ensures the Future Fund and charitable funds do not go to supressing self-determination.

Another core human right that these settlements impede is the right to liberty of movement and freedom to choose their residence. Settlements restrict the freedom of movement of Palestinian people in many ways, including restrictions like checkpoints, settler-only roads and physical impediments created by walls and gates. In order to make way for settlement building, Israel continually evicts Palestinians from their homes and communities. For example, 500 Palestinian Bedouins in the Naqab region were forcibly evicted from lands where their families had lived for decades to permit expansion for the Jewish-majority city of Dimona. Forced evictions have rapidly increased in East Jerusalem, with approximately 150 Palestinian families at risk of forced eviction and displacement by Israeli authorities and settler organisations in 2023. The Bill ensures that companies who assist in the demolition of Palestinian houses and/or fund or support illegal Israeli settlement activity will not receive any support from public funds from the Australian government or from donations to Australian registered charities.

In line with International Practice

This Bill follows the lead of other states that have divested from Israeli companies or imposed sanctions on Israeli organisations linked to settlements. In April 2024, the Irish Government announced that it would divest the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund (ISIF) shareholdings of €2.95 million from six Israeli companies linked to activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. In April 2024, the EU's European Council listed four Israeli settlers and two Israeli organisations on the EU Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime, for their responsibility 'for serious human rights abuses against Palestinians' in the occupied West Bank. Canada, the United States, and Australia have placed sanctions on Israeli settlers. This shows that there is an emerging international practice to level sanctions as a key response to these illegal settlements.

But individualised sanctions do not go far enough when the issue is structural and systemic. Settlement violence is not an aberration of individual extremist settlers, but part of an Israeli policy of unlawful occupation, annexation and apartheid. We need financial measures that target the actual cause of the violence and illegal activity.

Conclusion

Despite overwhelming international condemnation, even from its 'closest friends', Israel has not stopped its illegal settlement activity—in fact, it has actively sought to both facilitate this violence and vastly, and rapidly, expand the illegal settlement program. In March 2024, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights noted that 'the international community has failed, both individually and collectively, to take adequate, feasible and effective measures to ensure the compliance of Israel with its international obligations'.

It is urgent and necessary to give proper and full effect to the existing Australian policy position, as well as our international legal obligations. The clearest way to do this is through ensuring Australia's financial assets cannot be used to perpetuate this illegal activity.

Australia has not only failed in its international obligations but chooses to do so on a continuing basis. The legal barriers to the prosecution of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes are intentional and signify an acceptance of these crimes, an enabling and indeed complicity in them. This includes the Attorney-General's fiat, which grants sole discretion over prosecuting international crimes, functions as a significant barrier to accountability, undermining efforts to pursue justice under international law.

This is most prominently shown in the Genocide of the First Peoples of this land. Genocide has been perpetrated from the time of invasion, through massacres, forced displacement, land theft, the destruction of cultural heritage, the Stolen Generations and so much more. It continues to this very day. It is not as starkly obvious to the outside observer as the Genocide in Gaza, but it takes place in sophisticated, silent and effective ways.

This Bill goes towards ensuring that Australia complies with its obligations to the international community, global peace, and the international rules-based order, while ensuring that its financial assets are not further perpetuating a cycle of violence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.