Mehreen Faruqi (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I want to draw attention to the words of Martin Luther King Jr in his letter from a Birmingham jail. It seems especially relevant while you all sit here and censure me for breaking what you call the decorum of parliament, for my failure to be polite or respectful while a genocide unfolds, while kids are being killed. He wrote of his frustration with the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice, who seeks only the absence of tension rather than the presence of justice, who says, 'I agree with the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your ways of achieving it' and who has a paternalistic belief they can set the timetable and decorum of another people's freedom. Well, you can set your standards because you don't want to see the truth. You don't want to do anything about the genocide.

One day you will all have to explain to your children and grandchildren where you stood when tens of thousands of men, women and children were being slaughtered. I wouldn't like to be in your shoes then, because you are all on the wrong side of history. Instead of sanctioning me, maybe you should think about sanctioning Israel. They are the ones starving, slaughtering and displacing Palestinians; blowing up hospitals; obliterating schools; and wiping out entire bloodlines. But you ignore all of that, you ignore your constituents and you ignore your communities. You can't even read the room. You can't engage with people in your own communities who have, for 21 months—and, for some, much longer than that—been crying out for you to do something, to take real action to stop this genocide, to stop the starvation, to sanction Israel. But I'm not really holding out hope, honestly.

I can tell you this: the Greens will not be silent as this genocide unfolds. You will not be able to intimidate me or any of my colleagues. We will never stop fighting for freedom for Palestine and all those oppressed people. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. (Time expired)