Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

The coalition will not support the suspension of standing orders to enable the tabling of this document. It's purportedly a list of more than 17,000 children killed in Gaza, compiled and published by an organisation that draws its data directly from the Gaza Ministry of Health, which is an arm of the listed terrorist organisation Hamas. The coalition does not deny leave lightly. Every civilian death, especially that of a child, is a tragedy, and every innocent life lost is a human catastrophe. But we cannot trust information from the Gaza Ministry of Health to be tabled in the Australian Senate. The Gaza Ministry of Health is under the control of the listed terrorist organisation Hamas. Where a senator of this parliament seeks to table such a document, especially one compiled by an activist collective sourcing from Hamas, it gives an implicit endorsement to the legitimacy of that information. This is something that the coalition cannot support. This parliament should grieve the loss of innocent life, but it should do so on the basis of verifiable, credible information. It should do so in a way that upholds our values and maintains a clear line between democratic institutions and terrorist information.