Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I also rise to take note of Senator Wong's response to Senator Faruqi's question today. We know there is a genocide underway in Gaza. The International Association of Genocide Scholars—more than 300 of the top experts in this field—have now made that judgement. The International Court of Justice has found that what Israel is doing in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide.

It is time for both major parties in this place to stop running cover for what Israel is doing, to cease their complicity in what Israel is doing. Call it out for what it is: it's a genocide and it is an ethnic cleansing. The euphemisms are despicable—conflict, hostilities, tragedies. Call it for what it is. People are being slaughtered in their droves. Starvation is being used as a weapon of war. War crimes are being committed on a daily basis. This is a genocide. This is an ethnic cleansing. It is time that everyone in this place called it for what it is, and it is beyond time for the Labor government to do the right thing.

Call it a genocide. End the two-way arms trade with Israel. Stop supplying weapons to Israel that are being used in the genocide. Stop supplying cover for the deliberate starvation and the slaughter of countless Palestinian people. Sanction Netanyahu and his war cabinet of war criminals. The hand-wringing is not enough. The platitudes are not enough. It is time for action, and it is time for what is happening in Gaza to be called what it is by the Australian government, and that is a genocide.

Question agreed to.