Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Minister, there is no suggestion that all information is to be, you know, posted on Facebook. You seem to be arguing that it's either that or total secrecy. Our contention here is that you have chosen, with the cosy club between the Labor Party and the Liberal Party, that only you, the chosen few, get to make these decisions, get to have a look at what's really going on and get to make the judgement. My proposition is that the Australian people call BS on that—that you are not trusted to monitor yourselves and that you are not trusted to just sit there and collude, year after year after year.

We know, in relation to the existing joint committee, the cosiness between the Labor Party and the Liberal Party—that there has been only one report in 20 years that hasn't been unanimous. That's testing the proposition? That's having robust debate, is it? And this is what people are talking about. The collusion between the major parties is continuing today with this piece of legislation and the attitude that—despite the fact that there is a growing parliament, and diversity of voices and representation, and growing concern in the Australian community—that should all be ignored, and that, because it has always been the case that Labor and Liberal can collude on military operations, information and decisions, we should all just roll over.

Of course, we are having this debate at a very prescient time, when the world is watching the horrors in Iran, the bombs falling in Lebanon, airports around the Middle East being shut and Australian citizens stranded, for a war that is being led by Donald Trump. And we have the Australian Labor Party and the Australian Liberal Party and One Nation all saying: 'It's fine. The US said it's fine, so we'll just follow.' No wonder people are sick and tired of the secrecy and the cosy relationships, and, of course, the collusion between the major parties—the war parties. You're not the major parties; you're the war parties.

We have seen this story before. We saw what happened when the Australian government just followed suit with the United States in Iraq. We saw what happened in Afghanistan. Dozens of Australian defence personnel lost their lives. Hundreds of thousands of citizens were killed. There were decades of further unrest, suffering and oppression. All you need to do is ask any mother or schoolgirl in Afghanistan how they feel right now about the US led intervention in Afghanistan and all the promises of hope and freedom. History is repeating itself again. And we have no excuse to be ignorant about this. Donald Trump, as President of the United States, is making it crystal clear how callous he is prepared to be, how irresponsible he is prepared to be, and how he does not care about the innocent lives of mothers, of fathers, of babies, of children, in his quest to drop bombs.

I find it extraordinary that our government here in Australia, the Albanese government, was the first to jump on board with this bombing from Donald Trump. I find it extraordinary that the Australian Labor Party has swung in behind this atrocity, this blatant abuse of international law—dismissal of international law. We have Democrats in the United States showing more opposition than the Australian Labor Party are.