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

We well remember how Australia got sucked into the Iraq war based on the massive lie of weapons of mass destruction. We all remember the catastrophic, calamitous consequences of that war: countless people dead, injured, dismembered, buried alive, impoverished and poisoned. And now Australia is being sucked into another war in the same region—again, on the basis of a big, fat lie. This time it's not from a coalition government but from a Labor government. It is lying to the Australian people about our involvement in this war. The latest lie that Labor is telling the Australian people is that the military assets and the personnel that we have committed into the war theatre today are only going to be used for defensive purposes. The Greens are here today to call out that lie because those personnel and those assets will be used in such a way to boost capacity for the United States and Israel to continue to rain down horror on the Iranian people—to continue to bomb schools and hospitals in Iran, to continue to destroy the natural environment and to continue to mass murder Iranian people. While this is going on, the war parties in this place—the Labor Party, the Liberal Party, the Nationals and One Nation—are cheering these horrors on.

Remember that Labor was the first government anywhere in the world to cheer on Trump and Netanyahu's illegal war. It was embarrassing and mortifying watching Prime Minister Albanese obsequiously toady his way onto the international stage while the war criminals, Trump and Netanyahu, committed war crimes. And now you've even got US president Donald Trump suggesting that the Tomahawk missile that bombed an Iranian school, killing over 150 Iranian schoolgirls, was stolen from the US by Iran, which apparently dropped it on its own school! Aren't you embarrassed? This is the guy you've hitched us to at the hip. He is a fascist, a war criminal and a fantasist, and you have hitched our country at the hip to him through AUKUS and through your obsequious toadying. You have hitched our country to the illegal war of the war criminals Trump and Netanyahu. It's humiliating, embarrassing and degrading for our country.

Of course the women from the Iranian football team that are here in Australia deserve asylum, and the Greens are very happy to see that that asylum will be granted. But we have to point out that—on the same day that the government announced that those women will, quite rightly, be granted asylum—the government is slamming the door in the face of countless other Iranian people who could have sought protection in Australia and will now not be permitted to do so. What that means is that every time a Labor politician claims that they care about women in Iran, every time they claim they care about human rights abuses in Iran, we will remember that you slammed the door in the face of countless women and other Iranians who've had their human rights abused. You slammed the door in their faces with your draconian visa laws introduced into this parliament today that will prevent countless Iranian people, many of whom already hold valid visas, from seeking asylum. The hypocrisy is rank and it stinks. It stinks like Labor stinks. I say to people who voted Labor in the last election and who thought better of the Labor Party that it is now time to re-evaluate your political choices. The Greens are here, and we will also always defend human rights and we will always stand against war and for peace.