Penny Allman-Payne (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Australia and Australian troops should not be involved in this illegal war in Iran. This is a war that has been started by a genocidal maniac who, against international law, has overseen the genocide of tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza for the last two years, through bombs and starvation, targeting hospitals, schools and civilians. It's a war that has also been started by a deluded, fascist president in the United States—a president who has sent teams of ICE agents out onto the streets to kidnap his own citizens and illegally detain them, a president who has been found to be a sexual predator, a president who has illegally kidnapped the leader of another nation, a president who is illegally denying food and fuel to the people of Cuba. These are the people that our government, our Labor government, has been quick to support.

Let's talk about moral clarity. The Greens have been unwavering in our position that the Iranian regime is a wicked one. The Greens have been unwavering in our position that the women of Iran and the other people who have been targeted by that regime should be freed from that oppression, but it is not up to Western nations to take the law into their own hands and to illegally start bombing civilians. Where that leads is that the next government that doesn't like what our government is doing has open slather to go and do the same thing.

After the Second World War, we introduced laws of war and international rules for a reason: to respect the human rights of everyone involved, to protect civilians. What we have seen is the complete trashing of international law by Netanyahu and Trump and the Australian government and the parties of war in this place—Labor, the coalition and One Nation—cheering them along. Australians are not happy about it, and the Greens will consistently stand for peace.