David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Foreign Affairs (Senator Wong) to a question without notice I asked today relating to the Middle East.

I rise to take note of what were described in Hansard as answers from the Foreign minister. What an extraordinary performance from the government's Foreign minister today—Senator Wong coming in here and refusing to answer the most basic questions. The first question was: given the appalling impacts we're seeing on the ground in the Middle East, but also now the repercussions throughout our economy—people fearful of going to the fuel bowser and people fearful about what's happening to their jobs—why does Labor still continue to support this war? And we couldn't get a coherent answer from the Foreign minister—something about Iran being bad, ignoring the illegality of the war, the reckless expansionism of Donald Trump and the fact that this war is costing people's jobs and livelihoods. We get this endless patter because they refuse—they absolutely refuse—to stand up for Australia's national interest, to stand up to Donald Trump and to say, 'We do not support this war.' Labor's utterly gutless approach to this is surrendering our national interest. You are supporting a war that is destroying jobs, destroying the economy and throwing the world into chaos, and you haven't even got the courage to articulate why.

The second answer from Senator Wong was an extraordinary performance. We asked why this government hasn't come out and opposed Israel's invasion of Lebanon and its threats to turn the southern part of Lebanon into another Gaza, and we get this performance from Senator Wong where she comes out and says, 'I'm very concerned about displacement—very concerned about people losing their homes,' as though it's happening by some kind of natural disaster—as though it were an unnamed flood. I'll tell you why it's happening: because of Israel's illegal war. We see the complete inability of Senator Wong to even say 'Israel' and to even point out that its government is driving this appalling conflict in Lebanon, driving people from their homes and killing more than a thousand Lebanese. They can't even say the word 'Israel', because they know that will offend Donald Trump, and they dare not do that.

Lastly, we asked why on Earth, with all of the chaos that's been produced from this war, including the dreadful chaos running through the Australian economy—with people feeling anxious about their jobs and anxious about the world and the killing that's happening in the Middle East—the Australian government won't join with other middle powers around the world and actually stop supporting the war and say there'll be no support for US global war-making and that bases here can't be used. Bases in Spain can't be used. Bases in the UK can't be used. Why not call together middle powers to speak for peace? If you want to open the Strait of Hormuz, the only way is peace. We asked why the government won't join with middle powers, and do you know what? Labor's Foreign Minister Wong wouldn't even address the question. Do you know why? Because they're utterly gutless. They are afraid of Donald Trump. They're afraid of standing up to Trump and Netanyahu's illegal war, and they don't even have the courage to articulate why. It's an extraordinary betrayal of Australia's national interest.

Then, for the rest of this question time, it was as if we were living in some alternative reality, some complete fantasy. This government and the other war parties—One Nation and their friends in the coalition—tell us, 'We're going to war in the Middle East to stop an aggressive expansionist power in the Middle East from having access to illegal nuclear weapons programs.' Now, I know it's about as popular as a fart in an elevator, but let's be clear: Israel, which is leading this war with Donald Trump, is an aggressive expansionist power in the Middle East with hundreds of illegal nuclear weapons which it allows no international inspection of. That's the truth, and nobody in this chamber can speak that basic truth about this war—the utter hypocrisy at the very centre of it.

Now, apparently, the new story is that we're all going to go to war and support the US war against Iran to open up the Strait of Hormuz. How on earth did the Strait of Hormuz get shut in the first place? It got shut because of the illegal war from Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, which the Labor government was the first government in the world to support. And now we're going to continue to support the US war to open up the Strait of Hormuz, which was only shut because of this illegal war in the first place. You couldn't make this stuff up.

Finally, we get this run from One Nation that they're deeply concerned about fuel security. These are the climate deniers who have refused to ever support renewable energy, which would give us energy security right now. The same party whose leader went over and had a party with Donald Trump just before he started this illegal war now complains about their mate's war. They probably got flown there in Gina Rinehart's executive jet. That's who One Nation is—a bunch of bloody hypocrites. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.