Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Greens' Defence Amendment (Parliamentary Approval of Overseas Service) Bill 2020. For more than 40 years parties in this parliament have been pushing for oversight in the deployment of troops to fight in foreign wars. Sending Australians to war, and potentially to their death, is one of the most important decisions that politicians have to make, and it is a decision that should not be made with the unchecked power of the executive branch of government. It should require the approval of parliament—like much of the world's parliaments require—and, like, 90 per cent of Australians support.

Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq were all wars that Australia got involved in with those prime ministers exercising powers as though they were a monarch without even reference to cabinet. And all of those invasions were disasters. Yet, for more than 40 years both coalition and Labor governments have joined together to stop any requirement of parliament's approval to send Australians off to fight other countries wars. The Democrats introduced this bill in 1985, in 1988 and then in 2003. The Greens introduced it in 2003, 2014, 2020 and now in 2026.

We are an anti-war party. War will never deliver peace. This war will not bring safety to the brave Iranian people who are fighting for liberation from a brutal Iranian regime. At least 1,500 Iranians have been killed since this war began, the majority civilians—innocent people massacred, including 160 schoolchildren when a primary school was bombed. You cannot bomb your way to peace. The Iranian people deserve to be free from persecution and domination, both from the current regime and from foreign bombs. Trump and Netanyahu don't care about democracy for the Iranian people who are fighting for their own liberation, and bombing doesn't make democracy. All it makes is a power vacuum that leads to more fighting, worse repression and more harm to civilians. Parliament must be a counterweight to our government's drive to appease the likes of Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu and others like them.

Australians don't want war. The war parties do, though. Labor, Liberal and One Nation are all in support of this illegal war—a war that is based on a lie, again. Our prime minister was the first in the whole world to support this illegal war, which is illegal because it's in breach of international law. Our prime minister, with his full-throated support of this war, said:

We support the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent Iran continuing to threaten international peace and security.

Yet the US national security director later told the US Congress that Iran had not restarted its nuclear program—that same program that Trump had already said had been obliterated in June of last year. So this is yet another war based on a lie that Australian warplanes, equipment and now 85 of our people have been sent to. They are allegedly not engaged in offensive action, but there will be mission creep, and our presence and resourcing will free up the resourcing and the personnel of Israel and the US to launch yet more offensive strikes, which will punish civilians.

The Prime Minister then tried to backpedal a little bit on his support for this war while continuing our presence in the Middle East. As we've come to expect from Labor, they say one thing and do another. The gaslighting from this government is endless. Labor can't say it wants to end the conflict while actively fuelling it—allowing the US to use our bases, sending troops to the region and keeping Australians embedded in the military. Australians do not support Trump and Netanyahu's latest forever war on Iran, just as they don't want our government to support Israel's continued genocide in Gaza, where tens of thousands of people have been killed by Israel and many more are suffering a human made famine, legally imprisoned or missing. It is a genocide that has continued unabated. While we are now looking at yet another illegal war, that pain in Gaza and the West Bank has not diminished. Australians don't support Israel's shameful occupation of southern Lebanon either, where they're now striking bridges and civilian infrastructure and pushing people out of their homes in a horrific escalation that threatens to prolong this illegal war indefinitely.

Over a million people have been displaced by this illegal war, this war which is supported and resourced by Australia. Australians don't want war, but they weren't asked. And, because they don't get a say and neither does our parliament, we need the power to say no to war and to make sure that our government can't join a war on the whim of a deeply unstable US president ever again without approval from this parliament. We need to detach ourselves from this volatile administration and have an independent foreign policy that puts Australia's best interests first instead of asking, 'How high?' when Donald Trump says, 'Jump.' The only winners from war are the billionaires and the big corporations who back them—fossil fuel companies and weapons dealers. Their profits soar while ordinary people, whether in the Middle East or here at home, bear the financial and emotional pain of war. Donald Trump drags us into an illegal war based on a lie about nuclear power, and now you, as Australians, are paying more for fuel, for food and for energy—all so the top one per cent can get even richer.

The Greens are the only party that have opposed this war, and we are the only party who want to make the wealthiest one per cent pay their fair share. The second this war started, the price of petrol went through the roof, and so did the profits of the corporations who sell that petrol. Then interest rates went up, and so did the profits of the big banks. Food prices will be next, and guess what will happen to the profits of Coles and Woolies? And energy prices will be after that. We have seen this movie before. The only winners are the big corporations and the billionaires who profit from war. With their wealth, they buy more assets, like homes and more shares, driving up the cost of housing and further increasing inequality. You're drowning in a sea of rising costs because the system is designed to funnel money to the richest people and corporations in our society.

We saw it during the pandemic. We saw it during the invasion of Ukraine. And now, with another illegal war, we're seeing more wealth being concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer people and corporations again. Wars and crises are exploited by billionaires and big businesses. Prices go up, wages go down and inequality continues to grow.

In the last decade, the wealthiest one per cent gained 10 times more wealth than the bottom half of the country. It is obscene. The average billionaire in Australia currently makes $25,000 per hour. In just four hours, they're making the same amount an average worker makes in a whole year. This is why people feel like they are drowning. The government like to pretend that the war has got nothing to do with them. They want to blame it for rising costs, and they claim they're doing all they can. Well, they are not. We could withdraw our personnel and our resourcing from this illegal war, and we could use our diplomatic pressure to urge an end to it, to urge for peace. We could make the one per cent pay their fair share so that you don't have to. We could use that money to make sure that everyone has the things that they need to live a good life.

Imagine if we used the billions going to Trump's nuclear submarines and his war machine to further reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. Imagine if we invested in housing, in health care and in education so people can afford them. There's a lot that could be done if governments had some courage and actually made the one per cent pay their fair share. Australians deserve politicians who represent and work for them, not work for the interests of the big corporations profiting from death and destruction.

We owe it to our constituents to support this bill. It is their democracy, it is their armed forces, it is their neighbours and it is their loved ones who have to go off and fight. It cannot be another 40 years of brazen, unchecked warmongering before this bill finally passes and the parliament can finally have a say on who lives, who dies and who we trust to not violate the human rights of others in conflict situations. Australians do not want war, and the Greens stand with them.