Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

At the outset, let me thank Senator Shoebridge and his team for today bringing forward this bill, the Defence Amendment (Parliamentary Approval of Overseas Service) Bill 2020. It has created a moment for this parliament to debate a vital question. The question before us is this: what should be asked of politicians before politicians make an ask of the Australian community? In my mind, there is no more serious request that a government can make of its people than the request to send their children, their mothers and daughters and their fathers and sons into harm's way on fields of battle far from home. There is no more serious request.

The Australian Greens believe that, before politicians ask that of our community, they should be willing to turn up to the houses of parliament to which they have been elected, make the case as to why it is necessary for people to put themselves in harm's way and explain what the objective is that those service men and women will be asked to achieve, how they know that that objective will be achieved and what we will do to support them once they return. These are very reasonable expectations that the Australian community have of their leaders before a request is made of them to put themselves in harm's way.

For decades, both sides of parliament, when asked to take that expectation and put it into law, have resisted it at every turn. Both Labor and the Liberal Party, when asked to submit themselves to democratic scrutiny and democratic approval before they send us to war, have responded by asking for the community's trust. They have said to the community again and again: 'Trust us to make this call. You don't need to be involved. You don't need your members of parliament to have to vote on these questions of war and peace. Leave it to us. Leave it to us and our superior knowledge, our contacts, our connections and our experience with complex foreign policy matters that couldn't possibly be disclosed to the public.' And what has the result of this request for trust been for the Australian community? Again and again and again, we have been asked, our sons and daughters have been asked, to go overseas and fight American wars—Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and now Iran.

Time after time, war is entered into based on lie and deception. And, every single time, the full extent of the disaster of that decision-making process is laid bare to the public. Every single time, it becomes clear that this process of trusting politicians to make these decisions has once again failed. Those very same politicians rock up to this parliament and they make sombre speeches about the loss and sacrifice, the serious respect that they hold for the members of the armed services and the deep reverence they have for military service. And yet will they back that up with action? Do they take a moment to reflect on whether their decision-making led to that harm? No. Every single time, there is a collective forgetting.

When the Greens, on behalf of the community, raise the proposal, once again, that maybe enough is enough—that maybe the trust that you have asked of the community for decades has now been broken and it is time to turn the decision of whether to send Australian personnel into harm's way over to the elected representatives in the parliament—every single time, that is responded to with derision. It is resisted, because it is an attempt to actually hold people to account.

I can think of no better example, no better case study, of precisely why accountability is so desperately needed when it comes to whether or not we go to war than the current war in which we find ourselves. The Albanese government has led Australia into an illegal and immoral war, started by a tyrant president on a whim. He has put our service personnel at risk. Bombs rain down upon the people of Iran daily. Civilians are slaughtered daily, not merely with the complicity of this government but with the active enablement of this government, because not only is the Albanese government the current holder of the title of the world's first government to endorse this man's war; it functions to this moment to provide the American administration with the very intelligence capacity that it needs to continue this war—to continue to drop the bomb.

In the run-up to the last federal election, the Australian community was increasingly worried about what seemed to be the likelihood of the election of Donald Trump, and so the Australian community went to work. In seat after seat, vote after vote, they rejected the far-right politics. They tossed Donald Trump's political apprentice into the dustbin of history. They elected a government led by a man who, for most of his political career, had positioned himself as one of the few members of the Australian parliament willing to talk tough to the United States. They elected a progressive parliament with a progressive majority. They gifted this Labor government with the best opportunity in a generation to change course and to establish an independent foreign policy and a peace based defence policy. The Australian community could not have given this government more tools to avoid the crisis into which the community has now been plunged.

So they gave this government the opportunity, and what did you do with it? You saw this man get re-elected. You knew what he had been like. You knew what his aims were. You knew what his cabinet looked like. Nothing. Did you change a single aspect of Australia's foreign policy relationship with the United States? No. Did you modify our intelligence relationship? No. Did you rethink any part of AUKUS? No. Did you reassess the value or dynamic of the American alliance or the ANZUS Treaty? No. You continued us on the course that had been set for decades, and, in many cases, you deepened our relationship with this erratic and immoral tyrant. Look where it has landed us. Look where it is taking the world—not only countless murdered and many civilians killed or maimed for life, but a world teetering on the brink of a disaster, the potential likes of which we have yet to know.

When the history of this period is written, when the scholars look back and attempt to find who actually spoke out and what roles the people elected to represent the community played in this moment, what will they find? They will find an Australian community of whom 90 per cent believe the parliament should have a vote before we go to war. They will find a community where the vast majority oppose Trump's war on Iran. But they will find a government, a Labor and a Liberal Party, that—in the face of this man and his utterly unjustifiable, illegal and immoral war motivated by his own domestic political needs—did nothing. They continued the soporific sycophancy that has dominated Australian foreign and defence policy for nearly 80 years. They continued the lazy, intellectually vacant, fundamentally unimaginative and ultimately self-serving approach to the United States of America.

I don't think the people in this place understand how far out of touch with the community you really, truly are. The Australian people are friends to most people of the world, including the peoples of the United States. We have enjoyed, shared in and contributed to moments of cultural exchange, joy and fun together for decades. We are very happy as a community to collaborate with Americans and appreciate their culture and aspects of their values. But it is not an uncritical friendship. We understand the other side of the United States: that they can be, and often are—in terms of the actions of their governments—bullies. They're ignorant bullies. Yet, Australian governments continue to make an exception for this nation and its governments, administration after administration.

As Dr Emma Shortis described in her book of the same title, Australian governments have treated America, for 80 years or more, as an exceptional friend. This relationship must now be reassessed. It is time for this parliament to join with our community in leading us collectively away and into an independent and peaceful foreign and defence policy. That work begins with requiring this parliament and its politicians to get out of bed, put on a tie and bother to turn up to vote before they send our service personnel into harm's way.