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

Fair dinkum! This Senate is existing in some kind of alternative reality in relation to this war, in relation to who started the war, in relation to Iran's actions and in relation to the fuel price and availability crisis currently being endured by the Australian people. This Senate is living in an alternative reality.

The real facts are these. Fact 1 is that the Labor Party supports this war. The Prime Minister was one of the first global leaders out after the US and Israel illegally engaged in an unprovoked attack on Iran saying he thought it was a good idea. He has been joined by the Liberal Party, the National Party and One Nation—the parties of war in this place. What we are getting today from all of these parties is that, somehow, the fuel crisis in Australia manifested out of thin air. Well, it didn't manifest out of thin air. It was an entirely predictable consequence of the illegal aggression against Iran perpetrated by the US, perpetrated by Israel and cheerled by our sycophantic, mediocre Prime Minister. That's fact 1.

Fact 2 is that Iran didn't wake up one morning and decide to start bombing petrochemical facilities in the Gulf region. What actually started the war was an unprovoked, illegal act by the US and Israel. That's what started the war. Iran's actions are not a provocation; they are a retaliation to an illegal provocation from the US and Israel, cheerled by the Labor Party. The Labor Party used to oppose wars back in the day, but they haven't seen a US war they didn't love in the last couple of decades, because they've abandoned their roots. They've forgotten where they came from as a political movement. They're far more interested in sucking up to Donald Trump than they are in calling for global peace and an end to the suffering, the death, the misery, the injuries and the displacement of millions of people across Iran, Southern Lebanon and elsewhere.

Do you know who's paying for the warmongers—for the Labor Party, the Liberals, the Nationals and One Nation? If you want to just look in a domestic context, do you know who's paying? It's the people who are trying to get fuel at the moment. They're the people who are paying. No-one who supports this war should come in here and pretend that the fuel crisis is somehow happening in isolation. This was an entirely predictable consequence of the illegal invasion and bombardment of Iran perpetrated by Israel and the United States and cheerled by the Labor Party, cheerled by the Liberals, cheerled by the Nationals and cheerled on by One Nation. This was so obviously what was going to happen.

All of the wargames that have been conducted for decades said this was going to happen. Don't pretend you did not know this would happen. Of course it was going to happen. Of course Australians were going to pay the price at the petrol bowser. But I want to say, very clearly, to Australians unfortunately and tragically for the people in the Gulf region, we have not seen nothing yet. The human consequences overseas, the economic consequences and the material pain for Australians have unfortunately barely begun. There is no scenario where things go back to the way they used to be anytime soon, and there is every chance that this war is a cataclysmic black-swan event for the global economy. And it will be because of the war criminals Trump and Netanyahu, and because no-one in this place, apart from the Australian Greens, had the stones to stand up and say, 'We want peace, not war.'

Well, you reap what you sow. Every one of you should be held responsible by the Australian people for the economic pain they're feeling, let alone the people over there who are being murdered—