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

I rise to speak on the motion to take note of answers. Reflecting on the responses given by Senator Wong, the Australian people expect independence and a bit of spine from their government. Yet what we have witnessed since the beginning of America's war on Iran—and the escalation and expansion of the war in the Middle East, which has now been going for so many years and for which the US bears such incredible responsibility—from the Australian government is utter spinelessness. This government will bear, for all time, the shame of being the first nation in the world to back in Donald Trump's war on Iran—to look at this man and his administration's vile track record, in every area of policy, and go: 'That's the one. We'll go all the way with him. That sounds like a good idea.'

Tonight, across the country, families, from Western Australia to South Australia, to Victoria, to New South Wales, to Queensland, and in the NT and here in the ACT, and down in Tasmania, are paying the price for the spinelessness and the lack of vision of this government. Not only has the government followed along behind the United States into an escalation of this conflict—preventing us from playing a role in the urgently-needed de-escalation, the urgently-needed negotiation for the urgently-needed peace that is the only thing that will give us any hope of restoring the conditions necessary to relieve people's cost-of-living pressures, let alone to actually end the bloodshed that continues, right now, as we debate this question—but also they sit here condemned of one of the most shocking acts of failure to do the basic work of government that I have seen in nearly a decade in this place.

I can't believe it has to be a statement made this evening, but our nation is an island nation, and, in a time of crisis, our access to the basics required to function as a country depends on one of two things: either our ability to manufacture, create and supply those basics here at home, or our ability to source those basics from the region around us. Now, this dynamic is not new; it has always existed, and the COVID-19 pandemic threw this into clear relief. It showed us, in devastating detail, that in so many areas of essential goods and services, from the supply of food to the supply of medication to the supply of petrol, diesel and fertiliser, where once had existed systems able to supply the community in times of crisis, systems able to self-sustain, now existed privatised, corporate run systems that existed solely for making a profit and that those systems were not fit for purpose in an emergency. And what did you people do with the years given to you to act? Tonight, people would be fair enough in looking to this place and answering, 'Nothing, and we are now paying the price.'

Question agreed to.