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

How extraordinary is it that, a matter of weeks after Labor joined Australia into the war on Iran, at the behest of the war criminals Trump and Netanyahu—the illegal war against Iran that Australia is now fighting, on the side of the war criminals and the perpetrators—all the war parties in this place, the Labor Party, the Liberal Party, the Nationals and One Nation, are colluding to prevent a bill from just going to an inquiry? It's a bill that would actually require this parliament to decide, the next time Labor wants to lead us into another disastrous US led forever war. You don't want the bill that would allow this parliament, the democratically elected representatives of the Australian people, to have the say about whether or not this country should go to war.

This is a war that has resulted in thousands of people dying—women, children, men and everyone in between—tens of thousands being injured and many, many, many hundreds of thousands, well north of a million, being displaced from their homes in places like the south of Lebanon. This is a war that Labor, in the most cavalier way, signed this country up to, because Donald Trump—under pressure from the Zionists and from the war criminal Netanyahu, and in an attempt to distract from his complicity in the paedophilia of Jeffrey Epstein—launched this war, illegally, against the people of Iran. What an absolute disgrace! And how far the Labor Party has fallen from where it stood, just a matter of a couple of decades ago, on the Iraq war.

I also want to talk about the referral that the Greens are attempting to deliver through this amendment of the Treasury Laws Amendment (Doubling Penalties for ACCC Enforcement) Bill. I want to start by reflecting on the economic impacts of this war. Make no mistake, senators: there are no circumstances, even with a massively unlikely immediate ceasefire, where the economic impacts of this war will not continue for some time. And that is the best-case scenario. The worst-case scenario is a global economic black-swan event that will change the nature of international geopolitics and the global economy forever. That is how serious the situation is. And it is time for Labor to come to grips with the impacts of this war, which they were one of the first governments in the world out of the blocks to say they thought was a terrific idea. This is Labor's war, and the impacts of this war on everyday Australians are the impacts Labor has delivered. One of those impacts is petrol prices and petrol availability. It is the absolute barbecue stopper of an issue that is discussed everywhere you go in this country at the moment, whether you're picking the kids up from school, leaning on your back fence talking to a neighbour, down at the pub, in a place of worship or in the supermarket. Everyone is talking about it. And what's Labor doing to stop petrol companies price gouging? Nothing, because their bill, which they say will stop petrol companies price gouging, actually will not do that. It won't do that. Labor knows it won't do that, and Labor knows there are no anti-price-gouging provisions in competition and consumer law in Australia, because last year they moved to create anti-price-gouging provisions only for the supermarket sector and only after the Greens had campaigned for 18 months to get them to do that. Labor is misleading the Australian people, and, instead of being honest, they are being deceptive and they don't want to be caught out.