Penny Allman-Payne (Queensland, Australian Greens) | Hansard source

Israel intentionally targets children in Gaza—an infant shot in the head while breastfeeding, a 3-year-old shot dead in the arms of his father, a teenager slaughtered while carrying a white flag. More than 20,000 children are dead since Israel launched its assault on Gaza in October 2023. This is the evidence documented in a new UN report, a report that also details systematic use of torture and sexual violence against Palestinian children. Yet Labor continues to run cover for the Israeli regime and continues to trade arms with a country that is actively engaged in genocide and ethnic cleansing on multiple fronts.

The Australian people and people all over the world see Israel for what it is now: a colonial apartheid state run by a fascist government that murders and brutalises with impunity. Yesterday, Helen O'Sullivan, a grandmother and member of the Gaza flotilla, was arrested in Brisbane for saying, 'From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,' a peaceful call for freedom that the people of Palestine and their allies have been making for decades. There have now been 31 people charged in Queensland under LNP laws that have banned this phrase. The intent of this ban is clear, to use the power of the state to try to crush criticism of Israel and silence those exposing Australia's complicity, but it's not working. Palestinians and their allies are still turning up to tell the truth and oppose the genocide, risking their own freedom to fight for a just and moral cause, an end to the genocide and freedom for the Palestinian people, and solidarity with Helen O'Sullivan and everyone else charged under these draconian laws. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.