Andrew Murray (WA, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Special Minister of State (Senator Faulkner) to a question without notice asked by Senator Murray today relating to Zimbabwe.

Mr Deputy President, you will recall that I asked, with respect to Zimbabwe, whether the minister accepted my thesis that the Zimbabwean government is no longer a legitimate government. I said that it was no longer a legitimate government because the Mugabe regime has violated the rule of law, created millions of desperate refugees, inflicted starvation on its own people, inflicted grievous harm on its citizens and thrown aside basic democratic principles by declaring war if the MDC are victorious at the ballot box. To add to those, it has, of course, done many other things.

My thesis is that once a government moves into illegitimacy—and to date the international community have given Zimbabwe the benefit of the doubt; they continue to have normal diplomatic relationships with it, despite there being some sanctions on that government worldwide—it is then possible for the international community to up the ante. The essential decision that the Australian government has to take is whether it, along with other members of the international community, will indeed up the ante. You then have to ask: ‘How do you do that and what are the guidelines?’ One of the policy areas where there is assistance in this matter is outlined by the International Crisis Group, which has established the Responsibility to Protect principles. On its website, it says:

The world’s heads of state and government unanimously accepted the concept of R2P at the UN World Summit in September 2005. The Security Council has also accepted the general principle.

So these matters are already accepted as a foundation for action. What the Responsibility to Protect principles say—and this is Basic Principles (1)(B)—is:

Where a population is suffering serious harm, as a result of internal war, insurgency, repression or state failure, and the state in question is unwilling or unable to halt or avert it, the principle of non-intervention yields to the international responsibility to protect.

The Responsibility to Protect principles say that, if prevention fails, you are required to institute whatever measures, economic, political, diplomatic, legal, security or—the last resort—military, become necessary to stop mass atrocity crimes occurring.

I was in southern Africa at the time the Smith regime was forced to the negotiating table. People wrongly think that they had finally been defeated in war. They were certainly in real strife. But what really forced the Rhodesian government—as it was then—and Ian Smith to the negotiating table was the South Africans. The South Africans applied immense financial, trade, export, energy and fuel pressure by denying, delaying or obstructing landlocked Rhodesia from getting supplies or getting rid of exports. They were forced to the negotiating table. So far, the South African government and the surrounding governments which form the SADC have engaged in quiet diplomacy, and they have absolutely failed. The failure now is hurting their own countries and destabilising their own countries very badly. So it is in the interests of the Australian government and in the interests of other governments around the world, and in the interests of the southern African governments, to start to up the ante and to apply real pressure on Zimbabwe on the economic, political, diplomatic, legal and security levels—right now. They have now the grounds for doing so.

The purpose of my question was to bring that proposition forward to the Australian government so that they can stop wringing their hands and saying, ‘There’s nothing more we can do’ and recognise that because of the now—

John Hogg (Queensland, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time for the debate has expired.

Question agreed to.