Lee Rhiannon (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

International Women's Day will be marked with inspiring celebrations around the world. One of the creative actions will be the women's peace camp held in Shannon, Ireland. The camp has been organised to support Margaretta D'Arcy, who is serving a three-month jail sentence for crossing the perimeter fence onto the tarmac at Shannon Airport. That occurred in December 2012.

Margaretta and many others have taken a stand for peace, using courageous, non-violent actions to protest the continuing use of Shannon Airport as a war hub by the United States that facilitates the movement of troops from that country to theatres of war. This is the airport where Ireland has become a complicit partner in US rendition and a partner in facilitating the transportation of weapons of war. 'Rendition' is defined as the practice of sending a foreign criminal or terrorist suspect covertly to be interrogated in a country with less rigorous regulations for the humane treatment of prisoners. Rendition has actually become synonymous with torture.

In 2014, Margaretta was imprisoned after she refused to sign a bond saying that she would not trespass on non-public parts of Shannon Airport. This story is all the more remarkable and inspiring given that Margaretta is a 79-year-old peace activist. She should not be in jail. She is in poor health and undergoing treatment for cancer. This International Women's Day, around the world, people are calling for Margaretta to be released from prison.

Despite Ireland's claimed neutrality, successive Irish governments have allowed Shannon Airport to be used by the US military to transit planes carrying out bombings in other countries—bombings that inflict an unknown number of civilian casualties. Amnesty International, the United Nations and the European Parliament have expressed serious concerns about the many stopovers at Shannon airport by CIA-operated aircraft. Regarding the actions of Margaretta and the growing opposition to Ireland's cooperation with the US, these people are protesting that Ireland could be complicit in US torture of prisoners by facilitating such flights.

Margaretta is dedicated to highlighting that the most devastating impact of war is on women and our children—both directly, from the killings and maimings of war, and by robbing dollars from the public purse. The trillions of dollars spent on war could end world poverty and provide a decent life to the world's poor and marginalised. Margaretta is also a veteran of the Greenham Common peace camp of the 1980s. This was a very historic and innovative women's action which opposed the US military placing cruise missiles on common land in England. This protest had a big win: there is no longer a cruise missile site, or any war base, in this part of England. That was also an inspiring action that led to the very historic women's peace camp at Pine Gap in 1983. Over 700 women gathered for a two-week action to highlight that Pine Gap, as a US base, should not be in Australia.

As we celebrate International Women's Day and its fine traditions, Margaretta's actions are a reminder that to dissent from a perspective of permanent war and austerity, and to demand the protection of life and the planet, is increasingly labelled as subversive and even criminal behaviour. While war criminals are allowed to pass through Irish airports, and financial criminals go unpunished, the Irish state has imprisoned an elderly woman, a pensioner, who has dedicated herself to highlighting, and working to prevent, war crimes.

Margaretta has called on Ireland's Minister for Defence, Alan Shatter, to stop defending the indefensible military use of the airport. She has stated that the Irish state has a responsibility to ensure the proper use of the airport and to protect against security threats. Regular peace protests are held at Shannon Airport calling for an end to the US military's use of the airport. I understand that the protests are held on a monthly basis and that this month's event is calling for the immediate release of Margaretta. The crowd at a recent protest included former UN Assistant Secretary-General Denis Halliday and Irish MPs Mick Wallace, Clare Daly and Senator Trevor O' Clochartaigh. It also included Vietnam veteran Joseph Bangert. This protest continues the work of Margaretta, protesting that the United States Armed Forces should not be allowed to use Shannon Airport routinely without any oversight or reporting on what they are transporting.

A ground-breaking research project mapping the US government's program of global rendition throws up more information about what Shannon Airport is used for. The rendition project contains a database of over 11,000 pieces of data on confirmed or suspected rendition flights and others flights from related carriers. It has been identified that over 350 of the flights came through Shannon Airport. The researchers behind the project are Dr Ruth Blakeley, of the University of Kent, and Dr Sam Raphael of Kingston University, London. The rendition flights database draws on testimony from detainees, Red Cross reports, courtroom evidence and flight records—including records provided by Shannonwatch, which document US flights in and out of Shannon Airport.

Margaretta is a talented artist. Her life is outstanding; it is truly inspiring. In 1961 she joined the anti-nuclear Committee of 100, led by the famous peace activist and philosopher Bertrand Russell. She has written widely and directed films—including Yellow Gate Women,a very interesting film about the attempts by the women of Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp to outwit the British and United States militaries at RAF Greenham Common with boltcutters and legal challenges. As I said earlier, that was very famous and they were successful. They mobilised women around the world and across England—and there is no longer a military base on Greenham Common.

Calls for Margaretta's release are gathering global support. Across Ireland, support is also growing. Sinn Fein Leader Gerry Adams has called for her release. He said:

Successive governments have failed to inspect any planes in Shannon and have allowed the continued militarisation of a civilian airport. Rather than addressing these issues, the state has focused its efforts on arresting and jailing a 79-year-old woman.

Margaretta D'Arcy has taken a stand for world peace. This International Women's Day is our opportunity to add our voices to the growing worldwide call to release Margaretta. Margaretta should be congratulated and thanked, not imprisoned.

On another matter, as the coalition cuts back on Australia's aid program and cuts the aid budget, it really would be timely for the coalition to give support to the important work being undertaken by Publish What You Pay. This has great relevance to how aid and development is undertaken in low-income countries. Today, more than 60 per cent of the world's poorest people live in countries rich in natural resources, but they really share in the wealth. Secrecy and corruption often means that the income from oil, mining, gas and logging activities never reaches ordinary people.

To take Africa as an example, $148 billion of Africa's income is lost every year due to corruption—in a continent where 2.5 billion people do not have access to a proper toilet and nearly one billion lack access to clean water. That amount, $148 billion, is equivalent to one-quarter of Africa's income being lost. That is one-quarter of the whole continent's income lost—not lost altogether; lost by the African people to some of the world's richest companies. African exports of minerals, oil and gas in 2010 were worth roughly seven times the value of international aid to that continent: US$333 billion versus US$47 billion in aid. If those resources were harnessed effectively in the fight to end extreme poverty, resource-rich countries could exit from their dependency on international aid, a sustainable solution that surely we all want to see happen.

I have read and I have listened to many of the comments made by this government about the future of aid programs, and great emphasis is given to the need for economic growth. This issue is critical, and it has been identified by Publish What You Pay. But, surely, if you are going to have an emphasis on economic growth, the benefits need to stay with the people, who are truly the owners of that wealth. Yet the secrecy and corruption that surrounds deals between governments and multinational companies is a major barrier to the effective use of the financial resources that extractive industries generate.

Those multinational companies are largely headquartered in the developed world. We know many of them are in Australia and come from Australia. That is why the global Publish What You Pay campaign for transparency in the extractive industries was formed a decade ago. From small beginnings, it has grown into a coalition of more than 700 organisations active in more than 60 countries, including Australia. I very much congratulate them on the extraordinary and groundbreaking work they are undertaking.

Publish What You Pay has achieved a great deal since its inception, and I will share with you some examples of those achievements. Since 2010, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange has required prospective mining and oil and gas companies to disclose payments to governments in their listing applications. In August 2012, the United States adopted final rules that will operationalise its law, under section 1504 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, requiring all extractive industry companies registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission to report payments made to governments on a country-by-country and a project-by-project basis. In June 2013, the European Parliament voted to adopt new accounting and transparency directives that require all public and large private extractive and logging companies in the European Union to report their payments to governments on a project-by-project basis. In the same month, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that Canada would establish mandatory reporting standards for extractive companies that are consistent with existing international standards. Norway committed to implementing payment disclosure legislation for extractive industry companies by 1 January 2014. In June 2013, the Swiss parliament adopted a resolution calling on the federal council to draft transparency rules that are in line with the US and European Union laws for private and publicly traded companies, and to include commodities traders as well as extractive companies.

It is an impressive list of examples, but I notice there is nothing about Australia. All of the major markets around the world are moving in the direction of greater transparency, except Australia. With more than 240 Australian mining companies operating in Africa, we have a key role to play in making sure that the resources they extract benefit local people as well as their shareholders. And we have a great opportunity to have a global impact too, because, as we know, Australia will host the G20 summit in Brisbane in November. Action from Australia—the last developed country to move on this—could precipitate action from the big developing countries, where we also need movement: China, Brazil, India and South Africa. Then we would truly have global rules and a more level playing field for Australian businesses.

We would be able to talk about the beginning of the end of the 'resource curse', whereby countries are burdened by their bounty instead of blessed by it. Our actions would be helping to end extreme poverty rather than exacerbating it. I acknowledge it is only a small step, but it is a very important step, particularly in assisting low-income countries to control their own resources and the distribution of wealth from those resources. That would be a G20 legacy that all Australians could be proud of. I think it is a very worthy suggestion from Publish What You Pay.