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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

I want to begin this contribution by making the observation that in reading the report, Australia's sovereign naval shipbuilding capability: All at sea, I was reminded of that baseline reality that weapons of war are the physical manifestation of one of the greatest failures we can commit as a human race—that being, to fail to be able to resolve our conflicts, our disagreements, peaceably and have to plunge our resources, our collective energies, into the task of murdering each other on an industrial scale. Over time, we have allowed, politicians have allowed, governments have allowed this failure to be turned into an industry, an industry that stokes profit, that stokes violence for its own ends.

It seems very much as though Australia is now fully within the grips of its own military industrial complex and that this new Labor government is happy to continue this business as usual. This is regardless of the reality that we are, right now, in an unprecedented time in history. We are seeing the devastating effects of climate change across the nation, a distribution of wealth becoming more uneven and superpowers that are treating the South Pacific as their own personal playground. You would think that, given this context, the Albanese government would seize the opportunity to chart an independent foreign policy focused on peace and non-violent conflict resolution. Unfortunately, the plan put forward by the government and the facts spoken to in the report speak to a government that is instead recommitting to the spending of billions of dollars on the procurement of capabilities such as nuclear-powered submarines through a dangerous, dangerous deal with the US and the United Kingdom. Indeed, the Labor government is continuing the position established by the right-wing hardliners of the Liberal Party that will see the nuclearisation of our naval fleet, nuclear submarines off the shores of Rockingham, not far from where I call home and where I have spent most of my life. This will precipitate a drastic rise in tensions in our region. It is a disgusting and deluded compact with two nations whose judgement in matters of foreign and defence policy is little more than an international joke.

The Greens will continue to raise serious questions about the AUKUS deal, about who in this country is benefitting from it and about who is being put at risk. We will not sit by while the two major parties in this place put our communities at risk of being stuck in the middle of a region with tensions rising precisely because of the decisions that the government itself is making. We will not sit by and allow the arms manufacturers, the weapons dealers, to continue to talk as though the amount of money they divert from other public funding is in fact being spent in the public good when the reality is that the money that is spent on weapons of war goes to lining their pockets and increasing the probability that we will end up in a violent conflict. We will continue to push the conversation and the absolute moral point that public resources should be spent on the peaceful and non-violent addressing of the underlying determinants and causes of conflict and that the wisest course of action is always to seek peace.

Debate adjourned.