Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Australian Senate spent an hour today debating a motion around the one-year anniversary of the war of aggression by the Russian government on the sovereign state of Ukraine, an illegal, unethical and immoral invasion of a sovereign nation. I wondered how many senators today in this chamber were also aware that in just two weeks time, 20 March, we have the 20th anniversary of another illegal, immoral and unethical invasion of another country, which our nation shamefully participated in: the invasion of Iraq.

I said this in my first speech to the Senate: one way or another, that event was a major part of my journey to being in the Senate here tonight. I'd never been so angry about anything in my life as I was when our nation participated in that war of aggression. And I wasn't alone. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in Australia. Millions took to the streets around the world. It was the biggest protest seen in Rome at the time and, indeed, in London. There were half-a-million people in Hyde Park in Sydney, where Simon Crean, the Labor minister at the time, the Labor leader, spoke out against this war. But, nevertheless, even though there was this groundswell of foreboding and fear and anxiety that we were going to get dragged into a war that didn't need to happen, it happened. The people were ignored. And we were right. We were right about our fears and our concerns, because this conflict is still being felt today, nearly 20 years after it was initiated by the so-called coalition of the willing.

Hundreds of thousands of people were directly killed, many of them innocents, in this war of aggression. There was instability across the entire region for over a decade, including the Syrian civil war. The invasion of Iraq and the insurgency gave direct rise to Islamic state and more global terrorism and, ultimately, to a wave of millions of refugees, a wave of human misery, across Europe following this conflict.

And what did we achieve from it? More importantly, what have we learned from it? On Saturday 18 March and on Sunday 19 March, there will be two rallies for peace in this country—a big one in Melbourne on Saturday 18, which I will be attending, at the State Library at 1pm, and one on Hobart Parliament Lawns on Sunday 19—because I know there were many Australians that participated in protesting this war who must feel very strongly about this. I also know there are a lot of young Australians who don't remember the Iraq War or the lead-up to the Iraq War, but one of the reasons we have to remember is that the media played a really big role in taking us to that war. And I do want to say I was horrified at the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald and theAge this morning, 'Australia must prepare for the threat of a China war'. And it clearly just wasn't me who was horrified, former Prime Minister Paul Keating said today that this article represents:

the most egregious and provocative news presentation of any newspaper I have witnessed in over 50 years of active public life.

  …   …   …

the extent of the bias and news abuse is, I believe, unparalleled in modern Australian journalism.

He goes to explain why this is so dangerous, that our media are either complicit or actively beating the drums for war. Recently the UN Secretary-General said we are 'not sleepwalking' into another global conflict, given what's happening around Ukraine and with NATO and the threats and tensions in our region involving China, we are 'eyes wide open' walking into another global conflict.

This is the last thing we need. What we need to do is remember that while the media may have failed us, and largely failed us, one media outlet didn't, and that was WikiLeaks. The only truth teller of the Iraq War, Julian Assange, is sitting in a maximum security prison. No-one else has been brought to justice because of this illegal war, and it's time we came together on the 20th anniversary, in two weeks time, to remember and remember why this must never happen again. (Time expired)