David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

Today, the Greens introduce a bill that will require both houses of parliament to vote before the Australian Defence Force can be sent overseas to engage in warlike actions.

War power reform bills have been proposed by the Greens for over 20 years and have been routinely rejected by the war parties—the Liberal Party, the Labor Party—over those two decades. With Australians being sent into another illegal US war, without any democratic debate or input, the Greens today are reintroducing the Defence Amendment (Parliamentary Approval of Overseas Service) Bill, introduced by my colleague Senator Jordan Steele-John in 2020. I want to thank Senator Steele-John and the community groups that he and his team worked with in developing this bill and presenting it for the parliament then.

There is extraordinary support from the community for these reforms. A 2023 poll found that 90 per cent of Australians support war powers reform. Let me repeat that: 90 per cent of Australians want this legislation to pass, and they want a binding parliamentary vote before the deployment of Australian troops and military personnel into overseas conflicts.

The announcement from the Albanese Labor government that it's sending more than 80 military personnel, an RAAF E-7A Wedgetail aircraft and medium range air-to-air missiles directly into another US forever war in the Middle East shows how easy it is for a handful of empowered individuals in the executive—the Prime Minister and the defence minister, maybe with a nod to the Foreign minister, but it's not required, so literally two people can make the decision to send Australia to war. That's what's happened in this latest announcement: the decision made in a closed room by a handful of cabinet members—not even the full cabinet—with zero parliamentary oversight, zero public engagement and not even the pretence of asking the opinion of the Australian people. Labor's defence minister has actually now finally admitted that this most recent deployment of Australian troops came after multiple requests from the United States.

Once again, we find that the war parties in this place don't listen to the Australian public, don't ask the Australian public, don't listen to the Australian parliament and don't ask the Australian parliament. Who do they ask? They ask whoever is in charge in Washington: Donald Trump, son of Trump—whoever is in charge in Washington, that's the person who has the say over whether or not Australia goes to war. That is a gross failing of Australia's national interests—a surrender of Australia's national interests.

When a handful of people in a darkened, smoke-filled room get a phone call from Washington and then send Australia to war, that's not democracy. That is a disaster waiting to happen. We know that that's how decisions have been made for decades and decades. That's how thousands of Australians went to Vietnam—hundreds were killed in Vietnam. That's how thousands of Australians went into a never-ending conflict in Afghanistan—which was apparently to depose the Taliban—only to return after two decades of appalling violence in Afghanistan. Millions of people from Afghanistan were displaced and hundreds of thousands were killed—so much suffering. That decision is never democratic—that decision made by a handful of people in a dark room in Canberra.

Take the Iraq war. You would think that, at moments like this, when Australia is doubling down on deployment into another illegal US war in the Middle East, there would be at least an echo, a memory, of the disaster that was the last time that Australia deployed troops into the Middle East, sending Australian forces into another illegal war, based on lies, in Iraq, and of the utter chaos that that produced for the people of Iraq, and then, as Iraq imploded, the chaos that then echoed throughout the region, with the ripping apart of Syria and the spread of conflict from that US war. And yet, none of those historical lessons have been learned by Labor.

To their shame, the coalition brought a motion into this parliament to congratulate Donald Trump on this war. The faux debate that happened in this chamber between the war parties of One Nation, Labor and the coalition was about whether we congratulate the United States and Israel for commencing this utterly destructive war, or whether—

Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Hear, hear!

David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I note the interjection from the Leader of the Opposition—'Hear, hear!'—cheering on this war. It's as though the coalition has no eyes, no ears and no heart. Millions of Australians are suffering right now from this war. They're suffering when they can't fill up their petrol tank, they're suffering because they're anxious about their job and they're suffering because they're seeing yet more carnage and violence coming across on their phone and in their newsfeed. And in this chamber, when we mention it, the coalition cheer that illegal war on; they cheer on Donald Trump. And they did it just then, from the Leader of the Opposition. No ears, no eyes and no heart—that's how decisions like this are made to send Australians to war. It's time that changed.

This is not a radical reform. Democracies around the world require a parliamentary vote, parliamentary approval, before going to war. France, Finland, Denmark, Germany and Spain all require a parliamentary vote and parliamentary approval before their countries can go to war and before they can deploy troops overseas.

Ninety per cent of Australians want this reform. In fact, when you ask Australians about it—when you say, 'Do you think the parliament should have to approve Australia going to war?'—you have to get over the disbelief that it isn't already part of the system. Australians can't believe that some of the most consequential decisions for our country have no democratic oversight and are literally just made in that darkened, cigar-smoke-filled room with a phone call from Washington. They cannot believe it, and they are right to be appalled.

The last time the Greens brought this reform to the parliament, we had an extraordinary position put from the Labor Party. The Labor Party didn't pretend to be interested in democracy. They didn't pretend to be interested in asking the opinion of the Australian people. I'll read what the Labor Party's Senator Ciccone, on behalf of the government, said about what's important before decisions like this are made. He said:

But it's also important to note that in the Westminster system of government, as we have here in Australia, it is within the purview of the executive to make decisions regarding the commitment of forces to engagements, be they within our borders or overseas. It is that way because, the way our Constitution is written, the Governor-General, as a representative of His Majesty the King, Commander in Chief of the Australian Defence Force, is constitutionally vested with this responsibility.

That's Labor's answer—that the decision to send Australia to war is made by the unelected representative of the King. You couldn't make this stuff up--this bowing to a great and powerful friend, this surrender of democracy from Labor, who literally come into this place and say they want to back in a system where the Governor-General, as a representative of His Majesty the King, Commander-in-Chief of the Australian Defence Force, makes the decision to send Australia to war. That is a betrayal of our democracy. That is a hearkening back to the colonial 19th century, when Australia wasn't an independent country—when we were, at least officially, under control.

Do you know what is remarkable? The Greens reject that theory that we should be under the control of a foreign power. We reject the idea that a representative of a foreign power should be making decisions about sending us to war. But the war parties—Labor, the Liberal Party and One Nation—lean into that. They're quite happy for the representative of the King—some foreign king who lives on the other side of the planet—to be making the ultimate decision about sending us to war, and they're quite happy—in fact, they are super comfortable—with the idea that the real decision about whether we get sent to war isn't even made by our notional king; it's actually made by their mates in Washington and whoever happens to be the President of the United States.

So what does this bill do? Currently, the Defence Act 1903 has no transparent decision-making—no scrutiny or debate—in relation to troop deployment. It is a decision for the Governor-General, and, on one reading of it, it could be a decision by the defence minister themselves without even having to go to cabinet. That is a broken process. The Defence Amendment (Parliamentary Approval of Overseas Service) Bill 2020 inserts a new section 29A into the Defence Act to require that decisions to deploy members of the Australian Defence Force beyond the territorial limits be made not by one or two members of the executive but by parliament as a whole. That means a debate in both houses followed by a vote.

It is likely that, with the war parties in control, that vote would have succeeded, because they all seem to back in this war. But it would have required the Albanese Labor government to articulate what their war goals were, what they wanted to achieve from this war. No doubt they would have parroted the lies of Washington. They would have said three weeks ago—as we heard in their press releases, as we heard in their backgrounding of journalists and as we heard in the endless cycle of lies coming out of Washington—that this was about regime change, it was about democracy and it was about preventing a nuclear weapons program. And we would've seen that on the record, and those lies would've been sitting there on the record being pulled apart by reality as the war went on, and then voters across the country would've seen if their MP voted for this disastrous war or not, and they could've held them to account.

As the lies unravelled—and they've all unravelled. This was never about regime change. Donald Trump, Anthony Albanese and Benjamin Netanyahu don't care about the Iranian people. This was never about democracy, and they've all back-pedalled from that. This was never about dealing with an illegal nuclear weapons program in Iran, because we now know—and the Australian prime minister would've had access to the Five Eyes advice coming from Washington—that the entire US national security services have said that Iran did not have a viable nuclear weapons program and that it was destroyed in June last year and Iran had not restarted it. So that lie has unravelled, and it's a lie that, to his utter shame, the Prime Minister repeated just last week in a press conference to the Australian people.

And now we're getting the new lie that this endless war—this continuing war that is unravelling our economy, threatening global stability, killing thousands in the region—is about opening up the Strait of Hormuz. Well, how did the Strait of Hormuz close in the first place? It closed with an illegal war—started by Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu and backed in by their good mate Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his crew in the Labor cabinet. So, as those lies unravel, there is a continuing obligation on this house to scrutinise what's happening. This bill would also contain a section which provides that, once members of the Defence Force are deployed overseas, the Minister for Defence must report in writing to each house of the parliament every two months on the status, the legality, the scope and the anticipated duration of the deployment as well as on efforts to resolve the circumstance of the deployment and on any reasons why the parliament should allow the deployment to continue—ongoing democratic oversight.

I want to thank all of the community groups: Australians for War Powers Reform, IPAN, ICAN, the thousands of Australians across the country that have backed in war powers reform. They continue to have a sense of what Australia should be. Australia should be a democracy that makes decisions like this based on international law, on basic principles of humanity and on Australia's national interest—not on the national interest of the United States and not on the national interest of Israel but on Australia's national interest. And that argument, that fundamental argument, needs to be had right here, in the centre of Australian democracy, and, if the government don't have the courage to make their argument in parliament, they should never send Australian troops to another brutal, impossibly appalling US forever war. I commend this bill to the chamber.

Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Environment and Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government will not be supporting the Defence Amendment (Parliamentary Approval of Overseas Service) Bill 2020. Defending Australia, its people and its interests is the government's highest priority and most important responsibility. No decision to deploy the ADF into an armed conflict is ever taken lightly. The Albanese government has responded to the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade's inquiry into international armed conflict decision-making. As the Deputy Prime Minister has said, it is appropriate that decisions to enter into international armed conflict and the deployment of the ADF overseas remain a decision of the executive.

In 2023, the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade's inquiry recommended that the power to send ADF personnel into armed conflicts should continue to be exercised collectively via the National Security Committee of cabinet. The Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee has previously determined not to progress this bill for a range of reasons, which are set out in its report. Existing arrangements allow the government of the day to act decisively and respond flexibly to contingencies when they arise. The Albanese government acknowledges that this should not detract from the important role of the parliament in holding the executive to account for the decisions it has taken. There must be an appropriate balance between enabling the government of the day to respond to challenges to our national interest and security and ensuring the government has effective mechanisms to examine and debate those decisions.

Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise on behalf of the coalition to speak in opposition to the Defence Amendment (Parliamentary Approval of Overseas Service) Bill 2020 revised. Sadly, listening to Senator Shoebridge on behalf of the Australian Greens, the Greens like to talk about war parties in the Senate. But let's be very clear. History suggests—in fact, I would say it endorses—the fact that it is appeasement parties who are most harshly judged.

No party is pro war, but there is a reality—we are currently living that reality—that sometimes a nation must stand with its friends, with its allies, with the oppressed against the oppressor. The Greens like to say that they have the moral high ground when it comes to standing with the oppressed against the oppressor. I have to say shame on the Australian Greens. Shame on the Australian Greens for not standing with people of Iran, the people who would desperately like to have the same freedoms that the Greens here in Australia exercise on a daily basis. You are not standing with the oppressed. Quite frankly, your moral hypocrisy is sickening.

This bill would fundamentally change longstanding aspects of our government. This is not the sort of change which should come after an hour's debate on a private senator's bill. Sadly for the Australian people, the Greens are habitually reckless when it comes to national security. They mistake slogans for strategy, moral vanity for serious statecraft and protest politics for what actually is responsible government. Time and time again they approach questions of national security with ideology and naivety rather than with the seriousness and realism with which these issues should be approached. This bill, quite frankly, is a textbook example.

In the most dangerous strategic environment Australia has faced since the Second World War, the Australian Greens want to make it harder for the Australian government to act quickly, decisively and, most importantly, in concert with our allies. This bill does not reflect the realities of the world as it is today in 2026. Quite frankly, it reflects a fantasy version of international affairs in which threats move slowly, crisis arrives with notice and governments have the luxury of waiting for a parliamentary process before acting. In 2026, looking forward, the reality is that that is not the world we now live in.

The coalition is clear. Decisions to deploy the Australian Defence Force overseas must remain a function of the executive. This bill is a relic of a different era when wars were formally declared, conflicts moved more slowly and the line between peace and war was often clearer. Today the reality that faces us—we may not like it, but as governments you must live with the reality. We face fast-moving, complex and often asymmetric threats. Government must be able to respond in hours, not at the pace the Greens would like, the pace of parliamentary debate.

This bill is clearly modelled on the United States War Powers Resolution of 1973, legislation whose operations and effectiveness have long been contested. The Greens may also have forgotten that this is Australia. We are not United States. We do not have a separately elected executive president; we have a cabinet drawn from and accountable to the parliament. This is our system of government. At elections, Australians choose a government to govern. They choose through their elected representatives a prime minister and cabinet to make what are sometimes incredibly hard and incredibly difficult decisions that are required in moments of crisis. That democratic choice should be respected because it is respecting—even if we do not like it—the decision of the Australian people. We elect leaders to lead.

This bill would require parliamentary approval before the ADF could be deployed overseas. In practical terms, that means giving the Senate a veto over decisions that have historically and constitutionally rested with the executive. That is not consistent with our great Westminster system nor is it practical in the modern age. We are in 2026 looking forward, not 1973 looking backwards. The Prime Minister must maintain the confidence of the House of Representatives and secure supply through the parliament, so any decision of government already carries democratic legitimacy through the House.

What this bill that the Greens want to legislate does is not add accountability. What it does add, in a day and an era where sometimes speed is essential, is delay, uncertainty and, worse than that, operational risk. In matters of national security, delay and uncertainty carry real consequences. The bill itself exposes the problem. Much of it is devoted to trying to manage the practical chaos that its own model ironically would actually create. Did the Greens give thought to what happens if the parliament's actually not sitting at the time of a crisis? What happens if urgent action is required before the parliament can be recalled? What happens to troops deployed pending approval? What happens if approval is refused after a deployment has already begun? How are our Defence Force personnel supposed to operate under the cloud of uncertainty? How are our allies supposed to rely on Australia's support if it comes with an asterisk and a parliamentary contingency? Allies need certainty, the ADF needs clarity, and this bill sadly—but it is the reality of the Australia Greens' version of how to not protect your country and how to not stand with your allies—provides neither.

Parliament already has avenues to scrutinise debate and express its views on deployments and conflicts. This Senate has debated the situation in the Middle East multiple times in recent weeks alone. Governments can also be held to account when they lose parliamentary support. The classic historical example is the Norway debate in the United Kingdom, which led to the resignation of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain over the conduct in the war in Europe. Our current system already provides scrutiny, debate and accountability, but it also—and this is the important part, contrary to what the Greens believe—preserves the government's capacity to make timely decisions in the national interest. Ultimately, governments are accountable to the Australian people for their decisions at our elections.

As I said, the Greens like to sneer—you heard it again; you hear it every single day in this place—about the so-called war parties. The Greens don't seem to understand that government is tough. You've actually got to make really tough decisions. Nobody is pro war. Nobody is, but sometimes you actually have to make a decision that is in the best interests of your country and your national security and, quite frankly, that backs in your allies. History is not kind to those who confuse moral posturing with strategic judgement or theatrical dissent, as we have just seen and we see every day in this place, with responsible leadership.

No serious party is pro war. But serious parties of government understand that there are times when a nation must act. There are times when a nation must stand with its allies. A nation must defend its interests and stand, as I said, with the oppressed against the oppressor. Let's not forget that this ayatollah who is now dead slaughtered thousands and thousands and thousands of innocent Iranians over decades. The Greens clearly have not spoken to innocent Iranians who fled that murderous regime and have sought a better life in the great country of Australia. How the Australian Greens can actually in any way endorse the Iranian government and the IRGC having in any way, shape or form nuclear capability, quite frankly, defies any form of logic, and yet they are happy in this case to not stand with the oppressed but to back in the oppressor. Shame on you.

This bill would fundamentally alter a longstanding feature of responsible government in Australia. That is not the kind of change, quite frankly, that should be driven by a private senators bill and waved through. This is what the Australian Greens would like, and they'll do a press conference after this saying 'the two great parties of war' after a few hours of debate. And as I said, the opposition will oppose this bill because we are one of the two parties of government—the coalition and the Australian Labor Party—in the great country of Australia. We do understand that there will be times—and we did it during COVID—where, as a nation, we must act. Where, as a nation, we must stand with our allies. Where, as a nation, we must defend our interests, we must defend those great Western values that the Greens love to live on a daily basis, but God forbid anybody else, and in particular Iranians, ever seeks to actually have as a daily right like we do.

As I said, the Greens, sadly, are habitually reckless on national security, as is reflected in this bill. They have never understood that protecting peace, and peace is something that we all want, sometimes requires more than just rhetoric, more than just slogans in the Australian parliament. It requires strength, it requires resolve, but it also requires a willingness to act. This bill—I would say sadly, but I've been in this place a long time and the Greens rhetoric only gets worse on a year-by-year basis—is yet another example of the Greens putting ideology that they love to live by on a daily basis ahead of Australia's security interests.

Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Greens' Defence Amendment (Parliamentary Approval of Overseas Service) Bill 2020. For more than 40 years parties in this parliament have been pushing for oversight in the deployment of troops to fight in foreign wars. Sending Australians to war, and potentially to their death, is one of the most important decisions that politicians have to make, and it is a decision that should not be made with the unchecked power of the executive branch of government. It should require the approval of parliament—like much of the world's parliaments require—and, like, 90 per cent of Australians support.

Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq were all wars that Australia got involved in with those prime ministers exercising powers as though they were a monarch without even reference to cabinet. And all of those invasions were disasters. Yet, for more than 40 years both coalition and Labor governments have joined together to stop any requirement of parliament's approval to send Australians off to fight other countries wars. The Democrats introduced this bill in 1985, in 1988 and then in 2003. The Greens introduced it in 2003, 2014, 2020 and now in 2026.

We are an anti-war party. War will never deliver peace. This war will not bring safety to the brave Iranian people who are fighting for liberation from a brutal Iranian regime. At least 1,500 Iranians have been killed since this war began, the majority civilians—innocent people massacred, including 160 schoolchildren when a primary school was bombed. You cannot bomb your way to peace. The Iranian people deserve to be free from persecution and domination, both from the current regime and from foreign bombs. Trump and Netanyahu don't care about democracy for the Iranian people who are fighting for their own liberation, and bombing doesn't make democracy. All it makes is a power vacuum that leads to more fighting, worse repression and more harm to civilians. Parliament must be a counterweight to our government's drive to appease the likes of Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu and others like them.

Australians don't want war. The war parties do, though. Labor, Liberal and One Nation are all in support of this illegal war—a war that is based on a lie, again. Our prime minister was the first in the whole world to support this illegal war, which is illegal because it's in breach of international law. Our prime minister, with his full-throated support of this war, said:

We support the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent Iran continuing to threaten international peace and security.

Yet the US national security director later told the US Congress that Iran had not restarted its nuclear program—that same program that Trump had already said had been obliterated in June of last year. So this is yet another war based on a lie that Australian warplanes, equipment and now 85 of our people have been sent to. They are allegedly not engaged in offensive action, but there will be mission creep, and our presence and resourcing will free up the resourcing and the personnel of Israel and the US to launch yet more offensive strikes, which will punish civilians.

The Prime Minister then tried to backpedal a little bit on his support for this war while continuing our presence in the Middle East. As we've come to expect from Labor, they say one thing and do another. The gaslighting from this government is endless. Labor can't say it wants to end the conflict while actively fuelling it—allowing the US to use our bases, sending troops to the region and keeping Australians embedded in the military. Australians do not support Trump and Netanyahu's latest forever war on Iran, just as they don't want our government to support Israel's continued genocide in Gaza, where tens of thousands of people have been killed by Israel and many more are suffering a human made famine, legally imprisoned or missing. It is a genocide that has continued unabated. While we are now looking at yet another illegal war, that pain in Gaza and the West Bank has not diminished. Australians don't support Israel's shameful occupation of southern Lebanon either, where they're now striking bridges and civilian infrastructure and pushing people out of their homes in a horrific escalation that threatens to prolong this illegal war indefinitely.

Over a million people have been displaced by this illegal war, this war which is supported and resourced by Australia. Australians don't want war, but they weren't asked. And, because they don't get a say and neither does our parliament, we need the power to say no to war and to make sure that our government can't join a war on the whim of a deeply unstable US president ever again without approval from this parliament. We need to detach ourselves from this volatile administration and have an independent foreign policy that puts Australia's best interests first instead of asking, 'How high?' when Donald Trump says, 'Jump.' The only winners from war are the billionaires and the big corporations who back them—fossil fuel companies and weapons dealers. Their profits soar while ordinary people, whether in the Middle East or here at home, bear the financial and emotional pain of war. Donald Trump drags us into an illegal war based on a lie about nuclear power, and now you, as Australians, are paying more for fuel, for food and for energy—all so the top one per cent can get even richer.

The Greens are the only party that have opposed this war, and we are the only party who want to make the wealthiest one per cent pay their fair share. The second this war started, the price of petrol went through the roof, and so did the profits of the corporations who sell that petrol. Then interest rates went up, and so did the profits of the big banks. Food prices will be next, and guess what will happen to the profits of Coles and Woolies? And energy prices will be after that. We have seen this movie before. The only winners are the big corporations and the billionaires who profit from war. With their wealth, they buy more assets, like homes and more shares, driving up the cost of housing and further increasing inequality. You're drowning in a sea of rising costs because the system is designed to funnel money to the richest people and corporations in our society.

We saw it during the pandemic. We saw it during the invasion of Ukraine. And now, with another illegal war, we're seeing more wealth being concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer people and corporations again. Wars and crises are exploited by billionaires and big businesses. Prices go up, wages go down and inequality continues to grow.

In the last decade, the wealthiest one per cent gained 10 times more wealth than the bottom half of the country. It is obscene. The average billionaire in Australia currently makes $25,000 per hour. In just four hours, they're making the same amount an average worker makes in a whole year. This is why people feel like they are drowning. The government like to pretend that the war has got nothing to do with them. They want to blame it for rising costs, and they claim they're doing all they can. Well, they are not. We could withdraw our personnel and our resourcing from this illegal war, and we could use our diplomatic pressure to urge an end to it, to urge for peace. We could make the one per cent pay their fair share so that you don't have to. We could use that money to make sure that everyone has the things that they need to live a good life.

Imagine if we used the billions going to Trump's nuclear submarines and his war machine to further reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. Imagine if we invested in housing, in health care and in education so people can afford them. There's a lot that could be done if governments had some courage and actually made the one per cent pay their fair share. Australians deserve politicians who represent and work for them, not work for the interests of the big corporations profiting from death and destruction.

We owe it to our constituents to support this bill. It is their democracy, it is their armed forces, it is their neighbours and it is their loved ones who have to go off and fight. It cannot be another 40 years of brazen, unchecked warmongering before this bill finally passes and the parliament can finally have a say on who lives, who dies and who we trust to not violate the human rights of others in conflict situations. Australians do not want war, and the Greens stand with them.

Fatima Payman (WA, Australia's Voice) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to start with something very simple. Imagine some Australian, someone from your suburbs, someone your kids went to school with, someone you work with, signing up to serve in the ADF. They're proud, their family's proud, and then one day they're told they're being deployed overseas into a conflict situation that could turn deadly very quickly. Their family is left wondering who made that decision. Was it debated? Did anybody actually vote for it? Right now, the answer is no. At the current moment, the Prime Minister of the day can send Australian troops into warlike situations without a single vote in this parliament. There is no requirement for both houses to approve it and no obligation to lay out the case in full view for the Australian people. I don't think that passes the pub test, and, to those watching at home, I know you don't think that this passes the pub test either. This isn't just another policy decision; this is about sending people into harm's way. It's about lives, families and the consequences that can last generations.

What the Defence Amendment (Parliamentary Approval of Overseas Service) Bill 2020 does is actually pretty straightforward, and I would argue it's basic common sense. This bill by the Greens says that, if we're going to deploy Australian Defence Force personnel overseas into warlike action, both houses of parliament should approve this decision—not one person, not a small group of people behind closed doors but the entire parliament. From the outset, let me highlight that this bill does not ignore the reality that sometimes decisions need to be made quickly. There is a clear emergency provision: if there is a genuine crisis, something very urgent, where waiting for parliament isn't practical, the government can act—the Prime Minister can make that decision—but it must then explain itself. Within 24 hours, the decision and the reasons for it must be made public. Within two days, detailed information has to be provided to parliament. And, if parliament isn't sitting, it has to be called back. We've done it time and time again, so it's not unheard of or controversial.

The bill also makes it crystal clear what information must be provided—like the legal basis for the deployment, where our troops are being sent, how many are involved, how long it's expected to last and why it is necessary—because Australians deserve to know what is being done in their name. It also doesn't just lump everything together with the vagueness that we see from the government at times. Routine, non-warlike deployments, training exercises, diplomatic roles, attachments to Allied forces—those aren't caught up in this. This is specifically about situations that could lead to hostilities, situations where lives are on the line. It doesn't stop at the initial decision either. Every two months, the government has to report back to parliament to give an update of what's changed, if the mission is still justified, what we are trying to achieve and for how long it will continue. That's what ongoing scrutiny looks like, and that's what the Australian people deserve.

As I've said, none of this is radical. In fact, most Australians out there probably assume that that's already how it works. In any other part of life, if you were making a decision with consequences this serious, where people's lives are on the line, you'd expect it to be tested, debated and justified. During the 2025 election, I heard this constantly, people saying, 'Why don't we get a say in this?' That's why we pushed the petition 'War should be debated, not dictated', because Australians instinctively understand that this kind of power shouldn't just sit with one person. We've seen what happens when decisions to go to war aren't properly scrutinised: long, drawn-out conflicts, unclear objectives, lives lost and, afterwards, a lot of questions that come far too late—and maybe a half-arsed apology.

This bill is about asking those questions upfront, right from the beginning. If the case for deployment is strong, then it should be able to stand up here in parliament. If it can't, then we need to seriously question why we're going down this path at all. Is it blind loyalty to our so-called allies, like the United States or Israel? Are we fighting someone else's war? Are we repeating the same mistakes of the past and selling off our sovereignty?

We need to focus on strengthening the legitimacy of the decisions we make in this place and on ensuring that they are always in the best interest of the Australian people. When parliament is involved, when the case is made publicly, when there is transparency and accountability, Australians are more likely to have confidence in the outcome.

At its core, this bill is about trust: trust in our democratic institutions; trust in the representatives elected by the people in both houses; and trust that, when we send Australians in harm's way, it's being done with seriousness, proper scrutiny and the collective responsibility it deserves. War should be debated, not dictated. I commend the Greens for putting up this bill, which is a practical, measured and commonsense step towards making this a reality—because Australians deserve better. Every single person out there who believes in democracy, who believes in our right to protect our people, especially those we're sending into warlike situations, deserves better.

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

At the outset, let me thank Senator Shoebridge and his team for today bringing forward this bill, the Defence Amendment (Parliamentary Approval of Overseas Service) Bill 2020. It has created a moment for this parliament to debate a vital question. The question before us is this: what should be asked of politicians before politicians make an ask of the Australian community? In my mind, there is no more serious request that a government can make of its people than the request to send their children, their mothers and daughters and their fathers and sons into harm's way on fields of battle far from home. There is no more serious request.

The Australian Greens believe that, before politicians ask that of our community, they should be willing to turn up to the houses of parliament to which they have been elected, make the case as to why it is necessary for people to put themselves in harm's way and explain what the objective is that those service men and women will be asked to achieve, how they know that that objective will be achieved and what we will do to support them once they return. These are very reasonable expectations that the Australian community have of their leaders before a request is made of them to put themselves in harm's way.

For decades, both sides of parliament, when asked to take that expectation and put it into law, have resisted it at every turn. Both Labor and the Liberal Party, when asked to submit themselves to democratic scrutiny and democratic approval before they send us to war, have responded by asking for the community's trust. They have said to the community again and again: 'Trust us to make this call. You don't need to be involved. You don't need your members of parliament to have to vote on these questions of war and peace. Leave it to us. Leave it to us and our superior knowledge, our contacts, our connections and our experience with complex foreign policy matters that couldn't possibly be disclosed to the public.' And what has the result of this request for trust been for the Australian community? Again and again and again, we have been asked, our sons and daughters have been asked, to go overseas and fight American wars—Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and now Iran.

Time after time, war is entered into based on lie and deception. And, every single time, the full extent of the disaster of that decision-making process is laid bare to the public. Every single time, it becomes clear that this process of trusting politicians to make these decisions has once again failed. Those very same politicians rock up to this parliament and they make sombre speeches about the loss and sacrifice, the serious respect that they hold for the members of the armed services and the deep reverence they have for military service. And yet will they back that up with action? Do they take a moment to reflect on whether their decision-making led to that harm? No. Every single time, there is a collective forgetting.

When the Greens, on behalf of the community, raise the proposal, once again, that maybe enough is enough—that maybe the trust that you have asked of the community for decades has now been broken and it is time to turn the decision of whether to send Australian personnel into harm's way over to the elected representatives in the parliament—every single time, that is responded to with derision. It is resisted, because it is an attempt to actually hold people to account.

I can think of no better example, no better case study, of precisely why accountability is so desperately needed when it comes to whether or not we go to war than the current war in which we find ourselves. The Albanese government has led Australia into an illegal and immoral war, started by a tyrant president on a whim. He has put our service personnel at risk. Bombs rain down upon the people of Iran daily. Civilians are slaughtered daily, not merely with the complicity of this government but with the active enablement of this government, because not only is the Albanese government the current holder of the title of the world's first government to endorse this man's war; it functions to this moment to provide the American administration with the very intelligence capacity that it needs to continue this war—to continue to drop the bomb.

In the run-up to the last federal election, the Australian community was increasingly worried about what seemed to be the likelihood of the election of Donald Trump, and so the Australian community went to work. In seat after seat, vote after vote, they rejected the far-right politics. They tossed Donald Trump's political apprentice into the dustbin of history. They elected a government led by a man who, for most of his political career, had positioned himself as one of the few members of the Australian parliament willing to talk tough to the United States. They elected a progressive parliament with a progressive majority. They gifted this Labor government with the best opportunity in a generation to change course and to establish an independent foreign policy and a peace based defence policy. The Australian community could not have given this government more tools to avoid the crisis into which the community has now been plunged.

So they gave this government the opportunity, and what did you do with it? You saw this man get re-elected. You knew what he had been like. You knew what his aims were. You knew what his cabinet looked like. Nothing. Did you change a single aspect of Australia's foreign policy relationship with the United States? No. Did you modify our intelligence relationship? No. Did you rethink any part of AUKUS? No. Did you reassess the value or dynamic of the American alliance or the ANZUS Treaty? No. You continued us on the course that had been set for decades, and, in many cases, you deepened our relationship with this erratic and immoral tyrant. Look where it has landed us. Look where it is taking the world—not only countless murdered and many civilians killed or maimed for life, but a world teetering on the brink of a disaster, the potential likes of which we have yet to know.

When the history of this period is written, when the scholars look back and attempt to find who actually spoke out and what roles the people elected to represent the community played in this moment, what will they find? They will find an Australian community of whom 90 per cent believe the parliament should have a vote before we go to war. They will find a community where the vast majority oppose Trump's war on Iran. But they will find a government, a Labor and a Liberal Party, that—in the face of this man and his utterly unjustifiable, illegal and immoral war motivated by his own domestic political needs—did nothing. They continued the soporific sycophancy that has dominated Australian foreign and defence policy for nearly 80 years. They continued the lazy, intellectually vacant, fundamentally unimaginative and ultimately self-serving approach to the United States of America.

I don't think the people in this place understand how far out of touch with the community you really, truly are. The Australian people are friends to most people of the world, including the peoples of the United States. We have enjoyed, shared in and contributed to moments of cultural exchange, joy and fun together for decades. We are very happy as a community to collaborate with Americans and appreciate their culture and aspects of their values. But it is not an uncritical friendship. We understand the other side of the United States: that they can be, and often are—in terms of the actions of their governments—bullies. They're ignorant bullies. Yet, Australian governments continue to make an exception for this nation and its governments, administration after administration.

As Dr Emma Shortis described in her book of the same title, Australian governments have treated America, for 80 years or more, as an exceptional friend. This relationship must now be reassessed. It is time for this parliament to join with our community in leading us collectively away and into an independent and peaceful foreign and defence policy. That work begins with requiring this parliament and its politicians to get out of bed, put on a tie and bother to turn up to vote before they send our service personnel into harm's way.

Steph Hodgins-May (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Right now, we are watching in real time what happens when the power to go to war sits with a handful of people behind closed doors. Australia has been dragged—no, we haven't been dragged. Australia has chosen to go into an illegal US-Israel war in Iran—a war that began with strikes that have escalated across the region, killing civilians and destabilising an entire region; and a war now spiralling with missile exchanges, regional escalation and thousands of people already dead. And what say did this parliament have in Australia's involvement? None, zip, zero! And what say did the Australian people have? Zero!

The Albanese government has already deployed 85 ADF personnel, a Wedgetail surveillance aircraft and advanced air-to-air missiles into the region. Let's be clear, you do not deploy surveillance and targeting capability into a war zone and pretend you're not part of that war. No weasel words from the minister in this place, Minister Penny Wong, will negate the fact that we are at war. Flipping through her thesaurus of excuses and weasel words—the Australian people see through it, and they are disgusted. This is how war always starts—'support', 'assistance', 'defensive'—and, before long, we will be embedded in another forever war.

These decisions were not made in this chamber by the elected representatives from right across this country; they were made in closed rooms by a small group of ministers under pressure from allies. War should never, never be decided like that, not when the consequences are measured in human lives, because, when decisions are made in the dark, it becomes easier to ignore the civilians killed, easier to ignore the trauma carried by veterans and easier to ignore the families who pay the price for decades.

We are now backing in a war driven by Washington and Tel Aviv with no regard for the human cost—a war that is escalating every single day, with news today of more troops being prepared and no clear end in sight. Yet Australia is once again falling into line as that deputy cowboy, not because the public demanded it and not because parliament debated it but because that's what that group of a few ministers in their closed rooms, probably smoking cigars, as Senator Shoebridge alluded to, decided was best. Well, it's not in the public interest. The war parties in this parliament will tell you that it's necessary, and that is Labor, that is the LNP, and that is One Nation.

But we have to ask: who benefits from this? Because, when decisions are made behind closed doors, the public is shut out but the influence of the defence industry is not. In fact, it benefits from that darkness—billions of dollars in contracts, deep access to decision-makers and no democratic check when the drums of war start beating. Of course, then there are their mates in the oil and gas industry who are now poised to make billions in blood soaked profits. So many people benefit from war, but it is everyday people—the people with no voice in these decisions—who pay the ultimate price.

This bill changes that through a vote in both houses, open debate and ongoing reporting to parliament. Doesn't that sound pretty bloody straightforward? Doesn't that sound like the absolute bare minimum? It forces every single one of us in this place to take responsibility and accountability—no more hiding behind 'no, that was a cabinet decision' or 'we had no choice'. The public is already ahead of us. Ninety per cent of Australians support war power reform—90 per cent of Australians. Parliament must be a check on the rush to war, not a rubber stamp after the fact.

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

I'd just like to say that this chamber has been debating this issue for nearly 40 years. The Australian Democrats first introduced a bill like this one, the Defence Amendment (Parliamentary Approval of Overseas Service) Bill 2020, back in 1985 and again in 1988. It was actually previous Greens senator Andrew Bartlett, who was a Democrats senator, who led that charge back in the day. I would also like to acknowledge former Greens senator Scott Ludlam, who introduced a very similar bill in 2008 around all the heat of the Iraq war. Senator Ludlam again introduced the bill in 2017 following the Chilcot review in the UK, a chilling account of how the UK went to war, just like Australia, with the wrong information and completely hoodwinked their people.

I'd like to acknowledge Senator Steele-John for the work that he's done. He also introduced a similar bill in 2021 and has done considerable work to the time that Senator Shoebridge has introduced this bill. This has been a long-running debate, and it's not going to go away. I'd like to acknowledge the Australians for War Powers Reform and the amazing people there that have been driving this now for many years as well as IPAN and other community groups. I acknowledge Jo Vallentine and the so many people who refuse to give up until we get democratic input into what is arguably the most important decision any politician can make. That is sending its citizens to war.

Right now Australians are feeling very frustrated and very helpless. As they go to the petrol bowsers and the petrol has run out, as farmers can't get access to fertiliser, as Australians are looking at the skyrocketing prices of groceries and as interest rates go up, they are feeling helpless because they are pawns in a game. They are pawns in a game that has been rigged by powerful men with their hands on the levers making billions of dollars. This is what frustrates people. They feel helpless. At least their elected representatives can have a say on their behalf if we get a war powers reform bill through. At least then it's on the conscience of each and every MP and senator.

Slade Brockman (WA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time for debate has expired.