Lidia Thorpe Victoria, Independent
3:33 pm
I seek leave to table a document.
Leave not granted.
Pursuant to contingent notice standing in my name, I move:
That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent me tabling the document.
I sought leave here today to table a document that lists the names of 21,637 children killed in Gaza between October 2023 and May 2026. The coalition does not want me to table this, and now the government don't want me to table—
Penny Wong SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs
We gave leave!
Lidia Thorpe Victoria, Independent
Okay, I'll take that back. Thank you. These children have had their—
Penny Wong SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs
Seriously.
Lidia Thorpe Victoria, Independent
Calm down—lives taken through a cruel genocide.
Sue Lines President
Senator Thorpe, I'm going to remind you, as I do for all senators—you've sought to suspend because leave was denied for you to table a document. What you really need to focus on is the suspension not the substantive matter of the document you're seeking to table. You can refer to the document, but the substantive part of your five minutes needs to focus on the suspension.
Lidia Thorpe Victoria, Independent
These children have had their lives taken through a cruel genocide. They cannot have their identity taken away as well. They deserve to have their names heard. Their families deserve to have them remembered. This is why I'm bringing their names to the Senate today. Just last week, I was handed this box with 21,000 children's names.
Sue Lines President
Senator Thorpe, I am going to again remind you that this is a suspension debate. Your comments need to substantially relate to the suspension.
Lidia Thorpe Victoria, Independent
The 21,000 names I was given in those bits of paper are in this document that I'm trying to table into the Senate. Each one contains the name of a child that was killed. I would have liked to present every single one here individually, but this place cannot deal with that. Here I am, presenting 451 densely filled pages containing the names of 21,637 children killed in Gaza. These were lives taken prematurely. These children had their—
Sue Lines President
Senator Thorpe, I'm again going to draw you back to your suspension motion. It's not about the substantive nature of that document. It is about why you are seeking to suspend.
Lidia Thorpe Victoria, Independent
I'm seeking to suspend because we are complicit in a genocide in this country of these children who've been massacred, murdered, and their parents can't bury them because they can't find all the limbs to their bodies. They can't grieve.
Sue Lines President
Senator Thorpe, I'm going to again draw you back to the suspension.
Lidia Thorpe Victoria, Independent
I'm suspending standing orders because these children were loved and will be missed forever. Their families are living through unimaginable grief. I'm tabling this document because the sad reality is that thousands more children were killed in Gaza during that same time, as well as many more since. I'm tabling this document for so many reasons. Their deaths are—
Sue Lines President
Senator Thorpe, if you just hear me out, please. I'm trying to assist you. You sought leave to table the document. Leave was denied. You then moved your suspension motion. It is really the suspension motion that we are now debating in the chamber, not what you were seeking to present.
Lidia Thorpe Victoria, Independent
Sorry, President. I'm actually giving you reasons why I'm suspending, and it's because this country's complicit in the deaths of these children, and I'm trying to table it so that we have a record in this country of all of the children that we're complicit in killing. It's an important document.
Sue Lines President
Senator Thorpe, I'll draw you to—we are now beyond the tabling of the document. You were not granted leave to table the document. You were not granted leave. You sought to suspend. What the Senate is debating right now is your suspension. That's what you need to keep coming back to—the suspension.
Mehreen Faruqi NSW, Australian Greens
The suspension is to table the documents.
Sue Lines President
Senator Faruqi, you are being disorderly. I'm trying to ensure that this is an orderly debate.
Lidia Thorpe Victoria, Independent
I'm suspending standing orders because 15-year-old Suhail Walid Suhail Abu Shaaban was murdered. Yousef Sharif Salah Abu Al-Shaar, 16, was murdered, as was Mohammed Taha Mohammed Farah Reihan, 14; Nevin Mohammed Raed Al-Saati, two; Yahya—
Sue Lines President
Senator Thorpe, I'm going to advise you once again it is about the suspension motion, not about the document that you are seeking to table.
Lidia Thorpe Victoria, Independent
I'm suspending standing orders to read the names of dead children who have been massacred on our watch in Palestine, in Gaza. I'm reading out the names as part of my suspension—Kanari Mutasim Mahmoud Aqel,0; Zina—
Sue Lines President
Senator Thorpe, you need to confine your remarks to the suspension order.
Lidia Thorpe Victoria, Independent
I am suspending standing orders to deliver a document with over 20,000 dead children. We are complicit in the genocide against Palestinians. I have over 400 pages of dead children's names that I am suspending to ensure a part of Hansard in this country—Hour Al-Ein Osama Suleiman Abu Sneima,0; Razan Jihad Yousef Asaliya,0—
Sue Lines President
Senator Thorpe, I have asked you to confine your remarks to the suspension order.
Lidia Thorpe Victoria, Independent
I'm suspending because of the cruel, inhumane actions of this government that is complicit in the genocide in Palestine, who continues to sell parts that kill these children. We're selling parts—
Sue Lines President
Senator Thorpe, I have really tried very hard to get you to focus on the suspension order. It's about the need to suspend, not what's in the document.
Lidia Thorpe Victoria, Independent
The need to suspend is because we cannot be complicit as a country in an ongoing genocide of 21,000 Palestinian children. These are the names that I want all of you to read. I want all of you to think about your own children. As a grandmother, as a mother, I think about these children. I think about my own children. If I was in this situation then I'd want a country to stand up for me, and this country is not doing that for Palestine right now. It is complicit. It is actually selling arms to Israel to kill 21,000 children.
Michaelia Cash WA, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate
3:42 pm
The coalition will not be supporting the suspension of standing orders to enable the tabling of this document. Our position is consistent with the position that we put last time, that Senator Thorpe, indeed again, sought to suspend standing orders to table a similar document. Senator Thorpe has actually, in her speech, addressed what the document is, and Senator Thorpe has now raised some names on the Hansard record of children, she says, who have been killed in Gaza. The issue that we have, though, in terms of the suspension and the urgency of it, is that the document has been produced using data published by Tech for Palestine. Consistent again with the comments that I put on the record last time, one of the issues is that, in suspending standing orders and saying that it's urgent, you actually really do need to be able to verify exactly where the source document comes from. Sadly, as I said last time, our concern is with the evidentiary basis on which a document containing the thousands of individual names is placed formally before the Australian Senate. I would submit to you that, yet again in this case, the Gaza Ministry of Health is under the control of the listed terrorist organisation Hamas.
Sue Lines President
Senator Cash, you are drifting away from the substance of the motion.
Michaelia Cash WA, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate
On that basis, I would say that the urgency is, sadly, not established.
Katy Gallagher ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service
3:44 pm
I move:
That the question be put.
Question agreed to.
Sue Lines President
The question now is that the motion moved by Senator Thorpe to suspend standing orders be agreed to.