Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Public Accountability and Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

There are a range of issues as to why I believe the AWB scandal is in order in relation to this budget debate and as to why I have been speaking to it. For example, during his grand tour we had the Prime Minister recently say in Dublin about Iraq:

The cynics in the West are unreasonable, they’re overdemanding, their expectations are far too high.

He says that our expectations are far too high. Let us just do a little audit and reality check. Since the invasion, between 44,000 and 89,000 Iraqi civilians, an estimated 55,000 Iraqi insurgents and 2,500 members of the invading forces have been killed. Even on the minimum estimates, over 100,000 men, women and children have been killed.

The United States spent or approved the spending of $435 billion on Iraq—15 times the entire annual Iraqi GDP. Even so, a greater number of Iraqi children—nine per cent—are suffering from acute malnutrition than was the case before the invasion in March 2003. Is it unreasonable, Prime Minister, to ask that the invasion of Iraq not lead to more children suffering from acute malnutrition than were before the invasion?

More than two-thirds of Iraqis still do not have clean water. Residents of Baghdad receive on average fewer than six hours of electricity per day. Two-thirds of Iraqis feel less secure now than they did before the invasion. Fewer than one per cent believe that the occupying forces have improved security. Is it overdemanding, Prime Minister, and unreasonable to expect that the invasion of Iraq should have improved the security situation and made it safer for ordinary Iraqis to walk the streets at night rather than less safe?

Before the invasion, the Baghdad morgue processed fewer than 100 corpses a month. In the first three months of this year—three years after the invasion, three years after George Bush stood under the ‘mission accomplished’ sign—it processed 3,427 corpses. Are our expectations too high, Prime Minister, if we expect that our actions should lead to fewer deaths in Iraq, not more?

Debate interrupted.

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