Kim Beazley (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1)

censures the Prime Minister for being guilty:

(a)

guilty of taking Australia into the wrong war in Iraq;

(b)

guilty of refusing to change strategy and bring Australian troops home;

(c)

guilty of changing his story on Iraq to suit his own interests; and

(d)

guilty of making Australia a bigger target for terrorists; and

(2)

demands that he admit he has failed in Iraq and adopt Labor’s strategy in the Australian national interest.

In question time, I ended with the question that I asked the Prime Minister before moving this censure motion. During his remarks, the Prime Minister suggested that the Labor Party had been sitting around reading polls. This was something that he never does! The Labor Party has consistently held its views on Iraq for four years.

For four years we have suggested a different course of action to this government, through a whole variety of changes in opinions and attitudes on that. But the tip-off of where the Prime Minister was coming from was in a tiny little article written by Malcolm Farr in the Daily Telegraph and headed, ‘Iraq’s stand won’t hurt coalition’. Just read those comments; they indicate this: that he had his minions up there in the press gallery yesterday with one or two journalists, pointing out to them that they had read the public opinion on Iraq—they thought their position was completely safe and they could pursue it without fear and without regard to anything else—to see if the Prime Minister could twist it a little to turn it against the Labor Party. But was there anything in that article that said the government cared for the Iraqi people?

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