Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

That this House:

(1)

censures the Prime Minister for:

(a)

his statement that Al-Qaeda is praying for a Democrat party candidate to win the next United States Presidential election;

(b)

his false statement today in Parliament that his statement yesterday was restricted to one US Senator and not the Democratic Party as a whole;

(c)

the damage this partisan comment has done to the United States—Australia alliance, and to Australian relations with both Democrat and Republican members of the US Congress;

(d)

the gross insensitivity of lecturing United States Presidential candidates on Iraq, when the war in Iraq is responsible for the deaths of more than 3,000 US servicemen and women, the wounding of another 20,000, and expenditures exceeding $360 billion; and

(2)

demands that he immediately and unreservedly withdraw and apologise for those comments.

How can the man who is Prime Minister of this country come into this parliament and say that he is a person of experience on the question of national security when within the last 24 hours he has made the statement that, when it comes to the operation of al-Qaeda and its dealings in the world of international affairs today, somehow al-Qaeda is a terrorist organisation that would prefer to see a Democrat win the next presidential election rather than any other representative of another political party?

The Prime Minister today has inserted that in fact he was only making a reference to Mr Obama, one of the US Democratic Party presidential candidates. It is important that we place this unequivocally on the record. Yesterday the Prime Minister gave this answer to a question in relation to the Obama plan:

Yes, I think he’s wrong, I mean, he’s a long way from being President of the United States. I think he’s wrong. I think that would just encourage those who wanted completely to destabilise and destroy Iraq, and create chaos and victory for the terrorists to hang on and hope for Obama victory. If I was running Al-Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008, and pray, as many times as possible, for a victory not only for Obama, but also for the Democrats.

That is not an addition invented by the Australian Labor Party. That is not an addition invented by anybody else. That was spoken, or would we dare say misspoken, yesterday by the Prime Minister of Australia on a matter of great consequence—that is, the future of this country’s relationship with the United States, particularly on the question of the future direction of Iraq policy.

To accuse the Democratic Party of the United States of being al-Qaeda’s party of choice, to accuse the Democratic Party of being the terrorists’ party of choice, to accuse the party of Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy and Johnson of being the terrorists’ party of choice is a most serious charge. I cannot understand how any responsible leader of this country can say to the nation that it is his serious view that the Democratic Party of the United States is the terrorists’ party of choice. But these are your words, Prime Minister. I did not invent them; they are yours. In this parliament today we gave you every opportunity to say that you got it wrong.

See this speech in context