Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I also begin by acknowledging the Ambassador of Cuba, Mrs Tanieris Dieguez, here in the chamber today. I also commend the member for Newcastle for bringing this motion to the House. It is sometimes a little sensitive to talk about something that we have perhaps been criticised about for many years for not doing more about, so it is an important motion that we are debating today.

On 6 April 1960—we're going back 64 years—the then Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs at the US State Department, Lester Mallory, wrote:

The majority of Cubans support Castro …

… … …

The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship … every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba … a line of action which, while as adroit and inconspicuous as possible, makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.

That statement says it all because that is what it has been about for the last 64 years.

For over six decades, the US has aggressively pursued this harsh policy in its quest to bring Cuba to its knees. Over 80 per cent of Cuban people have lived their entire lives under sanctions and blockades that, really, were initiated before they were even born. Adding to its own sanctions, the US has used its trading influence to prevent other countries, including Australia, and private global businesses from trading with Cuba. And that is perhaps where the real impact comes from, because, if it were just the US, you could say there are plenty of other countries to trade with, but, regrettably, those embargoes and sanctions that have been applied by the US extend much further than the US alone. Indeed, the US has several of its own laws that specifically impose sanctions on Cuba or punish any of the businesses that want to trade with Cuba. The effect is that today 72 per cent of Cuban people live below the poverty line because of those sanctions. As other speakers have already said, these are people that have never shown any aggression towards the USA and were in no way associated with the events prior to 1960, yet they pay the price of a policy that denies them medical supplies, trading opportunities and unrestricted travel and imposes economic development initiative constraints. They can't even have the tourism trade that perhaps they would otherwise be able to have if it were not for those sanctions.

The reality is that those measures do not instil friendship between countries. We know that today more than ever before, with the world in the situation that it is in, we should be building peace and friendship between nations, not trying to separate them. Cuba is reliant on overseas countries for 70 to 80 per cent of its food. Regrettably those trade embargoes diminish the ability of that food to come into the country and, in turn, make it incredibly difficult for the Cuban people. Yet the Cuban people have shown that, through their own initiatives and with all of those embargoes in place, as other speakers have quite rightly pointed out, they have been able to get on with their lives as best they can—but that's not easy.

It is time that those embargoes were lifted, as this motion quite rightly alludes to, as does the resolution of the UN. Just about every country other than two of them, I believe, supported that resolution. It's in global interests to have peace between nations and to allow free trade, because we would all learn from each other and support each other in such a way that we will benefit from that two-way trade. It's so important.

I want to finish with this observation: the last line of each verse of the American national anthem ends with the phrase 'O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave'. It's the statement that, along with the Statue of Liberty, proudly depicts the US values of freedom, justice and opportunity. If the US believes in those values, they should be applied universally to all people, including the people of Cuba. The US should release the shackles on the Cuban people, end the embargo and allow Cuba freedom of trade.

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