Elizabeth Watson-Brown (Ryan, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I second the motion. As we sit here today in this House, Israel—right now—continues targeting civilians in hospitals: doctors, nurses, babies, the sick and the injured. Al-Shifa Hospital has suffered devastating blows since November, when Israel first targeted that medical establishment. Israel has deliberately not allowed medical supplies inside, leaving patients to die because treatments cannot reach them.

And still Australia continues to export weapons to Israel. In the last five years, Australia has provided almost $10 million in arms and ammunition to Israel. Australia has also given 350 military export permits to Israel—350! With the support of this government, Australian companies export to Israel: companies like Currawong Engineering, who make the engines for Israeli ThunderB drones; and Varley Australia make launch components for the Spike missiles—the very same missiles that are used to target and kill innocent Palestinians. We've also seen the Albanese government give hundreds of millions of dollars to Israeli arms companies, such as Elbit—the same Elbit that is currently using Palestinians as test subjects for their new weapons, using the destruction in Gaza as a sales pitch. And it is a sales pitch the Labor government bought.

Still, the Labor government continues to misinform and gaslight the public about their complicity in what Israel is doing. That is the urgency of this motion and why it must be passed as soon as possible. This parliament must rescind its support of the ongoing genocidal invasion of Gaza and stop the military exports. Canada recently voted to halt all arms sales to Israel, and now the UK is threatening to end the arms trade. They're going to join Japan, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and many others in ending weapons exports. And where is the Labor government in all this? It's silent in the face of the atrocities we are seeing in Gaza. The government must cancel contracts with Israeli arms companies and stop the export of military equipment to Israel. The rest of the world is doing it.

Each time I rise here to speak about Gaza, and since the last time I spoke, the death toll has climbed by thousands. Today, more than 100,000 people have been murdered or are injured or missing. That's thousands of innocent children, teachers, nurses, journalists, mothers and their babies. And now, through Israel's actions, which this parliament has endorsed, thousands more are under threat in Rafah—a place that people were once told was safe. Millions fled there hoping for safety, and it is now, itself, under siege. People are living in unfathomably cruel conditions. Children are starving to death, while aid trucks line up across the border. Israel won't let them through. That's right: children are starving, when there is food within metres of the border waiting to be let through. And yet the Labor government still does not condemn the actions of Israel. People are grinding bird-feed, where they can find it, into flour, to try to stave off their children's starvation.

Humanitarian agencies there are trying, against all odds, to prevent the deaths and improve the conditions on the ground. One of the largest of those organisations, UNRWA, had their funding cut by this very government—by this very parliament—for months. How many children have died because of Labor's collusion in the collective punishment of Palestinians? And collective punishment is a war crime under the Geneva Convention. Suspending funding to such an important relief agency on the basis of the alleged actions of a tiny number of their staff, resulting in a huge decline in relief efforts, seems like collective punishment to me.

The interim International Court of Justice ruling was that Israel may be carrying out a genocide in Gaza, with very clear orders to prevent that genocide. Yet, despite the mountains of evidence—including what was presented to the ICJ: the explicit genocidal language used by Israeli officials repeatedly and proudly—Labor has neither withdrawn support for Israel, nor called for a permanent ceasefire, nor supported South Africa's heroic actions at the ICJ, nor committed to ending military exports to Israel. The only way to stop this carnage and the horror is through international pressure, and Australia has a role to play and a responsibility. Labor is sitting on its hands while this genocide unfolds. Labor will be judged harshly by history for this cowardice. This parliament must correct this mistake. It must not continue to support Israel's genocidal actions in Gaza.

See this speech in context