Natasha Stott Despoja (SA, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

I seek leave to make a very short statement on that vote on behalf of the Australian Democrats. I will be very brief, I promise the chamber.

Leave granted.

Mr President, the Australian Democrats have a longstanding opposition to torture. We have often called for the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to be incorporated in legislation, for example. Further, our serious concerns about some of the methods that the United States and its allies have used in the war on terror are well known. Our concerns about those techniques are well known. We have abstained and not supported the motion before us today because we consider that the quote by the former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is quite broad. What is likely is that Mr Rumsfeld’s intention was to justify techniques that we might consider torture in the interest of keeping the debate balanced. We cannot accept that the words as written are so extreme as to call them ‘tantamount to endorsing torture’ when other interrogation techniques that do not constitute torture could be included in them. I reiterate our shared opposition with Senator Brown and, I am sure, many others in this place on the issue of torture itself.