Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make some additional comments on the 121st report of the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties. I acknowledge Senator Birmingham's backhanded compliments to me as a longstanding colleague on this committee while repudiating the rude and undignified shot that he just took at my colleague Senator Rhiannon. Senator Birmingham, you and I are fortunate to be young enough not to have gone through the Cold War, when people quite literally lived in fear that their allies were going to incinerate each other one afternoon in an exchange of nuclear weapons. I did march, and perhaps you did as well, with my parents on Palm Sunday when 20,000 or 30,000 people streamed down St Georges Terrace. I can really only give thanks to people in the global peace movement who dedicated their lives to ridding the world of these weapons. Many of them have been demobilised over the last 10 or 15 years.