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

I would like to note the fact that I did not seek to call a division or a vote on the second reading, as is customary in this place, because I support the objectives of the bill, I support the reasons why the government has brought it forward and I support everything that has been said in here tonight in terms of why we would want to take these weapons out of the arsenals of the world's militaries. And I believe that I have circulated amendments that would allow me, in good conscience, to advise my colleagues to vote for the bill. I will not be, however, voting for the bill on the third reading if none of the amendments pass, for reasons that I made reasonably clear.

Before I put some general questions on the bill to the minister—and I suspect this is going to end up feeling somewhat like deja vu before we are done—I would like to make two acknowledgements. Firstly, I acknowledge the funding commitments that the minister announced. I ran out of time during my second reading contribution to acknowledge the funding commitment that the government has announced for mine-clearing activities and so on. That is extremely welcome, and I am sure that it is welcome in the places where those funds are to be expended. I note also that Australia does have a good record in the areas of mine clearance and so on. Even in some of the work that I have done in this area, it is obvious that Australia has played a very constructive role. Obviously, the reason we will be bringing these amendments forward—and, you could say, the primary reason for developing this convention and then enacting it in domestic legislation—is that prevention is a lot better than mine clearing. Preventing these appalling weapons from being dropped and discarded in the first place is vastly better than spending tens and then hundreds of millions of dollars to dispose of the bomblets.

The second acknowledgement—and I hope the debate can continue tonight as it has begun—is that I believe that everybody who has spoken in this debate so far genuinely wants to rid the world of these weapons. So the comments that I make in critique of the government's approach do not go to the general motivations behind senators in this place tonight, none of whom, I presume, have been directly involved in the negotiations. I did not hear anybody suggesting hesitancy or doubt, I suppose is the point that I am trying to make. There is cross-party consensus in this chamber, and in the House of Representatives, that these weapons should be eradicated.

To briefly mention something that I was going to mention in my second reading contribution, I want to ground the remainder of this debate in an understanding of what it is that we are seeking to abolish, and the reasons why we would do so. This is from a US columnist, writing in 2004, by the name of Paul Rockwell, who provided one of the more concise definitions of these weapons:

A cluster bomb is a 14-foot weapon that weighs about 1,000 pounds—

or 455 kilograms—

When it explodes it sprays hundreds of smaller bomblets over an area the size of two or three football fields. The bomblets are bright yellow and look like beer cans. And because they look like playthings, thousands of children have been killed by dormant bomblets in Afghanistan, Kuwait and Iraq. Each bomblet sprays flying shards of metal that can tear through a quarter inch of steel.

The failure rate, the unexploded rate, is very high, often around 15 to 20 percent. When bomblets fail to detonate on the first round, they become land mines that explode on simple touch at any time.

So, these are the things, these hideous and indiscriminate legacy weapons that lie on battlefields long after the front has moved on, that are the reason we are here tonight.

I would like to put a couple of questions to the minister at the outset. I will put these ones on notice unless, in a flash of brilliance, your advisers have this material on hand. But I would like to bank these questions for—oh yes, nods from the advisors' box! We will see. I am interested to know, quite specifically: firstly, the military forces with whom we have cooperative agreements who are, or have in the last period of time—and I don't mind how we define that—transited through Australian ports or airfields. For example, the United States Navy, probably the French Navy and the Singaporean Air Force.

So it is the number of parties, being foreign military forces, who would potentially be caught by this bill and who also deploy cluster munitions in their armouries. So, if I may, I would like to put that question on notice, through you, Minister, to the department so that we can get a sense of whom we are talking about. Obviously, my remarks this evening will focus on the United States military. We have the closest defence ties with the US government. They have the largest amount of hardware transiting through Australian facilities. That is where I will focus my remarks, but I am interested at the outset to know who else these provisions might impact upon.

The second question that I will put on notice, and I can take some advice as to how complex this will be, is this: which weapons systems and on which platforms does the United States military deploy cluster weapons? The minister is shrugging. I do not know whether this is a 'piece of string' question. If we could take this from 2002, from the invasion of Iraq, which I will come back to and refer to again in a moment, which US platforms deploy cluster weapons—army, navy, air force and marine corps? That is extremely important and the agenda moved on so rapidly, beginning with President Obama's visit late last year that actually outlined a deployment timetable for the US Marine Corps and then for the US Air Force and now it is potentially for the US Navy in the south-west. So the debate becomes not abstract at all and the debate becomes profoundly concrete. To get the facts on the table, which military forces transit through our ports and may be caught by, for example, the provisions relating or not relating to stockpiling and which platforms actually deploy these weapons and which can we disregard for the purposes of the bill? I will give the minister the opportunity to respond as to whether those are seen as being reasonable requests.