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

That is fine; it saves me from tabling them, although I can do that if the opposition or Senator Xenophon would appreciate a copy.

Minister, to come back to the shock and awe aerial bombing campaign, like Senator Xenophon I thought the reason we were staying up late to debate this bill is because these weapons, like chemical weapons, biological weapons and nuclear weapons, are indiscriminate by nature. Perhaps it was just careless language on your part, Minister, to use that word but I found it unfortunate. These weapons are indiscriminate. That is why we are here; that is why we are seeking to ban them. The reason I take you up on the instance of the shock and awe campaign and the close support missions that our RAAF pilots flew as we were invading Iraq is that this is precisely a use case for interoperability that is not in the abstract—this is a real one.

I am drawing on an article by Chris Doran dated 3 March last year in which he makes the case, quoting Human Rights Watch work, that United States ground forces on their way into Baghdad in the shock and awe campaign were used 'in direct support' of forces that were firing 'extensive cluster bomb munitions on defenceless civilian populations'. He said:

An extensive Human Rights Watch investigation conducted in Iraq found that 'Unlike Coalition air forces, American and British ground forces used cluster munitions extensively in populated areas … use of these weapons … was widespread along the battle route to Baghdad … with significant numbers of civilian casualties in southern Iraq including al Hilla, Najaf, Kerbala, Nasiriyah, and Baghdad.

Human Rights Watch found that the 'targeting of residential neighbourhoods with these area effect weapons … represented one of the leading causes of civilian casualties in the war'. A USA Today four-month study conducted in Iraq found that the US dropped or fired nearly 11,000 cluster bombs or cluster weapons during the invasion—

the 14-foot monsters that we were talking about before—

containing between 1.7 and 2 million bomblets. Britain used 2,000 more.

This is the article I was quoting from before, the Paul Rockwell piece, where I describe what these things are. Minister, would you describe this as an instance of interoperability?