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

Minister, for once I am finding the committee stage of this bill extremely helpful. It is not every debate that I get to stand up and say that. This is actually highly instructive. In fact, you have confirmed the point that I have taken. If I may make this request just to save time in the debate: can we set aside any further assurances from the minister that Australian forces will be permitted to deploy or use cluster weapons? I completely and fully understand that we have no intention of doing that. I have heard that from you; I have heard that from the department; I have heard that from men and women in uniform who have put it on the record. The case that I am interested in—and the minister referred to this repeatedly on his way through that explanation—is our ability to work with forces who are non-state parties to the convention.

I also understand why article 21 got in there. I might disagree with it but there were arguments made at the time that without some form of words, which eventually landed at article 21, this convention would not have got up at all. I understand. Perhaps from Australia's point of view the government might argue, 'No article 21—then we cannot play because we still feel we may perhaps in the future want to invade more countries at the behest of the United States.' We have some form in that; maybe we will want to continue to do that in future. Who knows? Perhaps we will be called on to invade Iran. But let us not get distracted.

If I could remind you gently, Minister, the reason we go into the committee stage is to establish how these bills will work. I attempted not to use a hypothetical; I attempted to use a very timely real-world case. Minister, with respect to the fact that you have not yet been able to return with some answers as to whether the RAAF flew close support for US ground forces using these weapons, as we obviously have not been going all that long—would that behaviour be prohibited under this bill? My explicit reading of it is that it would not. None of the exceptions in section 72.41 would prevent an Australian RAAF pilot, who had not called in the cluster weapon strike, nonetheless supporting an operation in which they are used. If there is an exception in section 72.41 which would prevent that behaviour—in other words, if it is the government's point of view that, if that conduct occurred in 2003, it would certainly be expressly prohibited in any future military operation—could the minister point me to the exclusion that would cause a material difference?