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

Then, Minister, I fail to understand why you would leave this structural and deliberate loophole in the bill that permits the kind of behaviour that you then ask us to take in good faith you will now allow. It is very strange. People will have to draw their own conclusions as to why the bill specifically permits and authorises behaviour that you then put your hand on your heart and say will not happen. I have no confidence that the Australian government will not then find a reason to change their minds and it will be out of the hands of this legislature. Senator Scullion has been unable to put anything on the record on behalf of the coalition. So, if there is a change of government, again it will have to come back through this chamber. This is a serious opportunity missed to fix a flaw.

In closing my contribution to the debate—I will not seek to speak on the third reading but instead make some remarks now, before the question is put on this final amendment—I will mention a few things that come to mind about the overall framing of this bill. We have a number of obligations under the Convention on Cluster Munitions that we are not only failing to uphold but also deliberately and quite deceptively sabotaging. There are concerns that the language used in the drafting of this bill can be cut and pasted and used in legislation in other countries. Australia will then be pointed to as a responsible country which has done the right thing; meanwhile, the flaws in this bill will find themselves replicated in other jurisdictions. We have an obligation to notify other states parties, such as the United States government and others—as Senator Feeney has reminded us—to stand down cluster weapons and to remove them from their arsenals. We have done no such thing. We have notified the US government that we will be signing the convention, but we have done nothing at all to encourage the United States to get rid of cluster weapons. We have written a bill that allows us to assist another force to use cluster weapons in joint operations with Australian forces in direct contravention of the articles of the convention that we are signing. We have written a bill that will allow another power to stockpile cluster munitions here—that is, we will allow Australia to be a forward deployment post for cluster weapons on their way to being used in some theatre of war around the world in direct violation of the articles of the convention. Finally, we have left open a loophole to permit indirect investment in companies which are making cluster munitions.

Why are we bothering? What is the purpose of this legislation? It really pains me to have to advise my colleagues to vote against this legislation when this should be a proud moment—which could have come much faster—in which all sides of politics line up and congratulate the Australian government on bringing the convention forward through the bill. Instead, we have created a bill that has been critiqued here and around the planet by organisations and people who have themselves worked so hard to put the bill together. I will briefly name a number of them.

These folks have been of a great deal of assistance to us as the debate on this legislation has drawn to its rather ignoble end. In particular I mention John Rodsted and Mette Eliseussen, Lorel Thomas, Sister Patricia Pak Poy, and Matthew Zagor and Mark Zirnsak from the Uniting Church in Melbourne. These folks in Australia have done an enormous amount of work, and I am afraid that they can take no joy in the fact that this bill will pass unamended despite strong reservations hinted at by people such as Senator Birmingham, from the coalition side. I think it is really appalling that dissent within both of the major parties has been squashed. It is just the Greens—and, I presume, Senator Xenophon—on the final vote who are left standing. Internationally, I pay respect to Nobel laureate Jody Williams, to Steve Goose, to Mary Wareham and to Bonnie Docherty, who was woken at five in the morning in DC to provide information for the Senate debate on this legislation.

Last but not least, I cannot finish this without acknowledging the tireless work of Michelle Fay, who has provided information, arguments and evidence not just to me but also to many people on all sides of politics in this building. Through her long hours of hard work, she has made a lot of people think, but somehow we have not been able to bring you collectively to act. Michelle and others have brought great integrity and passion to bear in representing the views of the people who have been maimed and the families of those who have been killed by these horrific and indiscriminate cluster weapons, which everybody in this chamber insists that they want to see abolished yet we leave flaws in this bill as a result not of careful drafting but of deliberate instruction—and that, I think, is a tragedy. To Michelle and others I say: your arguments and your evidence have convinced me and my Greens colleagues. I thank you and I apologise to you and to all of those who have worked to bring the convention to bear on this legislation. Most importantly, I apologise to those maimed and injured by cluster weapons that the Australian Senate will now be complicit in weakening this important convention. I commend this final amendment to the chamber.