David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

It is now 20 years since Iraq was invaded illegally—an invasion predicated on lies sold to the world by the Western governments that together went to war in Iraq. That included Australia, and no-one has been held to account.

The initial 'shock and awe' military campaign killed more than 7,000 Iraqi civilians in just two months. We can just imagine the fear of communities on the ground, facing that swift and ferocious invasion. The war and its aftermath have since claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and Iraqis are still waiting for justice and accountability for the full truth of what happened. Indeed, the entire region is struggling with the instability of violence caused by the war. Australian war veterans who were sent to fight a brutal, bloody and illegal war based on a lie are still waiting for answers, and the current Labor government is refusing to give those answers.

Yesterday, Labor teamed up with the Liberals to stop the Greens' push for accountability through the release of documents surrounding the decision to go to war. This is exceptionally frustrating, because two decades ago the then Labor opposition joined with the Greens, and millions of Australians, in opposing that war. The then United Nations General Secretary Kofi Anan said in September 2004 that 'From our point of view and the UN charter's point of view, the war is illegal.' Today, the current Labor foreign minister still won't state a position on whether or not the war was illegal. Why not? Why do we still not know who made the decision and on what allegedly legal basis to send Australia into that brutal, unjust and illegal war? Worse still, the Wikileaks founder and Australian citizen, Julian Assange, who has been a vital truth-telling force about the illegal invasion of Iraq, is still sitting in a UK maximum security prison for the crime of telling the truth.

It's about time the Australian people learned the truth. And it's well past time the Iraqi people learned the truth about this illegal war. We say again: with the 20th anniversary coming up, this is the chance for Labor to remember where it stood two decades ago and to tell the truth about this illegal war.

Question agreed to.