Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Today is a very sombre day and a very important day for reflection. It seems 20 years ago, following this illegal war of aggression in which our country participated, we have learned very little based on today's public debate, and it is very sad and frustrating to see the Liberal Party continue to wipe clean the blood they so very clearly have on their hands. They have never shown any remorse for the invasion of Iraq and Australia's participation in that.

There was a very important point in Senator Steele-John's motion today that hasn't been touched on by either the Labor party or Liberal Party that is absolutely credible to the world we find ourselves in today, and that was the lie that this war was based on, not just a lie but a manufactured deceit of the highest order, not scrutinised by the media, not scrutinised by the parliament—even with a whistleblower in the other house, in the other place, Andrew Wilkie MP, who blew the whistle when he was an intelligence officer—but we were led to a war by a small group of powerful people who were totally unaccountable to the millions who marched around the globe in the biggest protests in our history at the time to oppose this war. We were ignored but we were right.

Looking back on history, the Liberal Party can come in here today and say whatever they want. You have made the world a less safe place. The instability across the Middle East started with the insurgency that led to the Syrian civil war and tens of millions of refugees washing across Europe in a wave of misery. There were the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, mostly innocents, for which no-one has been held to account, and the rise of terrorism. The Liberal Party, along with the UK government, the United States and the coalition of the willing gave birth to ISIS and to more global terrorism. And you come in here today and talk about stability?

We have to know we've learned something from this illegal and immoral war if we're going to have any confidence for the safety of our children in this country. Are we part of an alliance that's going to lead us into another war with no scrutiny from the media or from parliaments because of the cosy relationship that you have with each other around national security? Are we going to be hoodwinked?

Amongst all the frustrated people, many of my colleagues marched against that war. I marched again this weekend in a rally in Melbourne to commemorate this conflict.

When are we going to learn? It's really, really important that we have a process that at least gives parliament the opportunity to vote on the deployment of our defence forces. It's not a silver bullet, but at least we can speak on behalf of the people that democratically elected us to this place. We will continue to push, as we have done for decades, to get at least a vote from the Australian parliament on the deployment of our defence forces.

I want to finish with this point. There was one other person—one of many people—who was deeply angry and frustrated with this illegal war and the fact that they were ignored and who decided that they would do something about it. And that's Julian Assange. He set up WikiLeaks because of the Iraq war, and he was the only truth-teller of the war with everything that was published by WikiLeaks—and, by the way, republished by all media outlets around the world. He brought truth and transparency to the war, and he very famously said that if wars can be started by lies, they can be ended by the truth. And where is he now? He's behind bars in a maximum security prison. He's the only one who told truth and brought truth to power, and he's behind bars awaiting a virtual death sentence. And while there's a continued war on truth-telling and disclosure and transparency, which is what the war machine fears the most, this war is still ongoing. While he's on trial for telling the truth and doing his job as a journalist, press freedoms are on trial. The Iraq war is a long way from being over while Mr Assange sits behind bars. Make the decision. There's only one decision: no extradition.