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

Pursuant to contingent notice standing in the name of Senator Waters, I move:

That so much of standing orders be suspended as would prevent me moving a motion to provide for the consideration of a matter, namely to allow a motion relating to the trial of whistleblower David McBride to be moved immediately.

President, as we gather here today—indeed, as our day commenced in the Senate—the trial of David McBride commenced just a few short kilometres from here in the ACT Supreme Court. The trial is set to commence of David McBride, a brave Australian, a whistleblower whose conscience could not allow him to be silent while he had evidence of war crimes committed by Australian Defence Force personnel in Afghanistan and nobody would listen to him. Nobody in his chain of command would act. Nobody in the oversight committees was willing to act to commence an investigation of the evidence that David McBride had. He had tragically compelling evidence that Australian soldiers—a minority of Australian soldiers, but Australian Special Force soldiers—had committed war crimes in Afghanistan.

When he tried and tried and tried to bring that to the attention of the ADF through the chain of command and every door was shut on him, eventually his sense of duty, his sense of what of right, led him to blow the whistle and tell the public about what had happened. And thank God he did. Thank you, David McBride, for what you did. And I thank other brave whistleblowers for what they have done. Think about the blowing of the whistle on the robodebt scandal and how whistleblowers were silenced and marginalised. Think about Richard Boyle who blew the whistle on appalling practices in the ATO, to be hounded out of the ATO and also prosecuted, despite being vindicated by a Senate inquiry and an internal ATO inquiry. David McBride's allegations have been vindicated by an independent review and report, which detailed dozens and of Defence Force war crimes.