Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I seek leave to move a motion relating to general business notice of motion No. 451, as circulated.

Leave not granted.

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

That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent me from moving a motion to provide for the consideration of a matter, namely a motion to allow a motion relating to general business notice of motion No. 451, relating to Gaza, to be moved and determined immediately.

Here today, we know that 26,000 people have been killed in Gaza. Those who remain are at severe risk of disease and starvation, and this risk only grows daily. In the face of this horror, our community has not fallen into indifference or been paralysed by despair. Rather, they have fallen into community. Together, our community have taken action. They've been arm in arm at the picket line, rallied in their thousands and shared content online, bringing Palestinian voices into our living rooms and onto our phones. The horrific reality is that from these living rooms and through these phones we have borne witness to genocide. Our community have known this for months, and in January the International Court of Justice made their interim ruling.

The Albanese government's response to this has been completely inadequate. Instead of calling for an end to the genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanitarian laws and destruction, they have cut aid and funding supplied to keep Palestinians alive, while continuing to support and resource the Israel Defense Forces, giving them the cover and the capacity that they need to continue to carry out atrocity. The Greens and the community are imploring the Australian government to take new measures to send a strong message that these crimes are unacceptable to the Australian community and illegal under international law.

The government could formally intervene and voice its support for South Africa's genocide case against the State of Israel at the International Court of Justice. The Australian government could apply Magnitsky style sanctions to Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, and his entire war cabinet. The Australian government could reinstate immediately the financial resources that it has denied to the very organisations fighting right now to keep Palestinian children alive, to keep starvation at bay, to provide people with the water and medication which has been illegally denied them by the actions of the State of Israel. And the Australian government could unequivocally state its support for a permanent and immediate ceasefire. There is so much that this government could be doing, and yet it is simply choosing not to. This government is out of step with the Australian community and, far too often in the course of the last 120 days, has been in step with the United States and others who have sought to cover for the State of Israel and its crimes.

As a community we want a ceasefire, we want peace and an end to the illegal occupation, and we expect the government to work to achieve this. Instead, we are seeing the government choose the side of the occupier, choose the side of the invader and continue to back up perpetrators of these crimes in international spaces. It is choosing to take funds for life-saving aid away from those providing that aid on the ground.

Now, in the face of this reality, our community will continue to protest. Our community will protest, we will organise, we will take to the picket lines again and again in the name of a just and lasting peace, and we will call out Labor's woeful response. We in the Greens will keep talking about Palestine, no matter how uncomfortable it makes those in this place feel.