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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Foreign Affairs (Senator Wong) to a question without notice Senator Faruqi asked today relating to the Trump administration.

It is remarkable. Sometimes there are moments when you're looking for a clear statement of principle from the Prime Minister, from the defence minister and from the foreign minister, and three times in less than a week Labor has comprehensively failed on that. And that was in response to the appalling proposals by Donald Trump—first of all, to take the Panama Canal and/or Greenland by military force, which would be a gross breach of international law, the kind of action that we have rightly been condemning Russia for in Ukraine. We've seen the Prime Minister, the defence minister and the foreign minister condemning, rightly, the threat and then the actual invasion of Ukraine by Russia—dead right. But, when Donald Trump threatened to invade Panama and threatened to invade Greenland using military force and defence minister Marles was asked about it, what did he say? He said that he loved Trump, and he wanted to work with Trump and Trump was a great bloke. In a two-minute waffle, he could not once come out and say: 'No, that's absolutely bloody crazy! There's no way we would join with the United States to engage in yet another illegal war, contrary to international law, contrary to our policies—never.' Why couldn't he bring himself to say that? Because he's like a little poodle sitting there begging at the door, hoping for maybe a handful of nuclear subs at some point.

Then we have the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister was asked squarely about the most recent appalling statement by Donald Trump. In this case, it was Donald Trump threatening to engage in ethnic cleansing of Gaza and a US military assault on Gaza—to use US troops to ethnically cleanse Gaza and turn it into a real estate opportunity. When the Prime Minister was asked that question squarely, what did he say? He said, 'I'm not going to comment; I'm not going to run a day-to-day commentary on threats to do ethnic cleansing and illegal invasions.' He absolutely refused to make a statement. Again, what are they so scared of—being seen to have some kind of principles?

When exactly the same question is put to the foreign minister here by Senator Faruqi, we get the same nonanswer: some waffle about the two-state solution and a refusal to do what Labor know they should do, what millions of Australians expect them to do and what Palestinians in this country and around the world expect them to do, which is to condemn threats of ethnic cleansing, condemn the threat of another illegal war and refuse to follow the United States into the next illegal war.