Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

What's happening in Gaza right now and what has happened in Gaza for 18 months now is not a conflict, as some in here have described it today. It's not a war, as the apologists for what is going on over there claim it is. It's not a conflict; it's not a war. I'll tell you what it is. It's a slaughter. It's a barbaric murder spree. It is an ethnic cleansing. It's a genocide. It is a war crime. It's resulted in tens of thousands of people, countless of them—innocent babies and children—being blown to bits, being dismembered, being buried alive under rubble. And Australia is complicit; Labor has made us so.

We're not just supplying weapons components and military hardware. We're not just supporting the US and, presumably, Israel in their military operations through facilities like Pine Gap. I mean, we could not even bring ourselves to criticise US President Donald Trump, that dangerous demagogue and fascist, when he openly admitted to having a goal of ethnically cleansing Gaza so he could redevelop it into some kind of bizarre, obscene resort for wealthy colonisers. It is utterly disgraceful how complicit Labor has allowed us to become in this country. We need to take strong action to hold the war criminals to account and to end this barbarous slaughter in Gaza.