Dorinda Cox (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to also speak on the private senators' bill introduced by Senator Thorpe, the Criminal Code Amendment (Genocide, Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes) Bill 2024, and to add—as my colleague Senator Shoebridge has already said—our strong support for the intentions of this bill. I also want to reject the assertions made by Senator Cash that this is somehow about political activism and only about political activism, and that we are somehow radical by believing that there needs to be justice for crimes against humanity and genocide and for war crimes. We see, time and time again in this chamber, the opposition and even sometimes the government come in here and talk tough about being the tough cop on the beat. How about being the tough cop on the beat when it comes to injustices in this country?

This bill, importantly, challenges the current power—as my colleague Senator Shoebridge has already said—of the Attorney-General, who is the highest lawmaker. I think Senator Cash's tilt, I'll call it, for her election platform to be Australia's next Attorney-General was to speak through the window to all Australians. But what I know in my home state of Western Australia, which is hers as well, is the Frontier Wars never stopped. The blood has never stopped being shed in our state.

I'm a proud Western Australian and I know that Western Australians want to know the truth about the history of this country. As a proud First Nations woman, I think we need to ensure that giving power to the highest lawmaker in this country is not about one person and never about one person, because those crimes against humanity—such as genocide and war crimes—as Senator Shoebridge and also Senator Thorpe articulated, clearly need to sit above politics; they cannot be left to a single politician. There should be no political veto to bringing a criminal prosecution.

So I reject that assertion that this will open up the courts to political activists across the country, because we live and walk this every single day. The lack of a proper legislative framework impacts on the most vulnerable people across the world. There is a plethora of evidence and research about war-torn countries that already shows this, including what we are seeing happen in real time in Palestine. We cannot turn away from that and we should not, just as we cannot and should not turn away from what's happening in our own Australian First Nations communities.

At the end of the day, this bill is recognition of Australia's failure to fully implement the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide—from here on I'm going to refer to that as the 'convention'. Australia signed this convention on 11 December 1948. It entered into force in Australia in 1951. However, it was not enshrined in Australian domestic law until 2002, when the Criminal Code Act 1995 was amended to make it an offence to commit crimes punishable by the International Criminal Court. That meant that these crimes—namely, genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, which are sometimes referred to as genocide and related atrocity crimes—became crimes under Australian law. In passing that amendment, the Australian government included provisions according to which proceedings concerning these crimes under the Criminal Code must not be commenced without the written consent of the Attorney-General and can not be applied to events that occurred prior to the commencement of the International Criminal Court (Consequential Amendments) Act 2002, on 26 September 2002. This is commonly known as the Attorney-General's fiat.

What we know and what history tells us is that these provisions undermine the very intent of the convention to prevent and punish the crime of genocide. The convention establishes that genocide, whether it's committed at a time of peace or in war, is a crime under international law. That's the important part of this. That's the importance that we cannot lose sight of. The convention states that all parties must take measures to prevent acts of genocide. Have we seen that happen? No, we haven't. We continue to see the failures of our own country in standing idle, watching what is happening and not challenging any of that.

The convention also states this:

… genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

I can tell you that, in Australia, these things have happened, and still we see no justice. In other countries around the world, these things have happened, and still we see no justice. The colonial and Australian governments have committed all of these crimes. That is the harsh reality. These are the dark times of our past. It is the reason that Senator Shoebridge and I co-sponsored a bill to bring truth and justice, through a federal commission, here, and we will bring the bill in again in the 48th Parliament later this year for you all to vote on.

These are uncomfortable conversations to have, but they are necessary to face the injustices that are happening. We cannot continue to go home, close the door and shut off the rest of the world and pretend it's not happening. It is our job in this place as political leaders to challenge that, and today, over on this side, we are supporting Senator Thorpe in bringing this bill to the nation's parliament to challenge that. We have an obligation under the convention to prevent genocide, and through the Select Committee on Measuring Outcomes for First Nations Communities and closing the gap, which I chair, we know that it is continuing to happen. How many of our children continue to be transferred into out-of-home care? When we said sorry in this place, that should have meant never again. In 2008, it meant that everyone should be standing on the right side of history, but it's continuing. The genocide continues.

We cannot allow the necessary legal measures and processes to be determined by politics. We need to remove the political veto of bringing criminal prosecutions against these matters. We know that the majors in this place are terrified. We just saw one of them from the opposition stand in this place. They're terrified. For the first time in history we've got black women in this place who are standing up alongside our allies and challenging what has been happening for 200-plus years in this country. Everybody out there is listening and watching us and cheering for us, saying: 'This is great. We want to know about this.' Do you know why? It's because we didn't know this happened in our own country. We didn't get taught this at school. But also, if it's not in our household, in our community, we don't know what's happening and we don't know the impact that it's having.

We will continue over here at the Australian Greens, as radical as you think we are, to call that out. Being passionate about humanity is not being radical. It is being real. It is showing empathy. That costs nothing in this country. It costs nothing. I wish that the political leaders on either side of this aisle would take some advice today and think deeply about what that means—what it means when you turn the television and the radio on every morning, when you listen to RN about what's happening around the world, but also in your backyard, and how you have the power to change that today by voting for this bill, to ensure that we all stand on the right side of history. This is the time for change. This is the last day of the 47th Parliament and this is the time when you can actually do that with your power.