Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I move the motion as amended:

That the Senate rejects the dictum of former United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that ‘interrogations must always be planned deliberate actions that take into account a detainee’s physical strengths and weaknesses’ as tantamount to endorsing torture.

Question put.

Natasha Stott Despoja (SA, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek leave to make a very short statement on that vote on behalf of the Australian Democrats. I will be very brief, I promise the chamber.

Leave granted.

Mr President, the Australian Democrats have a longstanding opposition to torture. We have often called for the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to be incorporated in legislation, for example. Further, our serious concerns about some of the methods that the United States and its allies have used in the war on terror are well known. Our concerns about those techniques are well known. We have abstained and not supported the motion before us today because we consider that the quote by the former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is quite broad. What is likely is that Mr Rumsfeld’s intention was to justify techniques that we might consider torture in the interest of keeping the debate balanced. We cannot accept that the words as written are so extreme as to call them ‘tantamount to endorsing torture’ when other interrogation techniques that do not constitute torture could be included in them. I reiterate our shared opposition with Senator Brown and, I am sure, many others in this place on the issue of torture itself.

Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek leave to make a short statement, Mr President.

Leave granted.

Similarly to the Australian Democrats, the Australian Labor Party continues to have a strong opposition to torture and the use of torture. There are a range of human rights and international conventions that oppose torture. In this instance, Senator Brown deferred his motion from yesterday. He then moved an amendment to it on the floor. It was not circulated on the floor; it was not provided to the opposition beforehand. I assume Senator Brown’s interest is in opposing torture more broadly, but in those instances where Senator Brown does not want to take the usual process of providing the opposition with those types of issues, I can assume that he does not want the support of the Labor Party on those matters.

Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr President, I seek leave to make a statement following those statements.

Leave granted.

The pertinent point here is that Donald Rumsfeld was the architect of the rules which permitted egregious torture in Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere under the rubric of statements such as that quoted in the motion. If we do not stand up to that sort of philosophy, if we do not make a stand against it, then we cross the line to breach international rules, international laws and domestic laws, and to torture itself.