Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I ask that general business notice of motion No. 882, standing in my name and in the names of Senator Stott Despoja and Senator Nettle for today, relating to Japan and sexual slavery during World War II, be taken as a formal motion.

John Hogg (Queensland, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is there any objection to this motion being taken as formal?

Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek leave to make a very brief statement in relation to this motion, indicating that the government will be opposing it.

Leave granted.

I thank the Senate. The government is deeply sympathetic to the suffering of former comfort women. However, the government does not support the Senate making a demand of the Japanese government in this manner when successive Japanese prime ministers have reaffirmed their commitment to the 1993 Kono statement of apology.

John Hogg (Queensland, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There being no objection to the motion being taken as formal, I call Senator Wong.

Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I, and also on behalf of Senator Stott Despoja and Senator Nettle, move:

That the Senate—

(a)

notes that:

(i)

between 1932 and 1945, more than 200 000 women and children of Korean, Chinese, Filipino, Indonesian, Burmese and Dutch origin were kidnapped or forced into a sex slavery system enforced by the Japanese Imperial Army,

(ii)

these victims, some as young as 12, were systematically raped and tortured in so-called ‘comfort stations’, and coerced to have sex with up to 40 soldiers a day, every day for years,

(iii)

62 years later the Japanese Government still refuses to accept responsibility for this crime, or acknowledge its guilt, or to apologise to the hundreds of thousands of women who suffered from these inhumane deeds, and

(iv)

44 members of the Japanese Parliament recently took out an advertisement in the Washington Post denying that this sex slavery ever occurred; and

(b)

calls on the Government to:

(i)

urge the Japanese Diet to pass a resolution to formally apologise to the women who were forced into sexual slavery during the Second World War,

(ii)

urge the Japanese Government to provide fair compensation to these victims, and

(iii)

urge the Japanese Government to accurately teach the history of comfort women in Japanese schools.

Question put.