Richard Di Natale (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Defence (Senator Payne) to a question without notice asked by Senator Di Natale today relating to Senator Molan.

Another day passes and we see the coalition add to their number another person who holds deeply racist, bigoted and offensive views, joining the ranks of Peter Dutton and so many others. We know now from his social media posts that Senator Molan is an Islamophobe—somebody who holds views that are deeply offensive to so many Australians and undermine the very fabric of multicultural Australia. Rather than coming in here and apologising, he's dug in and defended those views. He defends sharing white supremacist material on social media by saying: 'I'm not a racist. I've lived overseas and'—to use his own words—'I ran the war in Iraq.'

Only a few short weeks ago in the US, we saw President Trump universally criticised for sharing the same images and criticised by our allies in the UK, with the British PM publicly rebuking him. This is a president who doesn't respond to criticism well, but even he realised it was time to apologise for sharing that material. But no, not Senator Molan. It absolutely beggars belief that a government senator thinks it's justifiable to share those images, and he's defended by members of his party.

Senator Molan's views do raise serious questions about how he has conducted himself in his previous roles, including that of running the war in Iraq, as he describes it. Of course, this isn't a reflection on any of the other brave men and women who serve in our defence forces, many of whom have put their lives on the line, some of whom have sacrificed their lives because of the decisions of their commanders. We know that Senator Molan oversaw an assault on Fallujah during the Iraq War which resulted in a humanitarian catastrophe. Civilians were denied food, water and aid in that attack. The UN described it at the time in this way:

… using hunger and deprivation of water as a weapon of war against the civilian population … a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law.

The US also admitted to using white phosphorus munitions in Fallujah, after initially denying it. It is deeply disturbing that a man with these Islamophobic, racist and bigoted views was making decisions about the execution of that campaign—a campaign widely criticised by the international community.

This is yet another reason to hold a long-overdue inquiry into Australia's involvement in the Iraq War. It's interesting that Senator Molan himself says he supports an inquiry. If the government were serious about supporting its own senator, as it says it is, it would back this inquiry. The 2003 invasion of Iraq was a humanitarian, legal, political and strategic disaster. It has been catastrophic, and we are living with the consequences today. Anyone who reads the Chilcot report on the UK's involvement in the Iraq War knows that it's a damning document. It documents in detail those serious failures of leadership that we saw here in Australia and in decision-making through every stage of that war—a war that was illegal and immoral and should never have been conducted, a war that led to the deaths of millions of Iraqis, to the deaths of Australian soldiers and created instability and violence that continues to this day. We can trace the rise of Islamic State all the way back to those decisions made at that time. It is long overdue now that the coalition and the ALP stop blocking an inquiry into the Iraq War, something long advocated by the Greens—indeed, by Senator Scott Ludlam while he was here. Let's learn from the mistakes of the past so that they never happen again.

Question agreed to.

Scott Ryan (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Can I remind senators that there will be a number of matters from the last half hour that I'll be reviewing in the Hansard. Can I ask senators to be exceptionally careful when using terms or epithets describing other senators so that I'm not requiring people to withdraw. I understand that the debate can get heated, but there are limits on what one can say about one's colleagues.