Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Foreign Affairs (Senator Wong) to a question without notice I asked today relating to the Iraq War.

Next month marks 20 years since the Howard government's decision to participate in the catastrophic US-led invasion of Iraq, a war that killed hundreds of thousands, displaced millions and left millions more with a trauma that they still live with and that will last for generations. During the course of this question time period I put a simple question to the foreign minister and to the government. I asked whether it was the government's view that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was illegal under international law and convention. The response was, 'We have no further comment.' It's 2023, as though to suggest to this chamber that the Iraq War and its implications are not something that the people of Iraq and that the people of Australia continue to live with to this day.

Five million orphans were created by the Iraq War. Hundreds of thousands lost their life. Today, the direct result of the war is still the third-largest cause of death and the largest contributor to child mortality. The infrastructure, the services, the health care and the education of that sovereign nation were devastated by a military campaign in which this Howard government, this Australian government, participated in willingly.

This month leading up to the anniversary of the invasion must be a period of reflection and of hard introspection. What happened? Who is responsible? What are the impacts that people are living with today? How do we ensure it never happens again? Who made the decision to go to war? Who gave the order? How did we end up there? How is it that, when 92 per cent of the Australian population opposed an illegal invasion, their government was able to go ahead and do it anyway? And how is it now that an Australian Labor Party government comes before this chamber in the context of that reality with no comment?

I yield my time.

David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is now 20 years since Iraq was invaded illegally—an invasion predicated on lies sold to the world by the Western governments that together went to war in Iraq. That included Australia, and no-one has been held to account.

The initial 'shock and awe' military campaign killed more than 7,000 Iraqi civilians in just two months. We can just imagine the fear of communities on the ground, facing that swift and ferocious invasion. The war and its aftermath have since claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and Iraqis are still waiting for justice and accountability for the full truth of what happened. Indeed, the entire region is struggling with the instability of violence caused by the war. Australian war veterans who were sent to fight a brutal, bloody and illegal war based on a lie are still waiting for answers, and the current Labor government is refusing to give those answers.

Yesterday, Labor teamed up with the Liberals to stop the Greens' push for accountability through the release of documents surrounding the decision to go to war. This is exceptionally frustrating, because two decades ago the then Labor opposition joined with the Greens, and millions of Australians, in opposing that war. The then United Nations General Secretary Kofi Anan said in September 2004 that 'From our point of view and the UN charter's point of view, the war is illegal.' Today, the current Labor foreign minister still won't state a position on whether or not the war was illegal. Why not? Why do we still not know who made the decision and on what allegedly legal basis to send Australia into that brutal, unjust and illegal war? Worse still, the Wikileaks founder and Australian citizen, Julian Assange, who has been a vital truth-telling force about the illegal invasion of Iraq, is still sitting in a UK maximum security prison for the crime of telling the truth.

It's about time the Australian people learned the truth. And it's well past time the Iraqi people learned the truth about this illegal war. We say again: with the 20th anniversary coming up, this is the chance for Labor to remember where it stood two decades ago and to tell the truth about this illegal war.

Question agreed to.