Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Over the last 24 hours, two seemingly unconnected events have occurred. The first of those, yesterday morning in this place, was when Andrew Wallace brought before a number of my coalition colleagues and me some representatives of the Hazara communities, approximately two years on from the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban. They told us some extremely harrowing accounts of the circumstances in Afghanistan, particularly for women and children. Inability to get an education is one that's been talked about, and I've talked about it in this place myself a number of times. Another is aid not getting out to regions and supporting communities.

The second one of those events was the naming of the Australian one-day international squad for the 2023 Cricket World Cup later in the year. How were these two connected? Afghanistan will be playing in the world cup. I've said in this place before that I think the ICC should enforce the rules that they have for their competition that, for men to compete, women should have a full, functioning program. Clearly that's not the case in Afghanistan. Quite frankly, it's great that 20 guys get to have a game of cricket at the ODI 2023 world cup, but how does that occur when women and girls have very few rights and in fact struggle to get an education? The ICC should make its rules count. (Time expired)