Susan McDonald (Queensland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak with a heavy heart and soul and as a representative who sits in our great democratic parliament of Australia and mother whose heart is torn to read the accounts of the barbaric attacks by Hamas on innocent families, homes and a music festival on 7 October. I quote the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, giving testimony on Hamas's atrocities:

A young boy and girl, 6 and 8 years old, and their parents around the breakfast table. The father's eye gouged out in front of his kids. The mother's breast cut off, the girl's foot amputated, the boy's fingers cut off before they were executed.

And then their executioners sat down and had a meal. That is what this society is dealing with.

The Australian reported just today on a soldier who in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attack found two babies alive in a cupboard where their parents hid them before being killed. The same soldier found a dead baby in a bin and two 13-year-old girls who had been raped and shot. Thoughts now lie with the fate of the 200 people taken as hostages—the elderly, new mothers and children as young as three.

I struggled with the decision to repeat these horrors, but if we do not publicly confront the truth about 7 October, we do the dead no justice and we do not distinguish ourselves from those who excuse and even celebrate murder. These were not the actions of war. These were the actions of Hamas terrorists whose stated aim is to wipe out the Jewish population. Israel is fighting back and going to great lengths to prevent harming Gazan non-combatants. Of the one million people who lived in North Gaza, 800,000 have evacuated after warnings of impending ground attack. I asked to speak today in the belief that we all have an obligation to condemn atrocities because history has shown us with the Holocaust, the ongoing persecution of Afghan refugees in Pakistan and the inhumane treatment of Uighurs in China that, when people are silent, the innocent suffer. The actions of Hamas are evil.