Page 44 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 12 February 1991
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resolve this conflict". Rubbish! Of course there is a parallel. There is a parallel in South Africa, where it has worked. For heaven's sake, it has worked. We have the parallel. We have something that works. If it takes 10 years of sanctions, then 10 years is what is required, and that is a far better way to do it. If it did take 10 years of sanctions, a strict regime of sanctions along those lines, the people of Iraq would be likely to become entirely dissatisfied with their leader.
Mr Duby: Do you support Australian ships supporting the blockade?
MR MOORE: I have never objected to the use of our armed forces for sanctions. However, I do recognise that many people who did object were concerned that the move was not towards sanctions but was towards war. That is the concern that people expressed over the sanctions. The vast majority of people that I know who object to this war consider that those sanctions were in themselves a quite appropriate and reasonable way to go.
We heard Mr Stefaniak, the Deputy Speaker, repeating the cliches, the propaganda and the lies that have come from both sides on this war. Let me clarify that; I am not talking about lies from Mr Stefaniak. I am not suggesting that at all. I am talking about repeating what we have had through the media. Let us not forget that old cliche, which is so appropriate, that the first casualty of war is truth. As far as this war is concerned, it would appear that there have been basically no casualties whatsoever.
I am reminded of a First World War poem that is so appropriate for this war in which we could well have chemical warfare. That poem ends with the Latin lines, "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" - "It is a sweet and glorious thing to die for the fatherland". That is like the rantings and indications that we heard in the speech by Mr Stefaniak today. From time immemorial violence has been used in an attempt to stop violence, and it has not worked. We had a chance, and we still have a chance, to attempt to use other methods here.
Mr Stefaniak spent a great deal of time telling us what a horrible man Saddam Hussein is. I have no doubt that that is the case. In the Second World War there was a tremendous amount of propaganda about what a horrible man Adolf Hitler was; and that was the case. But in the same era, Time magazine, in 1939 and 1942, had Stalin as "Man of the Year", as though Stalin was not a horrible man. Stalin happened to be needed by the Americans and the American propaganda machine and he was an ally, but some of his atrocities made Hitler's atrocities look like nothing.
New Zealand, our neighbour, has not rushed into this war as Australia has. Australia, for almost a century, has always been the first to be out there to fight a war, in any part of the world - "Let's get in there; let's fight; let's make
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