Page 52 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 12 February 1991
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The question has to be asked: What has to be done to achieve that? The fact of life, Mr Speaker, is that we, the citizens of this world, if you like, have reached the last resort with respect to Kuwait. We have reached the last resort in making an assessment of what we can do to contribute to the safety, the well-being and the self-determination of Kuwaitis, and it falls on us as fellow citizens of this world to take some action, to use Mr Wood's words, to liberate Kuwait.
Ms Follett said that war is too high a price to pay. I am sure that many people of her own political persuasion would not agree with that. I think Ms Follett has forgotten the lessons that were learnt by a different generation. She has forgotten, in particular, the lessons that were learnt by the generation that consisted of people like John Curtin and Ben Chifley - people who, on behalf of the Australian people, prosecuted a war, a just war, a war against a tyrant, because they believed fundamentally and completely, I think, that that war ought to have been fought and that Australian lives ought to have been committed in the fighting of that war.
Now, what is the difference between Saddam Hussein and Adolf Hitler? What substantial difference is there between those two people? I do not believe that there is any difference. I know that that is an emotive kind of expression, that it is very easy to draw those sorts of parallels and that people are very fond of making those kinds of analogies; but, quite frankly, I cannot see any differences. I really cannot see any differences between those two classes of people.
Mr Stevenson: What about Gorbachev? Would you add him to the list?
MR HUMPHRIES: No, I would not, Mr Stevenson. I would not add Mr Gorbachev to the list. There are such things as just wars. Anybody who thinks that pacifism, that demonstrations or sanctions or protests, would have dissuaded Adolf Hitler from his invasion of most of Europe would have rocks in their head. Apparently those opposite think that sanctions and protests and letters of protest would have been an appropriate response to Hitler's aggression in 1939. Apparently they think that would have been appropriate. I think that anybody who studies the lessons of history realises that that cannot be the case.
Mr Duby: Their colleagues did not mind stopping him in the Spanish civil war.
MR HUMPHRIES: I think Mr Duby has raised a very good point about the hypocrisy of those opposite when it comes to waging war. There are, of course, many examples of where people on the Left, even people sympathetic to the ALP Left in our own present context, have waged war, have fought wars, have exerted violence against other human beings for the sake of what they wanted.
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