Page 2445 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 6 August 1991
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
decision to take. But we could say, "No more", and that is what we have done. The Canberra Times, at the end of its editorial last week, in congratulating the Government on this issue, said:
How many of us can honestly believe that governments do not have an obligation to consider the world when they make decisions about what goes on within the city limits?
If the decision that we have taken, to say "No more" to international arms bazaars, was followed throughout the world, we would not have the aggression that Mr Stefaniak spoke about. Mr Stefaniak's rather bellicose speech, I think, particularly today, marked an extraordinary insensitivity from the local branch of the Liberal Party - - -
Mr Humphries: Division, actually.
MR CONNOLLY: The local division of the Liberal Party. Well, "division" is a very appropriate word, Mr Humphries; it is an extremely divided party. Mr Speaker, what is today - apart from the first day of a sitting time?
Mr Stefaniak: Tuesday.
MR CONNOLLY: "Tuesday", says Mr Stefaniak. Today is 6 August. What is 6 August? The 6th of August is celebrated by many people - no, "celebrated" is not the word; it is commemorated by many people around the world as Hiroshima Day. It was today 46 years ago that atomic weapons were first used against human beings. People have different views on war and peace and on the appropriate occasions when a nation may go to war, and there are divisions within the community, within the Labor Party and all over on those issues. But all of us would prefer a world where it did not happen. And on Hiroshima Day, on the anniversary of the day on which mankind first unleashed atomic energy against mankind, how inappropriate it is of the local division of the Liberal Party to decide to celebrate the international arms trade. I think that in itself speaks for the views of the Liberal Party on this issue.
Mr Stefaniak gave us a litany of occasions on which states have gone to war against other states and on which there may have been an appropriate or not appropriate response. The point we make is that if the West had not fallen over itself to arm the Middle East over the last decade there would not have been an invasion of Kuwait and there would not have been a United Nations sanctioned action. We are not debating tonight whether or not that action was justified. What we are saying is that if other states followed our lead, if other nations followed our lead, if we said "No" to the international arms trade, you would not have aggression because the aggressor - the "bully" that Mr Stefaniak speaks of - would not have access to high technology arms and equipment.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .