Page 2461 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 6 August 1991
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It is a deadly diet to see weapons sales going on, and I think it is wrong of the Liberal Party to suggest that these sales are only for defensive purposes and will go only to merchants who promote defence as a last resort. That is a myth; there is no way of holding onto where all of these items go. It is not the armaments that are taken away in crates; it is the insidious back deals and offset agreements, the technology transfers that are part of the arms trade and that produce the technology in underdeveloped countries for them to get armaments going themselves - computers and other technological developments - so that they can really maintain power in their dictatorships.
I worry about Mr Moore's motion. I think that if this Assembly endorses the principle that the ACT should not be used for promoting the international arms trade it might suggest that this Territory cannot be used, through the defence services here, to have offset agreements with New Zealand and other proper thinking military partners of Australia. I am not too sure that this does not offend the Anzac arrangements. New Zealand has taken bold steps in non-nuclear approaches; yet this motion would tend to prohibit it from being here in the ACT promoting the international arms trade. If Mr Moore gets a chance to respond to debate upon his motion, perhaps he can clarify what he means and whether he is referring merely to Aidex-type arrangements.
Finally, there is a need for consistency. If this Territory, in a majority vote today, supports this motion, we will have to be consistent in our approach and carry this message to the Federal Government and to all right thinking people in the nation. I expect that there will be an informed attempt to explain nationally why this decision was taken. I call upon the Chief Minister to have the courage to tell her Labor colleagues interstate and other Chief Ministers and Premiers why this decision has been taken and why it has been supported - the variety of reasons - by this democratic Assembly.
MR STEFANIAK (9.14): Mr Speaker, the Liberal Party will move an amendment, principally because Mr Moore's motion, as even Mr Collaery has indicated, is somewhat vague and misses the point. He talks of this Assembly endorsing "the principle that the ACT should not be used for promoting the international arms trade". I formally move the following amendment to the motion:
That all words after "Assembly" be omitted and the following substituted: "condemns the Follett Labor Government's attitude to AIDEX".
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