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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 12 Hansard (12 November) . . Page.. 3406 ..

MS DUNDAS (continuing):

As has been said before in other times of great tragedy, we must ensure that any legislative powers we have, and all our wisdom and will, are used to prevent another such massacre. But we must not be fuelled by revenge. A cycle of ongoing violence will not bring an end to the terror and it will not lead us to peace. As the saying goes, "An eye for an eye makes the world go blind."

Yesterday, 11 November, we commemorated Remembrance Day and acknowledged the many who lost their lives in previous wars, those who had made the ultimate sacrifice. Lest we forget the horrors of war, let us now build for peace.

MS TUCKER: I also rise in support of this condolence motion for the victims of the bombing in Bali. Condolence motions in most instances are about celebrating a life. But as much as we may wish to celebrate the lives of the many victims of this appalling act, more than anything we deplore their loss and our hearts go out to friends and relatives.

It is of particular concern when young people lose their lives-people in their prime with so much ahead of them who are horribly killed or injured simply for being in what turns out to be the wrong place at the wrong time. I think the detailed media coverage of the Australian victims, who could so easily have been us or our children, or people we know, has brought that home to us. That this attack was perpetrated at Kuta Beach, an Aussie playground in the very Aussie-friendly Bali, has obviously shaken us all.

Australia's first response to this event was right: to support as best we could the injured and the families of the deceased. Secondly, it has been to assist the Indonesian authorities in bringing the perpetrators to justice. I believe the next stages and how we manage them have more profound implications.

There is an ongoing campaign of terrorism around the world that we need to deal with but our response has to be more sophisticated than simply initiating a "war on terrorism"by attempting to destroy, first, the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and some of its al-Qaeda partners and then, as seems likely, Saddam Hussein in Iraq. We need to commit to an alternative path to peace and security, both globally and in our own societies.

In whatever actions we take as communities and as nations, we need to articulate a real commitment to a fairer and more hopeful world for everyone-in the first world, the third world, this whole one planet. Clearly those of us who have the most to consume, the most control and the most to lose, have to lead this process, no matter what our losses. Despite the horrific nature of the bomb attack in Bali, we cannot in Australia deny that people in the less affluent and less developed world have suffered and continue to suffer on a scale that is usually impossible to comprehend from our standpoint, and who are in a much more difficult position to lead such change.

This condolence motion is not the occasion to debate in detail what needs to be done. There are, however, some general principles that we can adopt and encourage others to adopt immediately. In the first place, there is the danger that this event and its aftermath will damage the relatively harmonious social fabric that we are so proud of in Australia. In the last few weeks we have seen images of Indonesian families being aggressively raided by ASIO and police. Our political leaders have failed to properly engage with the Muslim community leaders in Australia on this action, let alone question the need for such violent intervention.

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