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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 12 Hansard (13 November) . . Page.. 3565 ..

MR HARGREAVES (continuing):

If I had my choice, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I was the king of the world, I would say, "We are not going to war, United Nations or no United Nations!"However, we have a worldwide obligation to be part of the global community, and we have to make our voice known. But we do not have to lead it-we are a small country.

Where is France? Where is Germany? Where are all of the bigger countries with hugely greater numbers of armed forces and more people? They are a heck of a lot closer to Iraq than we are, and they are more dependent upon Iraq than we are. Where are they? They are resounding in their silence!

I do not mind if we are part of a global approach to this, but we are not-it is a cartel. I am not impressed by this cartel, and I will not support it.

Mr Stefaniak: What, English-speaking democracies?

MR HARGREAVES: English-speaking democracies is a big old hoary one that that warmongering John Howard trots out. America is the only so-called democracy in the world that constantly talks about freedom. We do it and they talk about it. Then they go and ram the words down other people's throats unilaterally. They are empire builders and ought to act within the concepts of the United Nations.

Nobody has given the United States any tin sheriff's badge to be the global policeman in this world. They have no mandate from me-and from nobody I know-to be the global policeman. Nobody gave them that right. The United Nations has the mandate to be the global policeman, not the United States.

Mr Deputy Speaker, the second part of my amendment goes to the point that I thought Mr Pratt put quite eloquently-to seek peace for the people of Iraq. In every conflict-regardless of whether it is a terrorist war or a conventional one-armies get slaughtered and all that sort of stuff. They are professionals and they ought to try to avoid it. I was in the army a couple of times and was taught how to avoid it. I have to tell you that the civilians going about their business cannot avoid it; children cannot avoid it; the women who are not combatants cannot avoid it; and the old men cannot avoid it.

This approach from the United States and Britain misses one of the major points. There are two sets of casualties. There are the casualties of ourselves at home. Our people who got blown up in Bali were casualties. So too are the Iraqi people. Certainly Saddam Hussein's regime has wiped out huge numbers of the Iraqi people. We should condemn him for that action and work within the concepts of the United Nations to do something about it.

Let us not forget the United States Air Force presence in some of their villages. And let us not forget the United States Air Force's presence in Cambodia during the Vietnam war. They were not even in it. Laos was not in it. They got a couple of little presents from the sky, and it blew the hell out of them. That conflict was not sanctioned by the United Nations, and the Yanks lost it. What happened? They took their body bags and went home, leaving three or four countries in Indochina wrecked and devastated.

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