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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 1 Hansard (19 February) . . Page.. 229 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

We will suffer because some of our own citizens are from the Middle East. Too many of them are already suffering as a result of John Howard's fear campaign-citizens such as children who have been victimised because of their Middle Eastern appearance or Muslim faith. We will also see many more refugees as a consequence of a destabilised world. Are Mr Howard and Mr Ruddock seriously going to imprison innocent people who have fled from our bombs? My God, what has this country come to?

Mr Speaker, war affects everyone and everyone has a right to make their opinion known to the people making the decision. We as elected representatives have a particular responsibility to represent our constituents on this matter. On 2CC Mr Cornwell smugly dismissed the whole notion of debating this issue as "the mouse roaring". Mrs Dunne said it was a waste of time. This is indeed a startling admission from members of the Legislative Assembly as to what they think democracy is about. It is clearly not a view shared by thousands and thousands of people in Canberra. Millions of people all around the world roared last weekend. Councils and parliaments in Australia and the United States have also roared against this war. While the view that we have no role, that we are a mere mouse roaring, fits with John Howard's view of democracy, it is one which the Greens totally reject.

Even Liberals who oppose this war in the federal parliament have little opportunity to influence John Howard. We have a Prime Minister with an increasingly presidential style who chooses to ignore the people of Australia and flouts democratic process. The majority of Australians reject this. If the state and territory parliaments and councils of Australia claim to be impotent at this time and just stay silent, what hope is there? If we do not speak on this matter we will be failing in our responsibilities as elected representatives and as global citizens.

If you look through history there are many examples of injustice and brutality eventually being stopped because people were prepared to be counted against what seemed to be overwhelmingly powerful forces at the time, and that includes actions by parliaments and elected representatives at all levels.

Mr Howard has not convinced Australians because there are obvious problems with his support for an attack on Iraq. Firstly, despite all their effort, the smoking gun has not been found. There is no clear evidence that Iraq poses an immediate threat to Australia or our allies. Also, it sets a precedent for pre-emptive military actions throughout the world.

We have the scandalous situation where the leader of the United Kingdom has produced a British government dossier which was claimed to contain the latest intelligence from Iraq but which, in fact, turned out to be copied, word for word, from published sources. Entire pages were copied without acknowledgment from a PhD thesis published last year in an academic journal. The UK government even reproduced typing and grammatical mistakes made by the PhD student, Mr Al Marashi, who had no idea his work was being used in this way. Another page was copied from an article in the magazine, Janes Intelligence Review, the article being six years old. And Mr Howard is convinced!

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