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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 1 Hansard (19 February) . . Page.. 239 ..

MR HARGREAVES (continuing):

Mr Speaker, I have attended a number of anti-war rallies in recent times and a number of issues have kept coming up. There is genuine and strong sentiment that John Howard is not listening to the people of Australia; he is listening to George W Bush. There is concern that John Howard has already committed himself to active participation in a war against Iraq, regardless of a United Nations authority for one.

What points to this conclusion? It is the deployment, not the predeployment, of Australians. Mr Stefaniak, Mr Pratt, Mr Smyth and I, and possibly others here, who have had some time in the services know that there is no such thing as predeployment. The whole of the armed services are predeployed. That is what they are doing; that is what they are trained for. Predeployment is an absolute load of rubbish and members opposite know it. They you can shake their head until it falls off, but that would not change things.

These people have been deployed and members opposite know as well as I do that they are over there for climate assimilation. They are fully trained and they are over there for climate assimilation for when John Howard pushes the red button. They are on a war footing and members opposite know it. On top of that, they already pose a threat to the people of Iraq. Their presence is precipitous if nothing else.

No-one in Australia condones the actions of Saddam Hussein. All people in Australia would like to see a regime change. But how should this come about? Who has the authority to demand this change? We pride ourselves on our commitment to democracy. This is the will of the people, the will of the community. It is the world community which has this authority, not George W Bush, not Tony Blair, not John Howard. The world community is represented, at least at this point in time, by the United Nations. No regime change in the world should be imposed by a couple of nations acting outside the world community, outside the authority of the United Nations.

No-one in Australia is comfortable with any nation having weapons of mass destruction. No-one in Australia is happy about India, Pakistan, China, the United Kingdom, half the countries in Europe, countries in the Middle East and, indeed, the United States having them. Just remember that it was the United States that actually used such weapons at the end of the Second World War and it was the United States which threatened such use in the Cuban crisis. I fear that the trigger-happy US might do so again.

My understanding is that the United States have objections only to Iraq and North Korea having such weapons-at least, objections so strong that war is an option for disarmament measures. Nonetheless, the United States has no worldwide mandate to wage war on anyone to achieve its aims, unless it is part of a United Nations contingent to disarm another nation. The same thing applies to us.

I am opposed to sending troops to Iraq on the following grounds. Firstly, the deployment of troops overseas is not a bluff. If it is, that bluff will be called and Australian service men and women will die, make no mistake of that. Secondly, we are not part of an extensive United Nations contingent against Iraq. Thirdly, such deployment will inevitably cause loss of life of civilian Iraqi. Fourthly, it is not Australia's fight. We should learn from New Zealand. Let us concentrate on our own backyard.

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