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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 1 Hansard (19 February) . . Page.. 240 ..

MR HARGREAVES (continuing):

Fifthly, Australia can give political support to the deployment of a United Nations contingent by voting in the General Assembly of the UN to support the Security Council. Sixthly, the United Nations has not asked Australia to send troops to Iraq or anywhere else in the Middle East. Seventhly, such an involvement will inevitably bring retribution to our shores. It will create and foster martyrs and they shall bring their jihad to our cities and to our people.

Before I go on, Mr Speaker, may I say that I regard the service men and women who have been deployed already as heroes. They are professionals doing the bidding of the duly-elected government.

Mr Pratt: But you won't support them, will you?

MR HARGREAVES: I will support them until hell freezes over, former Major Pratt, and I take personally any suggestion that I won't. I dare you-in fact, I challenge you-to say that outside this chamber. You have the choice of making a retraction or getting me a new house. You can take your pick, Mr Pratt, because you are an insulting little urchin. You are a grub, Mr Pratt; you are a grub. You are a grub.

Mr Stefaniak: I take a point of order, Mr Speaker. That is highly unparliamentary.

MR HARGREAVES: Do you want me to retract the statement that he is a grub?

Mr Stefaniak: Yes, retract that.

MR HARGREAVES: Do I have to retract the statement that he is a grub? All right, I retract the statement that he is a grub, Mr Speaker. I will let the community judge for themselves whether he is a grub when they read the Hansard. I retract it.

Mrs Dunne: I take a point of order, Mr Speaker.

MR SPEAKER: He said that he retracted it.

Mrs Dunne: I do not think that the retraction was unconditional.

MR HARGREAVES: I said that I retracted it. What else do you want?

Mrs Dunne: He did not make an unconditional withdrawal, Mr Speaker.

MR SPEAKER: Come on, Mrs Dunne, he has retracted it or withdrawn it, which means the same, I think.

MR HARGREAVES: Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. That our servicemen are being asked to go over to Iraq is not to be regarded as anything more than them doing their duty. I would expect nothing less of them. They cannot be held responsible for poor decision making. John Howard should bring the troops home and employ diplomatic means through the United Nations to achieve disarmament or the containment of Iraq. He should not drag the Australian community into another Vietnam.

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