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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 1 Hansard (19 February) . . Page.. 259 ..

MR SMYTH (continuing):

I ask, what more can we do? The expectation of the world was that, at the end of the Gulf war, Iraq would disarm, but it did not. The expectation after resolution 1441 was that Iraq would disarm, and it has not. Dr Blix says, "Iraq just refuses."Dr Blix's statement, which I quote, says that weapons inspectors can only achieve their objective of Iraqi disarmament if immediate, active and unconditional cooperation of the UN and the IAEA were to be forthcoming.

Dr Blix has made it perfectly clear. He has said that the key to successful inspections is not more time or inspectors, it is about Iraq coming clean with what they have.

To go back again, nobody wants a war. What do we do when somebody like Saddam Hussein, for a decade or more, simply skirts around all the good intentions of the world to disarm him-take away his weapons of mass destruction? Do we give him more time? Until when are we going to give him more time-the end of March? That is a couple of extra months-fine. Do we want to make it the end of April? Will we wait until Christmas? If you look at Iraq's track record, what are you going to do when Iraq is still not compliant? The reality is that he will not disarm.

There is one thing that seems to have an effect on Saddam Hussein, and it is the thing that, next to their own leader's regime, is probably the most destructive of the people of Iraq. He responds to one thing, and that is military force.

It is a sad conclusion to have to come to, that that must be the lesser of the two evils, when you have done everything you can, over a decade, to disarm somebody who just ignores you. He ignores the resolutions of the world; he is willing to live in luxury and comfort; apparently he takes take billions of dollars to send overseas; he is willing to use his own people as human shields and move medicines away from innocent civilians for the use of the military; he is willing to inflict war and use biological weapons on his own people; and even, from what I have heard and from what Mr Pratt has said, he uses Muslim law against his own people.

What do you do with somebody like that? Where do you draw the line? Nobody in their right mind wants to go to war. Nobody in their right mind could possibly want to do that. What is the alternative? Do we just stand by and acquiesce? As we acquiesce, what is the message we send? Is it that if you front the west, the US, the British, the Australians or whoever you want to put on the line at the time, they will back down? From this backing down, you bring further contempt. From that contempt comes such a low regard for life that we see September 11, Bali and the atrocities in the Euphrates delta and the hill regions where the Kurds live.

Edmund Burke, an Anglo-Irish philosopher who witnessed first-hand the French Revolution, wrote a famous treatise on what he saw, how it affected him and how, if I remember rightly, he went from great respect for what they were trying to do with equality, liberty and fraternity, to coming to the conclusion that the only condition for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

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