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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 1 Hansard (19 February) . . Page.. 269 ..

MS TUCKER (11.25): Thank you, I will close the debate. I thank members for their contribution tonight. It was pretty uncivilised to begin with, but thankfully it settled down and I think it was a useful debate. I would like to respond to just a couple of points that were made, starting from the beginning.

Mr Pratt and a number of members spoke about the human rights abuses of Saddam Hussein. I am not sure why they thought it was necessary to spend quite so much time on that. I have never at any point suggested that there were not human rights abuses in Iraq. In fact, my motion makes quite clear that, through the International Criminal Court, he should be pursued. Someone made the comment that he would not go there. Well, no-not many international criminals go there easily; that is one of the points of the International Criminal Court. Our own government does support that statute, as I have already pointed out in the motion.

I won't rebut a lot of things that were said because I would be repeating what I said in my original speech, and I am not going to bother going back over it. Maybe people were not listening; I am not sure. But that is one point.

Mr Pratt was into the name-calling stage of the debate, saying that it was naive-and whatever else he said. I did quote General Peter Gration extensively and, if Mr Pratt thinks he is naive and off with the fairies, or "left looking for relevance"-as Mrs Dunne's not-name-calling speech put up-well that is fine. Also, if Mrs Dunne thinks that the faith communities of Australia left people looking for relevance, well, that's fine too. But there is a very broad coalition of people in Australia who do not support John Howard's foreign policy on Iraq.

Mr Pratt also said that people were offering sustenance to Saddam Hussein. That is a serious misrepresentation of what I said in my motion. I made it quite clear that I thought he headed a dangerous regime.

I think I need to make the distinction between appeasement and containment. Some speakers spoke a lot about appeasement and referred back into history. Containment is not appeasement, and I am sure people realise that. There is a very clear difference. Military experts are recommending containment, and they are not calling it appeasement. It is quite a different thing.

People have talked about pacifism. I am not a pacifist-just in case people were thinking I was-but I am someone who is interested in seeing policy being determined based on information and hearing arguments that are informed. In this instance, it is my view-and obviously the view of many other people from whom I have gained a lot of the information in this session today, people who are experts in this field-

MR ACTING DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, members! I am having difficulty hearing the member.

MS TUCKER: that this war is not justified. That is quite a different position to being a pacifist.

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