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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 4 Hansard (1 April) . . Page.. 1170 ..

MR SPEAKER: Mr Hargreaves-

MR HARGREAVES: Mr Speaker, I withdraw the word "crap".

MR SPEAKER: Thank you.

MR HARGREAVES: Mr Speaker, we have to understand that this is an illegal invasion. Kofi Annan said that its legality is questionable. I do not have any difficulty about the view that I hold. There is no United Nations sanction; nobody like Kuwait is being invaded; there is no liberation. We are talking about the freeing of people from a political regime, however dastardly it may be. This is a political regime. Nobody has the right to do anything about that except the Iraqi people themselves or the world community, as embodied by the United Nations.

I am struck by a couple of the things that Mr Smyth said. He said that the Chief Minister was doing the wrong thing by raising this issue. Right now, at some stage or another, everybody in the ACT is talking about it. There have been demonstrations. People are out there looking for leadership. What they are getting is a smack in the chops from those sitting opposite. Those opposite want to talk about being lily-livered and gutless, but that is what they are demonstrating by the bucket load.

What we are seeing from the Chief Minister is a bit of leadership. He has stood up here and said unequivocally that it is an illegal war and we are opposed to it, and that if he were the king of the world he would bring the troops home. How definitive do you have to be? I echo absolutely what was said in the Chief Minister's statement.

What the Chief Minister is doing is showing this community some leadership so that when people go out and demonstrate and feel like being a little bit over excited, they will know how their leaders, the people in this chamber, feel. So it is most appropriate that he make a ministerial statement. He is speaking on behalf of the ACT government. I know that he does not speak for those people on the other side of the chamber-as far as I am concerned, they are just a bunch of warmongers.

Mr Speaker, Mr Smyth talks about the lesser of two evils. Well, what are those evils? We can leave Saddam Hussein in place and people could be killed or we can go and bomb half of them to death and then liberate them. As somebody said, "We'll kill thousands of Iraqis and liberate the survivors."Well, good on you. Liberate the survivors-both of them. I think that is appalling.

They are only two of the evils. What about the visitation on the Australian public by the people who have decided that they want to take it out on us? Only last Friday night Bishop Browning talked about the difference between fundamentalists and radicals. It is not the fundamentalists we need fear; it is the radicals. I have to say that I had not thought about it in the terms that Bishop Browning articulated. I am concerned because he is right in the sense that there will be a return visit, and I do not want the return visit to be on my kids or my grandkids, thanks very much.

Another casualty of this war is the United Nations. I do not care how many resolutions somebody does not comply with, the resolution is there. Let us try and breathe some life into and thereby strengthen the United Nations, instead of saying, "Okay, damn it. We'll

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