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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 4 Hansard (1 April) . . Page.. 1178 ..

MRS CROSS (continuing):

against Iraq which stands no chance of defending itself and its people from the impending massacre.

My comment on that press release-and a number of other issues have been addressed in a very comprehensive manner today-is as follows. I believe it is a blatant lie to claim that this is a religious war. Ameer avoids the facts that, firstly, it was the Muslims of Kuwait who were liberated from the vicious, brutal and rapacious forces of Saddam's Iraq in 1991 by the American-led coalition; and, secondly, it was the American-led coalition, while the UN sat wringing its hands, that liberated the Muslims of Kosovo from the ethnic cleansing Christian Serbians.

It seems that only Arabs/Muslims are the concerns of Dr Ameer Ali. He is, in his own fashion, entirely unconcerned about members of other faiths. For example, in Iraq there are Christians, Zoroastrians and members of other faiths; and besides Arabs, there are Kurds, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Medes, Turkomen, Azeri, et cetera. Muslims have studiously avoided-as have certain demonstrators throughout the world who seem to think that some fairy with a wand can cure the ulcer that is Saddam's Iraq-any reference to the way Hussein has conducted himself for several decades towards his own citizens and towards his neighbouring Muslim countries, and how he has relentlessly abused his country's membership of the flaccid and contemptibly helpless UN.

Saddam Hussein has been a relentless oppressor of Muslim peoples for years, but apparently that is of no import to Dr Ali. Ali's comments drip with subjectivity and religious and, yes, racial vitriol.

It is of deep concern to me to observe how the spin doctors of one side of this argument ignore the facts. As I mentioned, the facts are that it was the Muslims of Kuwait that the American-led coalition freed in 1991; it was an American-led coalition, with the UN sitting back and doing nothing, which liberated the Muslims of Kosovo from the ethnic cleansing Christian Serbians.

Blind Freddy could tell you, Mr Deputy Speaker, that this is not an anti-Muslim war. I know that there are a variety of opinions on this issue, even in my own office, and I think the wonderful thing about a democracy is that people are entitled to have differing views on these issues, and we have to respect those views. But I would like people to stop and think and look at the history and the facts, rather than follow the emotion and the ideology of their respective parties. I do not believe that our Prime Minister took lightly the decision to send our troops to war. I believe that the intelligence information that is at hand is significant enough and crucial enough for us to have made the decision to send our troops to war.

I do not believe that our Prime Minister, irrespective of who he is and what political party he belongs to, would sacrifice our young men and women carelessly. I am deeply concerned as an Australian that, instead of coming together and supporting our Prime Minister in the way we did in 1991 under another Prime Minister when we sent our troops into Kuwait, this nation has been divided to such a degree. I am deeply concerned about this and I would hate to think that-

Mr Smyth: A Labor Prime Minister who Mr Stanhope worked for.

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