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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 4 Hansard (1 April) . . Page.. 1183 ..

MS GALLAGHER (continuing):

war. I do not believe that anyone with a serious commitment to humanitarian values and to the health and wellbeing of the Iraqi people can possibly support the violence and the terror that Iraqis are now being visited with. I cannot believe that anyone can seriously think that those responsible for the death of Iraqi children will be welcomed as liberators by the parents of those children.

We are lucky in this country to have never faced war on our soil. Sure enough, we have sent brothers and husbands and sons and fathers to fight in other wars, but as a community we have never had to face war at home. We have not had to cower in shelters wondering if we would see the morning. We have not had to see our houses, our schools and our places of work destroyed by bombs. We have not had to search for food, clean water and medicine. We have not had to dig the bodies of our children out of the rubble of their own homes. Our injured children have not been turned away from the hospital because there is no power, no medicine or no space. We have not had to suffer through any of this. Yet this is what the Iraqi people are living with right now.

We sit night after night in front of our televisions gradually getting used to the images of war, and switching off or switching over. We hear the debate about who exactly is responsible. We are told that war is a messy business and that it is not easy to tell whose bomb killed whom. We cook our dinner, we kiss our loved ones goodnight and we go to bed. Not so in Iraq.

Yesterday in the Canberra Times there was a photo of a little girl injured in the crossfire between coalition and Iraqi forces. Her eyes were swollen and bleeding, and she was crying as soldiers tried to help her. Her father had been injured in the attack and her mother killed. If she was here today, what would we say to her? "We are trying to help you"? "We used this response as the first one"? "Your mother is dead because we could not wait for another solution"? "You will thank us"? I would not be able to say anything to that girl other than, "I am sorry. I think we are wrong. I think we have failed our children, we have failed diplomacy and we have failed peace. And, more importantly, we have failed you."

Until yesterday there were photos here in the Assembly of children injured in the first Gulf War and of babies born after it-babies who suffered hideous deformities as the result of the depleted uranium used by US forces during that conflict. The effects of this uranium linger long after the war is over, causing serious health problems. Yet in this so-called war of liberation, in this war that is supposed to help the Iraqi people, we are using depleted uranium once more.

As a parent, as an activist and as a humanitarian, I refuse to believe that death is ever an acceptable outcome or an acceptable price to pay. Everyone with a commitment to humanitarianism and peace should raise their voice in opposition to this conflict, and we should not forget that the people in Iraq are just that-people with lives. and hopes and dreams, and friends and families. They are people like me, and like you, who do not deserve to die just because we did not try harder.

Question resolved in the affirmative.

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