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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 12 Hansard (13 November) . . Page.. 3550 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

A remarkable stench of hypocrisy hangs over the heads of the affluent world, and past and present military activities of the United States are simply one illustration of that. Britain as well needs to be condemned for its hypocrisy. Britain's presence at the special operations forces exhibition (Sofex) 2002 in Jordan recently is the latest in a long list of New Labour's broken promises on weapon sales. The British presence at Sofex 2002 tops them all. The British Army, British arms companies and a British government agency, not to mention Prince Andrew and the defence minister Lord Bach, are this week buying, selling, doing deals and sharing information at a Middle Eastern showcase for all kinds of weapons from small arms to land mines, battlefield tanks and fighter jets.

Official delegations from Iraq-one of which had an encounter with Prince Andrew that was described by Radio 4's Today program as a strategic jostle-and Iran are also attending the show. Both are members of Tony Blair and George Bush's so-called axis of evil. Did Mr Blair not notice them on the guest list? Did Jack Straw overlook the fact that delegations from Sudan, Syria and Libya, three more states defined as sponsors of state terrorism by the US State Department, would also be attending?

The British government agency attending the fair is the Defence Export Services Organisation, whose sole job is to flog British equipment abroad. The British Defence Manufacturers Association, which represents and lobbies on behalf of British weapons firms, is also there, and the British Army is participating at the fair in the official hand-over to Jordan of Challenger tanks.

Among the British arms manufacturers attending are the tank firms Vicars and the British arm of the US weapons giant Lockheed-Martin. Lockheed-Martin makes the Longbow fire-and-forget missile and the Hellfire II anti-tank missile, as well as the F16 fighter jet. All are likely to be deployed when the US attacks Iraq.

Among the 10 American firms exhibiting at Sofex is Raytheon, which I think we have given a subsidy to set up in Canberra. It is the world's largest missile manufacturer and purveyor of the Tomahawk cruise missile which rained down over Afghanistan earlier this year.

If Britain and the United States are serious about halting tyranny, terrorism and weapons proliferation in the Middle East, they should not be flogging arms there but acting to restrict weapons sales. I think that comes from the BBC news. I will confirm that later, for the record.

More broadly and perhaps more urgently, we need to learn together how to work for peace and coexistence in the Middle East, in East Asia and all around the world. To do that we need to learn the lessons from people like Nelson Mandela that there can be no coexistence without a process for truth and reconciliation, that restorative justice is built on a recognition of what has befallen us all, and that we cannot deny the damage that we, our policies, our actions, our consumption or our lifestyle does to the lives and the cultures of others. We have to start from there.

We simply cannot say, "Let us go to war."To achieve coexistence and acceptance, we need a commitment to more equitable distribution of wealth globally and within nations, in addition to a demonstrated commitment to the health of the planet. We need to

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