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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 1 Hansard (19 February) . . Page.. 270 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

Mrs Cross said that the US had made some mistakes-and we all do-but that they learned from their lessons. Since the Second World War, the United States has bombed 21 countries: China, Korea, Guatemala, Indonesia, Cuba, Congo, Peru, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Lebanon, Grenada, Libya, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, Bosnia, Sudan, the former Yugoslavia, Iraq and Afghanistan. None of them have a stable democracy at this point in time, so maybe we need a different way of dealing with conflicts in countries around the world. There are certainly lessons that America could learn from its own violence.

Mr Berry was correct when he said that the arguments have shifted. It has, in fact, been commented on internationally that Bush, Blair, and Howard are now suddenly talking vigorously about human rights, which had not been a focus at the beginning of this debate. Then it was all about weapons of mass destruction, and the weapons inspectors have not said at this point that there is justification for going in. So, they are shifting the debate to human rights abuses.

There are real ironies in that, in particular from the speakers from the Liberals. We have had debates in this place about human rights abuses from a number of countries, and I have raised a number of them. China is a good example of where we had a very strong argument from the Liberals that, despite the human rights abuses there, they knew that the right thing to do was encourage them into the world community. That way they would get to understand how to behave better.

There are real inconsistencies in how the Liberals are working with that. Of course, that is about trade and that is about money. People have been reading lots of other people's articles. I won't read this whole article because I don't think it's particularly appropriate, but I am happy to refer you to a recent article by Hugh McKay, who says that free trade comes-

MR ACTING DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, members! Hansard have enough trouble as it is.

MS TUCKER: This is for Hansard's benefit. I am referring to Hugh McKay's article, "Free trade comes with strings attached."He refers to the very interesting position the federal government took on China, and the Dalai Lama in particular, and how interesting it was that on the one hand they are interested in human rights and on the other hand they are not if there is trade involved.

Now, of course-and I have not mentioned this yet tonight-we have the insidious relationship being made between trade and this war. The horrible connection is now being made by the United States-this is also in Hugh McKay's article-implying that, if we are good supporters of the United States' military ambitions, we are more likely to get a free trade agreement. I think everybody should be extremely concerned about that.

We have been told that we are inconsistent because we supported the South African sanctions. The South African sanctions actually worked; the sanctions in Iraq have not worked. The sanctions in Iraq have caused incredible misery for very many innocent people.

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