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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 4 Hansard (1 April) . . Page.. 1168 ..

MR SMYTH (continuing):

I think Mr Stanhope could do well to follow the lead of his federal leader, Mr Crean, who has now said that we must get behind the troops. Indeed, at the reception that brought about the Daily Telegraph article, the Prime Minister, the Governor-General and Premier Bob Carr all got together to send the message that we are 100 per cent behind our troops.

Mr Speaker, you could only dismiss the Chief Minister's statements as irrelevant. If only it could be as simple as to dismiss as irrelevant what the Chief Minister has said. This would confirm why people laugh at local politicians, such as yourself and myself, and mock the Assembly. But it is worse than that. It undermines those young men and women out in the field, who are serving their country. It gives propaganda value to those in Iraq who, I feel, have proven they care very little for human life and slaughtered their own citizens.

I believe this is important-that, when we talk about the relevance of the ACT Assembly it is easy for us, who have no jurisdiction over these issues, to stand here and make statements about Australia's involvement in the conflict in Iraq. That is what we have federal representatives for, and that is why we should send messages through them.

This is an important issue to discuss. Through the self-government act, we are charged with looking at things like the government's inattention to hospital waiting lists. There is the fact that people are worried they will not receive adequate attention if they get sick-the jobs of Totalcare workers, the farce of the economic development white paper, the exercise in self-indulgence and smugness called the Connors report and the budget blowout itself. In my view, there are many more important issues that we should be discussing, because we are charged, by the self-government act, with taking care of those. We are charged by the electors-the people of the ACT-with being responsible for those matters.

I would say to the Chief Minister: get some logic and accountability into this place and, just for a moment, put yourself in the position of the Prime Minister or the Defence Minister. If you were given the information that led them to make this decision, how would you go about pulling them out now? How would you extricate our military personnel from Iraq without putting British or American troops, or others, at grave risk? How would you pull them out? What would the consequences of that be? What would it say to the world about Australia, let alone what it might say to other nations with which we have long-term relationships-the US and Britain, and others beyond that pool?

What message are you sending to somebody like Saddam Hussein? We sent the same message in 1991 when the man was disarmed, when the man's force was destroyed, when the man's power was taken from him, when there was hope across the world that something better might come about for Iraq. We balked at the last moment. We stopped and put the world in the same position in which we find ourselves yet again. Mr Speaker, I think the question has to be: What message do you send to our young men and women fighting for justice, democracy and a fair go in Iraq?

It is interesting that we are having this debate in the Assembly today. I can assure you that nobody in Iraq is having this debate under Saddam Hussein. In Iraq, you do not get debates like this. They do not provide the fundamental right for me to stand up and have my say on my country, my society, and ask for a fair go.

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