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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 4 Hansard (1 April) . . Page.. 1171 ..

MR HARGREAVES (continuing):

walk away. We'll do it ourselves. Blow you."What has happened? George W Shrub has walked straight into Iraq with his troops, bombed the heck out of them and said, "We're gonna liberate you, we're gonna make you free". Isn't it funny how the United States is the only nation that talks every day about the word "free"? It is not in the lexicon of most other people. We live it and we do not have to keep believing it like they do. I just think these people are absolutely hypocritical.

The United States, in one fell swoop, has emasculated the United Nations and rendered it powerless. It is now going to be a joke. Any big super power will be able to walk in and do whatever it likes. They can do so because they have got the power of veto in the Security Council and nobody can do anything about it.

If there is ever a rogue state at the moment vis-a-vis the United Nations, it is the United States. Mr Smyth says it is simplistic and populist to want to bring the troops home. It is not. It was not in 1972. Gough Whitlam brought the troops home three years before the war in Vietnam ended.

Mr Smyth: They were already home. He brought the last hundred. The majority of them had come home. It is something you fail to ever-

MR HARGREAVES: Mr Smyth is very fond of trying to rewrite history. I don't give a damn who brought them home, but an Australian had the guts before the end of a conflict to just walk away from it because it was wrong. It was an illegal act of bastardry perpetrated on the Vietnamese community and an Australian had the goodwill and the strength to just walk away from it. We can do so again if we have got the will. John Howard has not got the will but he has got the weight. He won't say sorry and he won't move out of Iraq.

Mr Smyth asked, "What would the world say about Australia?"Well, I ask you this question in return: what did the world say about New Zealand when they told the Americans to stick it? Nine-tenths of the world said, "Good on you. You are only a little state but good on you, mate."What did the Australians say? They said, "Oh dear me, there goes the ANZUS Treaty."As far as I am concerned, you can burn it or throw it into a garbage bin where it belongs. That is where I say it can go.

Mr Speaker, I am totally opposed to the war. Indeed, I was totally opposed even before it started and there were mumblings about it. These people are not liberators. They are invaders and they have dragged us into an illegal conflict. We have been dragged into this illegal conflict by people that have not signed up with the international court of criminal justice, or whatever its name is. Why? Because by not signing they will not be held answerable to the world community for an illegal act. But we are. We are signatories to it. These people have dropped us fair into a cow pat, and I am not particularly interested in being there, thank you very much.

I have the most incredible sympathy for, and my heart goes out to, our men and women soldiers in Iraq. I just cannot imagine how they would feel. I want to send this message to them: "Good on you; you are doing a great job. I wish you weren't doing it and if I was king of the world you would be home not doing it. You would be looking after our doorstep, not fighting in some desert, spilling your blood in a desert that nobody really needs to spill their blood in."

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