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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 08 Hansard (Thursday, 5 August 2004) . . Page.. 3592 ..

That is interesting, isn’t it? It is all right to raise funds to support people and to support multiculturalism; but do not support those people against whom Australia has declared war, particularly when they are Muslims; particularly when they are the people that you have used outrageously for political advantage; particularly when they are from that race of people or those nations that you used outrageously in the run to the last election.

These people are Muslims; they are Arabs; they do not really care; their only use in life, in fact, is for winning elections; they are the sorts of people who throw their children overboard; they are stateless people, claim jumpers. These people are basically not wanted or deserved anywhere; they are completely undeserving; they are non-people. They are Muslims and we know what the Liberal Party think about them. They are to be used and abused; they are the sorts of people who throw their children overboard; they are the sorts of people who should be locked up in concentration camps in the Pacific, in the middle of Australia or in Cuba.

What have we had today, on the very day that we have had revealed through the international press the torture of Australian prisoners detained for over two years in Guantanamo Bay by the other invader of Iraq? We have had a member of the Liberal Party standing up in this place on the very day it has been revealed that Australians who have been locked up without charge in a concentration camp in Guantanamo Bay for two years were subjected to torture by our allies and complaining that I attended a function in the ACT to raise funds for people displaced by that war—for people who have had their legs blown off, people who have lost their arms, people who have had their whole lives destroyed as a result of that illegal invasion.

What utter hypocrisy! What appalling hypocrisy from Mr Pratt! Here we have the great spy of the Balkans, who went over there supposedly as an aid worker and was working as a spy. I wonder what his mates think about his involvement in that little escapade. He was a spy: we all know it; everybody knows it. He was charging around the Balkans pretending to be an aid worker.

Here he is, coming in here and having a go at me for raising funds for people who have lost their arms and their legs, people who have been displaced, people who have had their country basically taken over, objecting to me raising funds for somebody trying to assist those people. That is what he does: he comes in here and talks to me about that. What humbug! Think of the hypocrisy of it on the very day that it is revealed, quite graphically, that Australian citizens locked up for two years are being tortured by our great allies, the Americans.

Iraq—fundraising event

MS DUNDAS (9.22): I want to add to the very good points the Chief Minister has raised in relation to the work of Donna Mulhearn. I am quite disappointed that members of this Assembly should attack so personally somebody who does not necessarily have the opportunity to respond. I do not necessarily want to add to what the Chief Minister has put on the record, but I would ask Mr Pratt to explain why he needed to call Donna Mulhearn “gorgeous”. Are her looks—her appearance—in any way related to the fact that she is working incredibly hard to look after Iraqi children who have been displaced and gone through quite atrocious things because of the war in Iraq? She is working quite

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