Defence Amendment (Parliamentary Joint Committee on Defence) Bill 2025
Senator HODGINS-MAY (Victoria) (13:17): Over the weekend, we have been reminded why decisions about war, intelligence and military power must never be made in the shadows. We watched the United States and Israel launch coordinated military strikes on Iran in an unrestrained and unprecedented violent escalation in a region already at breaking point. This was another decision made in closed rooms by powerful men, with consequences that will be now paid for in civilian bloodshed.
This is what the modern war machine looks like: two global military forces converging with overwhelming power and acting with remarkable confidence that there will be no meaningful democratic resistance or scrutiny. If anyone believed that the era— The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Sharma ): Senator Hodgins-May, please resume your seat. Minister, on a point of order?
Senator McAllister: The point of order is relevance. Senator Shoebridge made an entire contribution without making any reference that I heard to the bill for the chamber. The senator on her feet now appears to be going down the same path.
I wonder if we could ask senators to make contributions about the bill before us. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: I will seek advice from—Senator Scarr on the point of order? Senator Scarr: On the point of order, I note that the senator has only had 53 seconds so far to give her contribution.
The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: I'm going to seek the advice of the Clerk. Senator Hodgins-May, you can resume the call. This is just a reminder that we are debating the third reading of the bill before the chamber currently.
Senator HODGINS-MAY: Thank you. At the heart of what I'm saying is the need for military oversight at this time more than ever, and so I think it is entirely relevant to the discussion that is being had. If anyone believed that the era of imperial interventions was behind us, that illusion has well and truly evaporated.
We cannot be clearer—the Iranian people have endured decades of repression under a brutal and totalitarian regime. Women have been beaten and imprisoned for demanding basic rights. Protesters have been silenced, journalists jailed, minorities persecuted—the struggle for Iranian liberation is real and it deserves solidarity.
But you do not bomb your way to peace. You do not drop explosives on a country and claim to speak on behalf of its people. Regime change imposed from the sky is not liberation; it's chaos.
The United States does not have the interests of the Iranian people at heart, and that is becoming increasingly clear. An administration that cannot uphold human rights within its own borders cannot credibly claim to be the guardian of rights overseas. In the US, we have seen migrants brutalised, families separated and state violence excused when politically convenient.
Human rights observers have been executed by ICE. This is not a government that gives any thought to, let alone acts upon, humanitarian principles. It is a government that acts solely for its own interests and those of its powerful allies and corporations.
Israel's government, which is still committing an active genocide, is hardly a credible force for democracy. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Sharma ): I have a point of order from the minister. Senator McAllister: I rise again for a point of order on relevance.
The senator has now been speaking for some minutes. She has made no reference to the legislation before the chamber, as did the Greens political party speaker before her. I conclude that this is a desperate attempt to try and stop the progress of this bill.
I ask you to draw the senator back to the question. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Thank you, Minister. Senator Shoebridge, on a point of order?
Senator Shoebridge: At the core of this bill is setting up a committee to consider ongoing defence issues. We heard that clearly from the minister when she read the terms of reference for the committee. Surely, it's consistent with a third reading to discuss current, ongoing defence issues in light of this committee.
I hear my colleague making reference to the secrecy of the committee. It's entirely within the scope of the third reading to discuss current defence issues. Senator McAllister: She didn't even read the bill.
Senator Shoebridge: I know it's awkward for the government. I know they want to shut down my colleague, who's doing a great job, but it's entirely within the scope of the third reading. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Senator Scarr, on the point of order before the chamber?
Senator Scarr: Just quickly, I did rise initially to give indulgence to the speaker. They'd only been speaking for 53 seconds; it has now been 2½ minutes. I think there is merit in terms of the minister's point of order.
The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: I sought some advice from the Clerk, and you may resume, Senator Hodgins-May. I will remind you that we are debating whether the chamber passes this bill for the third time, so please make sure your comments are tied towards the bill before the chamber. Senator HODGINS-MAY: These circumstances are exactly why we need more oversight of our military interventions, not less.
Once again, we are seeing Australia lining up as the well-behaved lapdog, and I know this is hard for the war party on my left, the Labor Party, to hear, but it is the truth. Instead of condemning this unprecedented and illegal act of war, the Prime Minister rushes to back the United States. The Foreign minister fails to condemn the strikes while invoking the so-called rules based international order.
International law cannot be conditional. It cannot apply only to our adversaries. A rules based system that excuses powerful allies while punishing others is not a system of law; it is a system of hierarchy, which is why Australians deserve oversight of the decisions that are being made in their names and by the representatives that they elected to represent them.
Australians deserve to know whether our country has been implicated in these attacks. We deserve to know whether Australian territory and infrastructure at Pine Gap played a role in coordinating the strike. A secret committee will not give us and give Australians the confidence they need about these decisions.
If Australian facilities were used, then we are not observers; we are participants. The government should immediately rule out Pine Gap's involvement in acts of war and commit to ensuring Australian soil is never used to facilitate unlawful military action. Who benefits from this escalation and ongoing secrecy?
It's not the Iranian people, who now face the risk of internal instability in a power vacuum, nor the thousands more across the region who will bear the brunt of retaliatory violence. It's not the Iranian schoolgirls—over 100 of whom were killed yesterday when a bomb hit a primary school, not a military target. Fatima al-Zahra Mohammad Ali, a nine-year-old student, was among those killed.
A nine-year-old girl was killed by the US and Israel, and her only crime was attending school. As a father of a six-year-old girl killed at the school waited for her body to be removed from the rubble, he said: I cannot understand how a place where innocent children learn can be bombed like this. We are talking about small children who knew nothing of politics or wars.
And yet they are the ones paying the highest price. We've seen this before in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya—intervention after intervention justified by the language of liberation and ending in protracted violence and civilian casualties, with children and families paying the price. We need more oversight, not less.
Why will we not learn from history? When bombs fall, it's ordinary people who suffer; it is women and children. It is not the architects of war strategy in Washington, Tel Aviv or right here in Australia, in the Australian parliament.
It is not the executives in corporate war rooms masquerading as boardrooms, but there is always someone who profits. Global defence corporations, surging oil markets—there is so much money to be made in war by the right people, with the ultimate cost being human lives. Australia's defence and foreign policy has become entangled with the objectives of the US with no public, transparent debate, and, here we are, listening to one of the war parties trying to reduce transparency even more.
AUKUS is another example of absolute self-delusion and self-denial. Hundreds of billions of dollars are being committed to submarines that will never materialise, while people struggle to afford rent, health care and energy bills. You want them to have less oversight and understanding of how their taxpayer dollars are being spent.
We must do everything we can to help the struggle of the Iranian people to promote peace in the region and support their pathway to a safe and fair democracy, but we cannot and we must not become complicit in another bloody American war. We are not at the beck and call of Donald Trump. The answer to an escalating war machine isn't more decisions made in dark war rooms by the global elite.
It is not Australia's automatic alignment with everything that the United States does. It is transparency and accountability. It is listening to voices from Iran and across the diaspora, but, above all, it is the bravery to put our own interests and the interests of civilians around the globe ahead of the interests of powerful warmongers.
This is the bravery that the Labor government so clearly and utterly lacks at this crucial moment in time. At precisely the moment when Australians are witnessing how quickly military escalation can occur, this parliament is being asked to endorse another structure in relation to this bill that conducts defence oversight largely out of public view. Accountability cannot simply mean a small group of insiders making decisions behind closed doors.
At a time when the world is crying out for de-escalation, diplomacy and independence from powerful interests, this bill risks entrenching quite the opposite—greater secrecy, less visibility and more consolidation of power. The Greens do not support this bill. The Greens do not support an illegal war led by Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu.
As a party of peace, we do not support outsourcing international law or the illegal violence and civilian bloodshed that is apparently supported by the war parties in this place: the Labor Party, the Liberal and National parties and One Nation. Shame on them. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Sharma ): The question is that the bill be read a third time.
Those of that opinion say aye—I'm putting the putting the question, Senator Shoebridge. Senator Shoebridge: My colleague has a contribution. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: I didn't see your colleague standing, Senator Shoebridge.
I've put the question before the chamber. A government senator: Are you desperate to keep it going? Senator Shoebridge: I'm not desperate to keep it going.
My colleague has a contribution. We thought it was coming to the 1.30 hard time, and we were showing courtesy to the chamber. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Minister, a point of order?
Senator McAllister: Senators do have an obligation to pay attention to the business at hand. The question is in the process of being voted upon. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: It being 1.30 pm, the debate is interrupted.
We will be in continuation on this bill.