STATEMENTS BY SENATORS
Senator HANSON-YOUNG (South Australia—Manager of Australian Greens Business in the Senate) (12:35): The war is just getting started and it is already wreaking havoc right across the world, including in Australia. Before I go much further, let me point out that the Greens are the only political party in this country that opposed this war from the beginning and opposed Australia getting involved.
And now we see the vast majority of Australians agree with us. They don't want anything to do with this bloody war of Mr Trump's. They don't want Australia to be involved, and they certainly don't want to see anymore of its pain inflicted on us here.
Because it is Australians who are now paying the price of Donald Trump's war, which has been backed by the war parties in this place: One Nation, the National Party, the Liberal Party and the Labor government. These war parties backed the war, and it is now inflicting pain and suffering not just on the innocent people in the Middle East but on everyday Australians going about their business.
Our government was one of the first governments to back Donald Trump's war. You cannot in good honesty, in good conscience, look at what has happened over the last four weeks and say that was a good decision. It was a stupid decision.
It was a dumb decision. Australia should not have swung in behind Donald Trump's attempts to bomb Iran into smithereens. Of course this war was going to erupt and tensions would escalate, and what has happened over the last month has now ensured that.
People are struggling to pay for basic cost of living. People's mortgages have gone up. People's petrol prices have gone up.
We're now looking at whether people's rubbish is even going to be collected because of the cost of diesel for the trucks. As this crisis deepens, it won't just be the cost of energy that pushes households to the brink. Our food supply may very well soon be impacted too.
And who urged Mr Donald Trump to take this irresponsible action? Well, it was none other than Mr Rupert Murdoch. Reports out this week are showing that the media mogul—once an Australian, now an American—urged the President of the United States to bomb Iran.
I mean, the attitude and entitlement of men like Rupert Murdoch and Donald Trump to think their war games should go ahead without any thought of consequence for the real people on the ground and around the world is sickening. They have no thought of consequence for the innocent civilians in the Middle East: the schoolchildren, the schoolgirls, who were the first to die and were bombed by the United States, the tens of thousands of families in Lebanon who are now displaced, frightened and hungry or the thousands of innocent civilians who have already been killed.
You don't have to go far beyond the borders of the Middle East to see this devastating war's effects, which are rippling across the globe. War sells newspapers. Bad news sells newspapers.
War sells media subscriptions. Whipping up fear, division and hate boosts the profits of people like Mr Murdoch, not just for the old-school media moguls but for the social media moguls as well. So, while Mr Murdoch and Mr Zuckerberg sit back and make massive profits and while the big fossil fuel companies make huge profits off blood money created from this war, it's regular people who are paying the price, and it's no wonder Australians are so opposed.
Polling out today shows that three-quarters of Australians strongly oppose this war. They don't want it, they don't like it, and they don't want anything to do with it. Two-thirds of Australians think the Albanese government should never have sent warplanes to the Middle East.
In America, the people of the United States disapprove of this war as well. New polling out today shows 61 per cent of Americans disapprove of Donald Trump's actions in Iran and in the Middle East. In fact, almost half of Americans are worried that this war is going to make the world and them less safe, and they're right.
They are less safe because of what Donald Trump has done, and Mr Trump, after blowing up the international rules based order, is now digging in his heels. He is refusing to see the pain and suffering that his bloody actions are having on everybody else. He is behaving like a spoilt brat who has just trashed his room, thrown his dinner on the floor and then still demanded dessert.
He's behaving like a man-child. But it's serious, because this is having real-life impacts on everybody. The international and the domestic crisis runs deep.
This war has caused the worst disruption of travel since COVID. Jetstar has just announced they're cutting flights to New Zealand because of the fuel shortage created from Donald Trump's war. Countries across Asia have announced they've had to cut the amount of days people can go to work because of the crisis.
The Philippines have declared a national emergency because of the pain that Donald Trump's war is causing them. Australia Post, in our country, contacted their customers yesterday and said that they will have to triple the fees for postage and delivery services. That will have a huge impact on businesses right across our country—small businesses, middle-sized businesses and big businesses.
Everyone else is paying the price of Donald Trump's war, yet we have the parties in this place—the Labor Party, the Liberal Party, the National Party, Pauline Hanson's One Nation party—all backing this war and saying the pain is okay. It's not okay, and you can't complain about the cost-of-living crisis that this war has plunged Australians into while you back Donald Trump's actions.
You've got to pick a side. If, four weeks on, you can't see how devastating, stupid and dumb the decision to start this war and to back this war was, then you don't deserve the respect of the Australian people, because you're not being honest with them. I say this particularly about One Nation.
One Nation is clearly very friendly with Mr Trump. Their leader, Pauline Hanson, hangs out at his place in Miami. They're friends.
They hang out together. They support each other. They've got a mutual friend, of course, in Gina Rinehart.
And they all back this war, which is causing pain and suffering to everybody else.