ADJOURNMENT
Senator FARUQI (New South Wales—Deputy Leader of the Australian Greens) (19:34): Only six months ago, Minister Wong proudly declared that Donald Trump had made the greatest contribution to peace in the Middle East for a generation. We were told it was a new day for the Middle East. It was a breakthrough, a turning point.
Do those words taste like ashes in the minister's mouth now? Because, while the Albanese government was clapping, Gaza was still burning. Gaza is still burning.
There is no ceasefire. There is no peace. Since the so-called deal late last year, Israel has not paused its violence.
It has refined it, expanded it and intensified it. After killing more than a thousand people and displacing a million, Israel has now planned the occupation of southern Lebanon. In Gaza, the genocide never stopped.
Just last week, a mother, father and two of their sons, only five and seven years old, were shot in the head. Little boys were shot in the head. What was their crime?
Going home after Ramadan shopping. Let that sit with you. That is not collateral damage.
That is a system of violence that targets Palestinian lives with murderous precision. While the bombs continue to fall, the blockade tightens. Aid is choked off at will, turned on and off like a tap.
It is weaponised. The promised 600 trucks a day have never been delivered—not even close. The sick and injured cannot leave.
Children who need urgent treatment are trapped. The latest report of the UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese found that Israel is clearly engaging in the systematic torture of Palestinians. Palestinian prisoners, held without charge for years, are abused in the most heinous ways, including rape with bottles, metal rods and knives; starvation; breaking of bones and teeth; burning; being spat upon; and being attacked and urinated upon by dogs.
Israel is running a regime of organised humiliation, pain and degradation, sanctioned at the highest political levels. It is deliberately designed to brutalise, dehumanise and displace an entire population. In Lebanon, the pattern of murder and occupation is repeating itself.
Netanyahu is promising another Gaza in Lebanon. There is no restraint, no accountability and no end. And now we are told to accept yet another forever war—a war in which Australia stands not just as a bystander but as a loyal friend of Trump and Netanyahu.
Labor and their pals, the coalition and One Nation, have backed yet another war based on US lies. None of them have learnt any lessons from history—not from Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan. They cheer on war after war based upon lie after lie.
The decision to drag us to war is made by a handful of people behind closed doors, with no public engagement, no parliamentary oversight and no democracy. That's why the Greens debated our war powers bill today—to ensure that this doesn't happen again. Decisions about going to war cannot be made by a few people in a dark room, people who will never be on the front line but are happy to send our troops to be killed in wars that murder thousands upon thousands of innocent people and destroy the lives of millions.
We have been bringing war power bills into this parliament for decades because we are a party of peace, but peace has been rejected every time by the warmongers in here. We have to stop history from repeating itself. The impunity and cover given to the rogue State of Israel to decimate Palestinians has given free rein to them to colonise, bomb, starve and kill across an entire region—Iran, Lebanon, Syria—all while they continue the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
This is not foreign policy. This is murder, pure and simple. People across the world know it.
They're continuing to demand justice, peace and accountability. They are documenting every bomb, every stolen life and every crime. No amount of spin, no hollow peace deal and no political cover can erase what is happening.
The blood on the hands of these murderers will forever stain their lives. Senate adjourned at 19:39