MOTIONS
Senator SHOEBRIDGE (New South Wales) (16:43): I move the motion, which I will read out: That the Senate— (a) notes that, over the past week, United States (US) President Donald Trump: (i) has threatened to 'bomb the s***' out of its ally Oman, (ii) has said he will declare the Strait of Hormuz US territory, (iii) has put further sanctions on the International Criminal Court in an effort to dismantle the organisation and prevent it investigating Israel's attack on Gaza, (iv) has said of the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, 'I understand him; he understands me' while cutting back on cooperation with South Korea, and (v) is requiring a multi-billion dollar redesign of US nuclear-powered aircraft carriers because he doesn't like the look of them as he wants the conning tower moved forward to look more like World War II designs; and (b) calls for an urgent reconsideration of Australia's military relationship with the United States given this increasingly erratic and dangerous behaviour by the US President, including in his role as Commander-in-Chief of the US military.
We have been watching the behaviour of Donald Trump. The Australian public has been watching the behaviour of the US President, Donald Trump. We've been watching what the US military has been doing.
We've been watching the actions of the US state. But it appears that, while the Greens have been watching, while the Australian public has been watching, none of you in this place—the Albanese Labor government, their comfortable mates in the coalition benches over there and their cheer squad in One Nation—have been watching. That list I just read out of erratic, bizarre, violent, dangerous behaviour by President Donald Trump is just from the last seven days—just the last seven days.
All you mob—Labor, the coalition and One Nation—pretend that it's all normal. You pretend that we can just keep going down this path, saying: 'The US is our indispensable ally. We share values with them.
We're going to share our military with them. We're going to open up bases with them.' You pretend that none of this is happening. What is wrong with you all?
Let's deal with just the last week. Oman has been a long-term ally of the United States. It has US bases in it.
It's been critical for the US in the US and Israel's current illegal war on Iran. It's put itself at risk. It's received attacks from Iran because it's a US ally.
The US isn't protecting it from those attacks from Iran. Its economy is in a downward spiral because it is sitting there as an ally of the United States, just off the shore, just across the way from Iran, where the US and Israel are engaged in a joint illegal war. You would think that, at a moment like that, the United States, as an ally of Oman, would be showing concern, would be doing what they could to protect it, would be saying: 'I'm sorry all those US bases that we have in your country are meaning you get attacked and bombed.
I'm sorry about destroying your economy. You're an ally.' But no. Donald Trump came out—I'm sorry for the unparliamentary language, but it's the language of the US President in relation to one of the US's longstanding allies—and said that he would bomb the shit out of Oman.
It's his ally. It's a US ally. It's taking hits.
He was concerned that Oman, who is facing all of that, is having some negotiation with Iran to try and prevent the chaos happening in its region and to itself. The mere fact that Oman was acting with some agency so angered the United States that the US Commander-in-Chief said, 'Now I'm going to bomb the shit out of you.' What happened in here? What happened with Defence Minister Marles over there in Russell?
Nothing. They think it's normal. It's not normal.
It's crazy and dangerous and erratic. Then the same bloke—the chief of the US military, the US President, Donald Trump—came out in the same week, the last seven days, and said that he intends to declare the Strait of Hormuz US territory. He's going to declare it US territory—to just take control of it.
How he's going to make that happen in reality—it's a fantasy in his head. It's an utter fantasy in his head. To make that statement, that you're going to make another part of the world, where you're engaged in a brutal, illegal war—he doesn't have control of it, but he's making this statement that he's going to turn it into some kind of overseas colony of the United States.
Again, what do we hear from our defence department, from the defence minister, from the foreign affairs minister, from the opposition foreign affairs minister and from the US cheer squad in One Nation? Nothing. They think it's normal.
You all think it's normal. I've got to tell you: this is not normal. This is wild, erratic, dangerous behaviour.
Then, in the same week, in the last seven days, the United States has come out and put further sanctions on judges and prosecutors in the International Criminal Court, because the International Criminal Court is doing its job and investigating allegations of genocide and war crimes by Israel in Gaza. They're doing their job; they're investigating war crimes. They're investigating the most serious crimes, I think, on the planet—genocide.
The United States, to try and stop the International Criminal Court doing its investigations, has ramped up new sanctions against the ICC and key members of the ICC, to try and stop them doing their job to investigate breaches of international law. What did our Foreign minister say about that? Zip, nada, nothing.
What did the opposition say? They actually kind of cheered it on. So did One Nation, they thought, 'This is great.' They want this to happen.
They don't like the International Criminal Court. I've got to tell you, this is not normal behaviour. This is destroying international norms, destroying international law, making it next to impossible to prosecute the obscene crime of genocide.
It causes no reconsideration, not even a wrinkle of doubt in the Labor Party, the coalition or One Nation—not even a ripple of doubt. Then, in the same week, in the last seven days, Donald Trump comes out and says of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un: 'I understand him. He understands me.' He radically shortens the military cooperation—the military exercises that are held annually with South Korea.
He radically shortens them in order to appease North Korea. South Korea has structured its defence around some kind of guarantee of US support for it, in the event of a threatened military or nuclear attack from North Korea, which now has nuclear weapons and a massive military presence barely a dozen miles from Seoul, the capital of South Korea. Then they find out that the guarantee that they thought they had is not worth the paper they've written it on, because it turns out that Donald Trump, the commander-in-chief of the US military who is meant to be giving some protection to South Korea, has got a bromance with the leader of North Korea and that he's more interested in developing his bromance with the leader of North Korea than living up to decades-long commitments to South Korea to keep them safe.
It is an extraordinary destabilising action from the United States, causing deep consternation not just in South Korea but also in Japan and in other allies. It's extraordinary. I say again: this is not normal.
Maybe you have all become desensitised to this, but it is not normal for the head of the United States military to direct that exercises with the South Korean military get curtailed because he wants to progress his bromance with the leader of North Korea, who's pointing nuclear weapons at South Korea. That is not normal. Yet what does Labor, the coalition and One Nation say?
Nothing, not a ripple! They love AUKUS. You'd love more US bases here.
You want to make our military interoperable with them. You pretend. This is not normal.
Then—to show the utter irrationality of the chief of the US military and the President of the United States—he then came out last week and said, to his own military, that he wants them to engage in a multibillion-dollar redesign of their Ford class nuclear aircraft carriers, these massive US$22 billion-dollar machines. He wants them to engage in a multibillion dollar, multi-year redesign and refit of them.
And do you know why? It's because he doesn't like the look of them. He thinks that they're not aesthetic.
He much prefers the look of the aircraft carriers the US built in World War II, the Essex class carriers, because the conning tower was more in the middle of the aircraft carrier, not at the back. He's given a direction to his military to spend countless billions of dollars redesigning and refitting the US's nuclear aircraft carriers to meet his aesthetic feel.
That is also not normal. That is wild, out there, crazy stuff. And because these aircraft carriers are nuclear powered, that work—the redesign and refitting to meet the aesthetics of Donald Trump—is going to throw even more work into the shipyards, which are there to pump out other nuclear powered boats and ships in the US, including Virginia class submarines.
It's going to push that work back even more and make the AUKUS submarine project even more of a fantasy project—all because that bloke over there doesn't like the look of them. Again, that is not normal behaviour. That is not the behaviour of a standard ally.
Yet Labor, the coalition and One Nation just pretend that nothing is happening. We need to radically revisit our relationship with the United States. Labor is in the process of destroying any kind of sovereign independence for our military.
They want to make it a little subunit of the US military. That's what the AUKUS submarines are for. That's what they're doing by inviting even more US military bases.
That's why Labor is building the United States an $8 billion nuclear submarine base off Fremantle at Australian taxpayers' expense. That's why they have allowed the US to extend RAAF Base Tindal in the Northern Territory, to have nuclear capable B-52 bombers there. That's why they're allowing the US to station thousands of marines in Darwin.
That's why they're expanding Pine Gap and North West Cape. That's why they're proposing to build the United States another nuclear submarine base on the east coast. That's why they're storing US military equipment in northern and north-regional Victoria.
And that's why they're proposing the US have all of these storage depots for remote air facilities all across northern Australia. And do you know what Labor is doing with all of that? They are inviting the front line of the next war the United States has to be right across Australia.
You're inviting the front line and a war to the shores and the centre of our continent. I don't know how to describe that other than deep, deep betrayal. We live in perhaps one of the most geopolitically secure parts of the world, down here in the bottom part of South-East Asia, and war will only come to our shores if we invite it—like those who have US bases in the gulf, who have invited wars to their shores.
Having US bases here—being tied to an erratic, bizarre ally like this—is one of the most dangerous things we can do. You're pretending this makes us safe, you're selling out our sovereignty, you're denying our ability to defend ourselves, and you're making the worst bed in history. That's why we want to end AUKUS.