QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE: TAKE NOTE OF ANSWERS
Senator SHOEBRIDGE (New South Wales) (15:23): I move: That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister representing the Prime Minister (Senator Wong) and the Minister representing the Minister for Defence (Senator Wong) to questions without notice asked today. It was an extraordinary response from Minister Wong on Defence bases. The minister said: Everything I do and everything the government is doing is working to deter and avert conflict.
That came from Minister Wong, the foreign minister in a government which was the first government on the planet to back in Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu's most recent war of aggression on Iran—their war of choice on Iran—which has thrown the world's energy supplies into chaos, driven up inflation here and seen job losses in Australia, global insecurity and hundreds of Iranian children killed in the first 24 hours.
That's the war that Minister Wong and her government supported. That's the war that the Albanese Labor government supported. Then we get Minister Wong coming in here and having the gall to say that everything she does and everything the Albanese government is doing is working to 'deter and avert conflict'.
They cheered this war in. Then, when pressed on the hundred-plus US bases that are in Australia—either total US bases or bases to which they have guaranteed access—Minister Wong came out with this doublespeak, talking about 'inviting' a foreign military into a hundred bases in this country. This is a foreign military—not ours.
This is another country's military, and Minister Wong said: … we ensure that Australian sovereignty is maintained in relation to the framework of US rotational force posture. What absolute gumph that was! The force posture agreement signed between Australia and the US, apparently with 'full respect for Australian sovereignty', also contains in it a provision that says it gives US forces and contractors 'unimpeded access to and use of' Australian facilities.
That's what this government does in a hundred-plus military bases around this country. Then, when we asked, 'Will you concede that putting up these US bases puts a target on us?' we got a complete failure to engage with that from the government, because they know it does. It's not just the Greens saying it—and my whole party is saying it.
Look at what Dr Emma Shortis from the Australia Institute has said. The Director of the International and Security Affairs Program at the Australia Institute, in relation to the attacks on US bases, says this: Trump has demonstrated that it's all contingent, it's all insecure … And what he has also highlighted—particularly with his illegal war in Iran—is the way those US bases themselves become targets.
It doesn't matter what you do, it doesn't matter how much you give him, you can literally give him a plane, and it's not enough, he will not defend those bases. When it comes to involving us in the next war, Emma Shortis says this: Instead of having the option of saying 'no' to involvement in United States wars, involvement becomes the default position. That's what Labor has delivered—inviting the wolf here and putting a frontline of the next US war right through this continent.
Senator Waters asked a critical question about what this government is doing to stop pumping in the carbon pollution that is leading to disasters around this world. To Labor's shame, when asked about the obvious connection between the melting glaciers and the disaster in Nepal and the links to carbon pollution—Australia is the second-largest fossil fuel exporter, and Labor has an appalling record of having approved 37 new and extended coal or gas mines—Minister Wong said, 'Don't play politics.' Well, the Greens see Labor playing politics every time they put their hand out and take money from the fossil fuel industry.
We see Labor playing politics every time they try and deny the connection between the increasing disasters we see around the world—the extreme heat in Europe, the wildfires in North America and this appalling disaster in Nepal. Our Foreign minister denies it, but perhaps Minister Wong could listen to what Nepal's Foreign minister, Minister Khanal, said: … we are paying the ultimate price for a global crisis we did not create.
The rapid melting of glaciers and these catastrophic mountain tsunamis are direct consequences of global climate change. Nepal's Foreign minister gets it; it's just a crying shame that Australia's doesn't. Question agreed to.