Pip Hinman
After two weeks of negotiations with the ALP, Greens Senator Kerry Nettle moved a motion on November 30 condemning the US-led assault on Fallujah and calling on the Coalition government to bring Australia’s troops home. The vote was two for and 46 against.
It’s hard to know what the ALP found objectionable about a motion noting that the International Committee of the Red Cross said the US-led assault on Fallujah had created a “humanitarian crisis”, that Red Cross ambulances and a relief convoy have been refused access to the city by the US-led coalition forces, in breach of the Geneva Conventions, and that destroying the city wouldn’t bring peace and would probably delay the elections scheduled for January.
Senator George Campbell, speaking for Labor foreign affairs spokesperson Kevin Rudd, said on November 30 that Labor didn’t have enough time to “explore some of the claims made in the proposed motion”. Nettle responded by asking why two weeks wasn’t long enough.
It’s more likely that the ALP couldn’t bring itself to support its pre-election “troops out” position, which the action part of the Greens’ motion specified by asking the Howard government to “clarify the role of Australian Defence Force members in the planning of, and participation in, the assault on Fallujah; reverse its policy of support for the US-led occupation of Iraq, and bring the Australian troops home from Iraq”.
Campbell noted: “Labor recognises that Australian troops will remain in Iraq into 2005" and then went on to argue that the troops should stay. He said Labor was “committed” to providing “economic, humanitarian and security support for the Iraqi people and to support the interim Iraqi government, through the United Nations”. This is the same interim government currently attacking its own citizens in Fallujah and elsewhere, and the same UN which has endorsed the US-led occupation of Iraq.
Labor’s new line was more or less echoed by the Democrats. Speaking after the vote took place (admitting that he wasn’t paying enough attention), Democrats spokesperson Andrew Bartlett argued that “it is not appropriate to bring the troops home from Iraq now”.
From Green Left Weekly, December 8, 2004.
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