 Thank you very much everyone for coming and thank you too for the acknowledgement I too acknowledge this is Gadot The Land and our collective obligation to walk together with First Nations peoples who have a lot to teach us about peace and non-violence and work together with them for pretty and true and true national justice so this land always was and always will be First Nations land We're going to be 20 years on from a war that started from a series of lines and we're gathered here as we gather here the most powerful forces in the media the weapons industry and the political class are also gathering but they're not gathering for peace they're bane for war and we must all be alarmed because 20 years ago we went to war on a lie and as Alison points out we went to war without the parliament ever having a say no democratic oversight no asking of the Australian people no permission being sought from parliament and all based on a lie delivered to us by our US overlords and that followed they considered a campaign from the very same groups who are bane for war right now and the US and its allies including Australia into war was a devastating and ultimately fail war with Iraq from which the Middle East and much of the world has never recovered and indeed I'd say the United States has never recovered and we're now at the 20th anniversary of that illegal invasion of Iraq and we must learn from what happened we owe that to the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who lost their lives as a direct result of the violence the over one million Iraqis were still displaced as refugees and who have a government that still can't provide their basic material needs or basic security all from a war of aggression that our government on our behalf took part in based on a lie without ever asking us so unless we learn from that history and demand accountability then as the last week is so frightfully improving we are in serious risk of repeating it now as a Greens MP and a Senator I'll be frank but I didn't come into politics to agree with Bob Carr and Paul Keating that wasn't my original plan but hard politics makes it unlike the allies and the fact that we agree on calling up the recklessness of the August deal and the August submarines so you agree proves just how broad the feeling in Australia is against this reckless deal it proves it it will be no safe peaceful future for us to fight in our region that should be our goal and instead the Albanese Labour government is seeking to permanently handcuff us to the United States military's aggressive full-body plan it's August in a handcuff for the Australian Treasury, the Australian people and for the Australian military who are being taken to the next war paid for by us had the unquestioning direction of the United States how can that be seen as anything other than a complete surrender of our sovereignty that the Albanese government has officially adopted a hand-me-down coalition warland like they have become the coalition of this and they have jettisoned decades of work from labour grassroots members towards a more independent national stance and they have jettisoned any pretense of a foreign policy based on peace and end diplomacy this is a national strategic surrender by federal labour to the federal coalition and it's to their eternal shame that they've done this Prime Minister Albanese will go down in history as the Prime Minister who drove us towards a war we never chose and no Australian wanted at least he'll go down in history provided after that war there's someone around to actually write the history because that's the scale of the decision-making we're facing that's what defence experts are telling us that after this war taken there by the United States that this war may well escalate into a global catastrophe we've heard that before Lawrence earlier today directly from the inside of the United States so because let's deal with a big lie behind this August deal it is a minor claim that these nuclear submarines are about defending Australia they are all about projecting lethal force into the South China Sea and that's worth repeating and repeating often these submarines are not designed to defend Australia they are designed specifically to threaten China and isn't any one that China responds negatively to that but they claim regional tensions and further drive a regional arms race and twice this week I was asked by senior journalists including on the ABC that given the Greens don't support 368 million dollar war for submarine people what would the Greens do to prevent China invading Australia I was asked that by people who pretend to be credible on this space but there's not one credible defence analyst not one who says that that is the risk they face by Australia yet it's been peddled in the media and peddled in this debate and driven by those causes that are behind this deal regardless war is not inevitable war is not inevitable and the Greens join a growing force of former Prime Ministers former Foreign Ministers defence experts and millions of people from across the political spectrum who are pointing out this year of recklessness of this deal and the deal marks the official demotion of Australia diplomacy and the bi-classic anti-war and foreign affairs for an international posture that's literally driven by the Australian defence forces and the global weapons manufacturers and within our region Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia have all expressed very real concerns and we are getting with this deal at best in 30 years at best 8 submarines and we are fundamentally damaging our national reputation our sovereign team and our relations with almost every neighbour in the region who don't want us to do this how does that make us any safer? it doesn't it makes us isolated with just one friend in the region and we should ignore the uniting they have no strategic presence in the region we lose friends with every regional neighbour we lose decades and decades of building connections to get 8 submarines and a hand-cuffed commitment to the United States military that is almost the definition of making us unsafe and surrender in our sovereignty so we need an independent defence force designed to protect Australia not to threaten our neighbors but to protect Australia and that does not involve a 368 plus billion dollar spending surge that literally is designed to a mesh of decades to come in the United States military's war-making plans because it's a fact we will not be able to crew, maintain or deploy any of these nuclear submarines as it is without the express prior permission of the United States and we have the defence minister saying this is about our sovereignty it would be laughable if it wasn't so utterly damaging to our national interests we are literally becoming a self-funded sub-unit of the United States military now that the next big lie is actually the real cost of this project the government you may not have noticed is now refusing to publicly back the 368 billion dollar figure that was, I think as we look back over the last week a plan an interim figure that was backgrounded to a handful of shows at the year the night before the announcement last week to get us used to something like the real cost because like all of you I went to Deadline last week thinking we had a 200 million dollar nuclear submarine problem and I hope I can find it was a 368 billion dollar nuclear submarine problem with no transparency no public debate no discussion now the government is publicly saying that's not the cost 368 billion dollars it's 9 billion dollars in the next four years another 58 billion dollars over the decade and then the overall cost is now said to be 0.15% of GDP who has ever heard of a government program being costed as a percentage of GDP that's not a budget that's literally a blank check being handed to the ADF to spend as much of our money as they want as much as they want without a figure that even holds them to account this would seem like some sort of parody of strategic decision making and national defence strategic planning it would seem like a parody if it's what's actually happening down there in Canada over the next 10 years doesn't include the billions and billions of dollars of additional costs to keep our existing submarines in the water and upgrade the existing submarine they haven't told us that and I think it's because they don't know if billions and billions more will come from and when asked about the true cost all by the treasurer and senior Navy figures it's that we can't afford not to do this that's not an answer that's a high school debating point if we go to damage the rest of the federal budget because every dollar spent on orders and nuclear submarines comes with an opportunity cost it's a dollar we won't be able to spend on education it's a dollar we won't be able to spend on urgent climate action it's a dollar we can't understand on health or the national disability insurance scheme and the coalition is already coming for those programs and for the defence forces it's also a dollar that can't be spent on another potentially more flexible defence that's actually designed to protect Australia it is a remarkable surrender of strategic government measures and given the scale of the project how is it we were told so little about it how is it that even the small amount of information we're getting now only came out after the handshake happened the deal was signed that's not democracy that is not how democracy is meant to work anything even the United States has a far greater scrutiny of their defence spending than the Australian Parliament the Australian Parliament gets pretend scrutiny over defence expenditure the bulk of the scrutiny if you can call it that happens in a closed club meeting of coalition and labour envoys in a secret committee that is the pretend scrutiny of the Australian Defence Force budget and the Australian Defence Force strategic measures and we never hear of that even myself as a senator are not permitted to see the information provided that that closed club if this was the United States there would be insurrection on the streets if that level of scrutiny pretend scrutiny was provided to the US military so let's be clear war is not inevitable and we need to resist it more now than ever and link together the millions of Australians who want a government that steps its back from war not towards war and we need to link with the unions and peace activists who have already been active in places like Paul Kepler and Neil Aurora and build this national movement and today's meeting is a powerful start as Nick said at the start of this meeting let's use today as that launch pad for a national peace movement and when we can say in five years time yes I was at that meeting I was there when we started the campaign and not only got off the office sucks but changed our national direction from water peace because the New York Times ultimately apologised for its warmongering to lead up to the Iraqi invasion and twenty-eight years on we need an urgent reminder of that lesson we don't want another apology we need to stop another movement thanks