AUSTRALIAN PARLIAMENT: Supporting the recognition of Palestine as a Non-Member UN State

Parliament of Australia     -     12 April 2013

Standing Committee on Petitions – 12/04/2013 – Selected petitions from the Brisbane metropolitan region presented since March 2011

FORDE, Mr David, Private capacity

TURNER, Ms Wendy, Private capacity

CHAIR: I now invite to the table the petitioners for the petition on Australia supporting recognition of Palestine as a non-member state of the United Nations. Although the committee does not require you to give evidence under oath, I should advise you that the hearing today is a formal proceeding of the parliament, and so I remind you, as I remind all witnesses, that the giving of false or misleading evidence is a serious matter and may be regarded as a contempt of parliament.

Mr Forde, as the principal petitioner, would you like to begin by making an opening statement before we ask you some questions?

Mr Forde : Yes, I would, if I could, please. Have we got five minutes?

CHAIR: You can have as long as you need.

Mr Forde : Don’t tempt me. First, I thank you for the opportunity to discuss this issue—to call upon Australia to join with the majority of the international community and support the Palestinians bid to be recognised as a non-member state of the UN last year. While history shows that Palestine won overwhelming support, it was regrettable that Australia could not support the yes vote by abstaining and, if reports are correct, Australia would have supported the no vote, along with only nine other countries but for the demands of some government MPs, including the foreign minister, to at least abstain. I say what has been reported in the media…

…We as a nation, Australia, are happy to champion that we voted at the UN for the creation of Israel in 1947, yet now we seem to dismiss the relevance of the UN in finding a peaceful outcome for this situation. Since 1947, under UN resolution 181, when the state of Israel was supposed to be formed on 55 per cent of the land, over one million Palestinians have been driven from their land. Of course, there are those who claim, falsely, that they left voluntarily. If that is the case, why are they not allowed to return, including some residents of Brisbane who were driven from their homes in the former Palestine? In those early days, over 400 Palestinian villages were also destroyed and there were many reported atrocities, and atrocities have been reported by Jewish historians…

It’s a long, as one would expect from a political transcript, but it’s worth the read.

Source: australiansforpalestine.net

RACIST TRAIN RANT CAUGHT ON CAMERA A woman accused of targeting another train passenger in a racist attack has spoken out, insisting she has done nothing wrong. Kelly Deans was captured on camera in an ugly confrontation with another passenger who asked her to take her bag off a seat. The attack on a Dandenong-bound service was directed towards a Philippine woman who has been left traumatised by the alleged racist taunts. Seven News caught up with the woman seen attacking the victim in the video, and she was unrepentant. “My son is actually half Cook Islander so am I a racist?” she said. “My husband is Samoan, so am I a racist? My children are black so am I a racist?” In court today over unrelated matters, the 38-year-old Clayton woman claims she was instead the victim. “Have you heard the man in the background telling me to go back to my own country?” Other witnesses say the comments captured on a mobile phone camera were much worse, including an alleged remark that the bomb in Hiroshima was not big enough. The video was posted on video-sharing website YouTube a short time after the incident on Tuesday night. Police say Ms Deans is being interviewed and expect to charge her on summons. It is the latest in a string of videos to be posted, showing alleged racist verbal attacks on board Melbourne’s public transport. Only last week, passengers bit back when a woman allegedly launched a foul-mouthed tirade against a man of African descent on a Melbourne train last week. A 37-year-old woman has been charged with using obscene language in a public place, and with behaving in a riotous manner in a public place.
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RACIST TRAIN RANT CAUGHT ON CAMERA

A woman accused of targeting another train passenger in a racist attack has spoken out, insisting she has done nothing wrong.

Kelly Deans was captured on camera in an ugly confrontation with another passenger who asked her to take her bag off a seat.

The attack on a Dandenong-bound service was directed towards a Philippine woman who has been left traumatised by the alleged racist taunts.

Seven News caught up with the woman seen attacking the victim in the video, and she was unrepentant.

“My son is actually half Cook Islander so am I a racist?” she said.

“My husband is Samoan, so am I a racist? My children are black so am I a racist?”

In court today over unrelated matters, the 38-year-old Clayton woman claims she was instead the victim.

“Have you heard the man in the background telling me to go back to my own country?”

Other witnesses say the comments captured on a mobile phone camera were much worse, including an alleged remark that the bomb in Hiroshima was not big enough.

The video was posted on video-sharing website YouTube a short time after the incident on Tuesday night.

Police say Ms Deans is being interviewed and expect to charge her on summons.

It is the latest in a string of videos to be posted, showing alleged racist verbal attacks on board Melbourne’s public transport.

Only last week, passengers bit back when a woman allegedly launched a foul-mouthed tirade against a man of African descent on a Melbourne train last week.

A 37-year-old woman has been charged with using obscene language in a public place, and with behaving in a riotous manner in a public place.

Source: Yahoo!

Chomsky and Keneally speak out against asylum seeker detention | These Machines Cut Razor Wire

amodernmanifesto:

Two world-renowned authors, American Noam Chomsky and Australian Thomas Keneally, have called on the Australian Government to end indefinite detention of refugees after a 10-day hunger strike ended at the Broadmeadows detention centre in Melbourne.

“The true measure of the moral level of a society is how it treats the most vulnerable people,” Chomsky said in a message this week to the Tamil Refugee Council in Australia.

“Few are as vulnerable as those who have fled to Australia in terror and are locked away without charge, their terrible fate veiled in secrecy. We may not be able to do much, beyond lamenting, about North Korean prisons. But we can do a great deal about severe human rights violations right within reach.”

The hunger-strike by 27 refugees who have been detained for between three and four years because of negative ASIO-assessments ended late yesterday. “We decided as a group that our bodies were too weak to go on,“one refugee said. “The Prime Minister Julia Gillard said the Government could not talk to us about ending our detention while we were on a hunger strike. We say to her now: We have finished, so are you willing to talk?”

Keneally, a vocal supporter of refugee rights, said it was wrong to treat refugees differently to Australians.

Brown remembers Thatcher for Belgrano

Former Greens leader Bob Brown says he’ll remember Margaret Thatcher for the “massacre” of young Argentines aboard the General Belgrano during the Falklands War…

…The Argentine Navy light cruiser was controversially sunk by the Royal Navy in May 1982 with around 1000 sailors on board.

More than 300 were killed and 700 rescued.

“My greatest recollection of Margaret Thatcher is 900 young Argentinians going to the bottom of the ocean on the Belgrano as they were leaving the Falklands and going back to Argentina,” Dr Brown told reporters in Hobart on Tuesday.

“I will never forget that unnecessary massacre of those young people at the behest of Margaret Thatcher.

Dr Brown, who is now a director of environmental activist group Sea Shepherd Australia, acknowledged Lady Thatcher’s election three times by the British people.

“I respect democracy but I think there’s few bleaker moments that can be attributed to a democratically elected prime minister than that unnecessary slaughter,” he said.

Source: news.ninemsn.com.au

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