Speech presented in moving the "No War in Iraq" resolution, subsequently adopted unanimously.

It will be no surprise when we wake up one morning to hear that it's on…that is after all what the softening-up has been about…the US has used the UN process to provide them with the time to put huge forces in place to attack Iraq and to get us to accept that it is inevitable. The only surprise will be if in fact the attack doesn't happen.

The trigger, if that is the right word, will be well prepared. Daniel Ellsberg, the well-placed Pentagon official who exposed the Pentagon Papers, believes a replica "Gulf of Tonkin incident" is being prepared where the fact of the build-up provides the cover for an alleged attack by Iraq. Five years after the Vietnam War started, we all knew there had been no attack on a US warship in the Gulf of Tonkin, they had done it all themselves. In a few years from are we going to pretend we are surprised to know that a pretext was used to cause appalling trauma, death and destruction, including possibly tens or hundreds of thousands of children and other innocent civilians?

There will be the inevitable wave of jingoism in the media but at the same time there has never been a war launched involving Australian forces with less public support. I speak as one who was stupid enough not to have realised what was going on when I was in the conscription ballot for Vietnam. Today's twenty-year-olds are far better educated and they are overwhelmingly opposed.

Keith Suter, a long-time peace movement commentator, recently wrote that the movement was no longer to be found on street corners but is in the mainstream of Australian life and opinion. He is right when you consider that the Australian Medical Association, the Vietnam Vets and the RSL, General Gration who led the Australian forces in the Gulf War, The Pope and all the main Christian churches have opposed the war, together with the ACTU.

We must stand firm. War is an atrocity; it is state legalised violence and terror; it has no limits. Sometimes it is necessary. Few would argue that the Vietnamese people were not right to fight against the US and Australian forces for their independence. I have no quarrel with the fact that my father fought in Iraq, in 1942, in the anti-fascist cause. We should all be opposed to war, but recognise that sometimes it is justified to fight.

But the Howard Government has not provided any adequate justification, no reason which stands up, and we should say so clearly, now.

Attacking Iraq is the wrong way for the Howard government to respond to the barbarity of Bali and the wrong way to deal with a repressive government in Iraq which is not attacking any other. Neither should we be naïve about Iraq, it has after all hung unionists and political opponents by the hundreds. But there are many countries where that is true.

It is a patent lie, spread by that Tory twerp Tony Blair, that there is a clear and present danger to Britain, Australia or the US from Iraq. That is the standard the international law requires and it has not been met. These same countries raise no question when Israel under Sharon has admitted it possesses weapons of mass destruction and is engaged in state-sponsored terrorism against the Palestinians. The only way to get rid of weapons of mass destruction is on a multilateral basis, it cannot be achieved on the basis that rich countries can have them but the poor can't.

We must be a part of building the greatest anti-war coalition this country has ever seen to stop this war and to consign those who have promoted it to political oblivion. War is risky business, not just militarily as the record shows. Not that the young Howards, Costellos and Downers will be taking any risks. They won't go; it will be workers and workers' children who are sent.

But the political consequences of the Coalition's servility to the US and the revulsion of Australian society which will follow should see them out of office, for ever. If the ALP does not clearly oppose the war it too will pay a heavy price: to this point you'd have to agree that the persistent fudge has been a pathetic performance, apart from figures like Carmen Lawrence and even Laurie Brereton.

If the ALP opposes a US attack undertaken with or without UN endorsement, then that would be a step forward in denying them the bipartisanship they have been seeking. The trap for the ALP is patently clear: send the lads and some lasses off to war before parliament can debate the issue and then threaten the ALP with the charge of treachery. To avoid this the ALP must make the position clear now.

We support the UN processes to inspect and deny Iraq weapons of mass destruction. But the UN was created to keep the peace, not to make war. In the end, every country and every person makes their own decision about sending others off to war. At present, our view should be that even if the US bullies the UN Security Council into tacit support for an invasion of Iraq, that does not replace the Australian parliament or the right of all to have a view.

We don't believe there is justification and we should say so, strongly and clearly, for one simple reason; because it is right.