2026-03-25
The Senate today debated a bill that will require both houses of Parliament to vote before the Government can send Australians to wars overseas. 90% of Australians support this reform with most astounded that the Parliament does not already have this power.
The Albanese Labor Government and the Liberals oppose this reform. Both are committed to keeping the decision to send Australians to war as a secret decision made by a handful of cabinet members with no democratic oversight.
Currently, in Australia, the Prime Minister or Defence Minister can unilaterally take Australia to war with no parliamentary oversight before that decision is made. Polling has routinely shown an overwhelming majority of Australians want there to be parliamentary oversight prior to the deployment of troops.
War power reform bills have been proposed in various forms for over 20 years, but have been routinely rejected by the Liberal and Labor parties.
The Albanese Labor Government has sent 85 military personnel, including an RAAF E-7A Wedgetail aircraft and medium-range air-to-air missiles, to the UAE.
This decision was made in a closed room by a handful of Labor cabinet members, with zero parliamentary or public engagement or consent.
We now know that the information collected by the E-7A Wedgetail is being provided to the US as part of their warfighting in this disastrous war of choice on Iran.
Senator David Shoebridge, Greens spokesperson on Defence and Foreign Affairs, said: “The Albanese Labor Government has dragged Australia into another US forever war, and the public never got a say.
“Having Parliament vote before sending a country to war is common in democracies. That is the case in Germany, France, Finland, Denmark and Spain, to name a few. But the war parties here want to keep making that decision in a dark room that only they can enter.
“The majority of Australians do not support Trump and Netanyahu’s war on Iran or the Albanese Labor Government backing it in. This is why the war parties are so resistant to giving Australians a say on this latest disastrous war.
“We are living through the chaos of a war that was supported by a handful of powerful people without public consent. If we had this law in place, then the Government would have had to justify their position before committing troops and the public would have had a chance of stopping it.
“Right now we are seeing death and violence spreading across the Middle East, and Australians are feeling the economic impacts with cost-of-living increases and chaos.
“Australians should decide if we go to war, not Washington, not a handful of people in the war parties and not Donald Trump.
“We needed this law before Vietnam, before Afghanistan, before Iraq and we certainly need it now.”