‘Liberal and Labor senators on the Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade have combined to reject a private member's bill by Democrats leader Senator Lyn Allison that would prohibit the acquisition of cluster bombs by the Australian military.

Most of the expert testimony presented to the committee was from organisations supporting a ban on cluster bombs. They were unpersuasive compared with Israel Military Industries salesmen who were there to peddle their M85 model that has proved so precise and successful in southern Lebanon. These are the weapons described by former UN undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs Jan Egeland as "completely immoral". UN Mine Action Co-ordination Centre for South Lebanon reckoned there were still 900,000 unexploded bombs in December last year, after 80,000 had been cleared.

We expect the conservative government to be gung-ho in the armaments business. They never refuse an invitation to a war, no matter how far away and how irrelevant to our security.

However, the chair of the committee is Liberal Senator Marise Payne, who happens to be president of the Parliamentary Association for UNICEF. UNICEF Australia supported the bill, saying that unexploded bomblets from cluster bombs pose a risk to civilians for years after a conflict has ended. Children are most at risk because they do not understand the threat the bomblets pose.

Another case of the Ruddock/Amnesty hypocrisy syndrome?

Why Join The Cluster Against A Ban?