Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to address private members’ business in relation to the reclassification of ADF service in Rwanda from non-warlike to warlike. I think it is important to put on the record, firstly, that whilst the troops in this initial operation were sent there under a previous administration, we did send 638 ADF personnel to Rwanda in Operation Tamar, a United Nations mission. Whilst it was today’s opposition who sent our troops there at the time, I am sure they sent them with the best of intentions, not thinking that a UN peace mission in Rwanda would witness the sorts of atrocities that we on this side and those on the other side saw—and which, I think, most people in Australia saw evidence of after the troops were sent to Rwanda.

What occurred in Rwanda was nothing short of genocide on a massive and unimaginable scale. It is very difficult in this place to even talk about the numbers without asking, ‘Why wasn’t the Western world, the United Nations, able to do more than they did at the time?’ I, like I am sure some other members in this parliament, have seen the film Hotel Rwanda, released last year. It gives an understanding of not only the failing of policy at the time but also the atrocities that occurred. We in this place could not adequately understand how such atrocities could occur anywhere in the world—but they did. Troops in Rwanda on a peacekeeping mission were unable to exercise any force. They felt absolutely helpless; they were unable to help people whose lives were cut short because of the unnecessary slaughter that was going on at the time.

It was in late 1994 that we dispatched a field hospital and a rifle company of infantry troops to Rwanda. I recall talking to former Senator John Herron, who was a doctor himself. He is obviously no longer in the parliament but now our Ambassador to Ireland and the Holy See. I remember talking to him about this some time after he returned. He went to Rwanda as a medical practitioner and spent some time there helping Rwandan people. His recall to me of some of the events just horrified me. He also said to me—and I am sure he would not mind me saying this; I am sure him talking about it has been documented somewhere—that when he came back there was to be counselling of all the people returning from Rwanda. He thought he would not need counselling. He went back into the Senate and was sitting one night in his parliamentary office when suddenly the horror of what he recalled seeing in Rwanda came back to him very visually and graphically. He said it was from that point on that he had a better understanding of the meaning of PTSD, post traumatic stress disorder. He was just a doctor there, but he saw some of the horror of the massacres and the people who were suffering from the absolutely horrendous wounds that had been inflicted upon them.

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