Brendan Nelson (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

Firstly, in relation to Iraq, I can assure the member for Barton there is no shortage of things to be done that require a military presence from those who are committed to seeing that these people have no less a right to self-determination than we or the East Timorese may have. I note in that context that on 9 June, in an interview with Sky News, the member for Griffith said:

I would say to anyone thinking of going into this total war zone—

that is, Iraq—

unless there is some overwhelming family reason to be there, just don’t.

In other words, his assessment, at least, is that there is plenty to be done. With respect to the skill sets of MPs, obviously the member for Barton has taken a much more active interest in what has happened in East Timor than perhaps the average everyday Australian whom we all represent. But if you look at the circumstances which led to our predeployment and then the deployment of our Defence Force, it was obvious that we needed a military presence and we needed it there quite quickly once the events rapidly unfolded. What happened, as is our experience, by virtue of the presence in considerable numbers of Australians, Malaysians, New Zealanders and subsequently Portuguese is that the gun battles in the streets, which we had immediately preceding the deployment, stopped and we moved then into orchestrated gang violence, arson and a range of things which clearly required a police presence.

Australian soldiers, in my opinion, are the finest in the world for all kinds of reasons and in all kinds of ways—I know the member for Cowan knows this very well—but they are not policemen. One of the discussions I had with the Chief of the Defence Force and also with Brigadier Slater, who is commanding the joint task force in East Timor, was that I certainly did not want to see, nor did I want them to have, rules of engagement which basically saw them using extreme force for what ought to be policing activities. The government made a judgment just before the deployment that we would not immediately deploy Australian Federal Police. We have subsequently done that; we have almost 200 there now. We have 250 Malaysian police arriving, and then obviously the Portuguese—the GNR. We would expect that we will have a United Nations policing presence there.

As is frequently the case, we have seen on television one small part of a broader picture of what has actually been happening in Dili. Australians have been led to believe that the entire city has been hostage to this kind of behaviour. Whilst there have been a significant number of incidents, they have declined rapidly over the three weeks of our deployment.

One of the things that I have discussed with the Defence military leadership—because, of course, we do have military police—is whether some sort of military policing capacity is necessary and appropriate. Whilst we have discussed this, we have no specific plans to develop it. As an Australian, apart from being the Minister for Defence, I do not particularly want to see Australian soldiers doing police work. Both of those roles are important, but they are quite different. I think what we are focused on is the capability of the deployable arrangements in our AFP to complement what our military may be doing, particularly in our region. That, of course, is a matter for the Minister for Justice and Customs.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, I can only say, in relation to the training that has been provided by the ADF to the East Timorese. The Australian government, I am advised, gave advice through our ADF to the East Timorese sovereign government about the nature, size and composition of its security forces, both policing and military. The East Timorese government, as it is perfectly at liberty to do, chose a particular path and we provided training. In the future, which is probably now more of a focus, I think Australia has the right to be more assertive about what we view might be appropriate in providing advice to the Timor Leste government—and indeed the UN, should it take on the role that we expect. In training, I think we need to focus a lot more on leadership. Leadership is at the heart of everything that succeeds and everything that fails. (Time expired)

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