Roger Price (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

We are speaking on a motion to take note of the statements made by the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition on the decision to send something like 2,600, or 2,800 troops including police, to East Timor. I want to reiterate what the honourable member for Fowler has said: not only should those serving men and women and police understand that they have our total support on both sides of politics but, more importantly, we wish them well and hope that they will successfully accomplish their mission. Sending troops to East Timor is not new. In fact the largest military contingent since the Vietnam conflict was sent to East Timor, and our troops did us very proud on that occasion. They performed magnificently well.

I want to return to a point that the honourable member for Fowler has made. When we send troops or police overseas there is no committee or ballot—you do not vote on it. They are required to go, and go in harm’s way. Increasingly we are asking the Defence Forces and the Federal Police to go overseas on our behalf as a people and as a government. I very much regret that the government has not considered this service to be warlike. Nowhere in their mission were they required to deal with gangs that were breaking into houses, setting fires and causing all sorts of mayhem—nowhere. That we have not had a fatality is a blessing, and I think it reflects poorly on the way the troops will feel we value them that their service is not considered to be warlike. If my memory serves me correctly, the Australian Federal Police are likely to be earning more money than the soldiers, as they did in the Solomons. In no way do I wish to reflect on the Australian Federal Police—I admire the jobs that they have been asked to do over many years—but I think that that is essentially wrong.

I think it is fair enough for us to ask, given that we had such a military presence and we wound it down: why is it that we are back there, especially when the Prime Minister says he has been aware of governance problems in East Timor for three years? We should not be using soldiers and policemen to mop up a failure of foreign affairs, and yet this is precisely what we are doing. When we send troops there we have an obligation to follow up. Even when we have no troops in a particular peace-enforcing or peacekeeping role we have an obligation to maintain the rage, as they say, and ensure that their good work is followed up by every other arm of government—not going back three years later in significant numbers, as we are today. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

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