Robert McClelland (Barton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, I have been briefed on that. We are waiting for the full details on that, but we express our appreciation and we recognise the contribution of our troops around the globe.

Currently in Afghanistan there are approximately 240 personnel in the special forces task group, made up of SAS members, commandos, an incident response regiment and also logistics personnel. They are supported in their operations by two Chinook helicopters from the 5th Aviation Regiment. That group—consisting of approximately 110 personnel involved in air crew, maintenance and support—is doing a tremendous job already in Iraq in particularly trying and increasingly dangerous circumstances. The level of violence in Afghanistan increases as a result of a number of factors, including the climate. As I understand it, moving into the warmer months is itself a cause for enhanced violence. There are other factors that I will refer to briefly.

As I indicated, I have had the opportunity of farewelling several deployments to Afghanistan. One of those occasions was in your electorate, Mr Deputy Speaker Lindsay, where I met up with you there. To see the obvious emotion of not only the troops who were leaving but also their friends and their families is itself a moving experience. But you appreciate what those troops are doing for their country and indeed for the prospects of those who live in Afghanistan: giving them the prospect of a better life is vitally important. You also appreciate the impact on their families and the tremendous contribution that the families of our troops make to the missions undertaken by our soldiers.

The reality is Afghanistan and the events that unfold in Afghanistan are vitally important to our regional security. As the Leader of the Opposition has said, Afghanistan is, if you like, the central office of the primary terrorist organisations of al-Qaeda, working in cahoots with the Taliban. There is no doubt that that is, as the Leader of the Opposition has said, terror central.

It is probably the general region where Osama bin Laden is located, perhaps in the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan. There is no doubt that Afghanistan has provided a training base for terrorists in South-East Asia; several people charged with terrorism offences in Australia have also been trained in Afghanistan. In other words, Afghanistan has been, and clearly has been proven to have been, a base for international terrorism.

It is also the centre of a massive opium crop valued at in the order of $3 billion a year, and that crop finances criminal, insurgent and terrorist activity generally in Afghanistan, as well as the fundamentalist organisations who ply the trade in order to raise funds. Unquestionably, it is also being used to fund terrorist organisations in the South-East Asian region. As well as the likelihood of the opium and its ultimate product, heroin, ending up on the streets of our cities and other cities in the world, the revenue from that atrocious trade is unquestionably being used to support terrorist networks around the globe, in particular in the South-East Asian region. So our troops have been engaged in a vitally important exercise.

Their numbers, as was announced last Wednesday, are appropriately going to be increased. A reconstruction task force will be deployed. Originally, it was intended that there would be about 240 personnel as part of that reconstruction task force. Approximately half of those would have been engineers, as well as support from a company of infantry and a light armoured company group. In view of the escalating violence in Afghanistan, the opposition supported the announcement of the additional troop deployment made last Wednesday by the Prime Minister. There will be an additional 30 troops with the regional task force and there will be an additional company group of approximately 120 personnel to provide enhanced security. We welcome that deployment. All we would say is that, in view of the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan, we would obviously like to see that security detachment put in place before the reconstruction team is deployed there.

It is unquestionably a dangerous environment. As I have indicated, there are climatic conditions involved. Just as the expression in the United States regarding the warning of an Indian summer when there were warm days came about through the likelihood of an Indian attack, the reality is that that seems to be the situation in Afghanistan—the violence increases during the warmer summer months; in the colder periods it decreases as the groupings move back to their mountain hide-outs. So climatic conditions can increase the violence. Indeed, as a United Nations report indicated recently, so too has the opium trade that has continued to flourish, and that is funding so much of the activity of insurgents—insurgents who are motivated by their political ideology, indeed fanaticism, as well as criminal groups who are themselves wanting to maintain their ability to continue to make profits from the evil opium trade.

In Afghanistan there is a mix of violence from those political elements as well as from the criminal elements, and that is a very dangerous cocktail and a very dangerous environment for our troops to be deployed in. Having said that, and for those reasons, we fully support the additional troops that the government has announced. We note that the government has announced that it will review the troop deployment, the nature of the troop deployment and the size of the troop deployment in approximately six months time. That is appropriate. Indeed, it may be necessary before then to review whether that deployment is adequate. Certainly, from the opposition’s point of view, as the Leader of the Opposition said, if it is necessary to supplement that deployment with additional resources, additional troops or additional equipment then the opposition will be fully supportive of that.

In that context, as we understand it, the Chinook helicopters will currently be deployed until about April next year. Again, we call on the government to examine whether that deployment of the Chinook helicopters should be continued beyond that time and possibly enhanced. Helicopter support is vitally important to the security of our troops on the ground in terms of surveillance, in terms of backup and in terms of medical evacuation. That is an area in particular where we know the demands on our aviation regiment, but the reality is that they provide a particularly vital resource for our troops in Afghanistan and we ask the government to look at continuing that deployment beyond April next year.

There have been concerns expressed in the media about both the integrity and the quality of the Afghani government. They are certainly issues to look at. But the reality is that we cannot ignore the plight of the Afghani people, for the security reasons that I have mentioned but also simply from the point of view of their own security. What they are confronting currently is a situation literally where what you would describe as bandits, standover people, are using extreme violence to enter towns and villages and, through the threat of violence and the actual use of violence or summary executions, obtain the subservience of those in the villages to their will. You cannot allow that situation to occur.

What our troops have done already and continue to do is protect ordinary people from the threat of that ruthless violence. That is something that we cannot ignore. Nor can we ignore the fact that the evidence is clear: Afghanistan, as I have indicated, is clearly a base of terrorist activity, with the opium trade and the financing and training of terrorist activity. It is not, and it was not when the United Nations supported activity in Afghanistan, based on questionable motives; it is clearly a haven for international terrorism.

The Leader of the Opposition in his reply mentioned that it was regrettable that our commitment in Afghanistan was wound back, together with that of the United States and the United Kingdom, as a result of the focus shifting to Iraq. If you recall, the focus shifted to Iraq on the basis of what proved to be failed or false intelligence that there was an imminent threat of the use of weapons of mass destruction, which of course have not been found, whereas from the outset we have constantly been aware of Afghanistan itself being a haven for terrorist activity. There is no question that, had we continued, had these nations generally continued their involvement to the full extent in Afghanistan, we probably would not be seeing the upsurge in violence or the extent of it as a result of the vacuum being filled by the Taliban and the insurgent and criminal groups, who have come into the vacuum to re-establish themselves. It is all very well to talk in terms of the wisdom of hindsight, but perhaps that was a lesson that was too available to ignore.

I have also been asked whether Australia, being a small deployment among, I think, 25 countries providing reconstruction teams, will make a difference. Anyone in doubt should simply look at the experience of New Zealand. They have maintained their reconstruction team from the outset. Not only reports but the evidence indicates that, in the region where they have been deployed, they have made a significant contribution.

In summary, this is an essential deployment not only from the point of view of giving the people of Afghanistan some prospect of a reasonable life in the future but also from the point of view of international security, in particular Australia’s regional security. We indicate our tremendous pride in our troops, and we also recognise their families. We indicate that we are here and available to provide any support that we need to not only to our troops but also to their families.

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