Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Treasury) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Prime Minister’s commitment of the Australian Defence Force to Afghanistan. This time the Prime Minister has correctly made a ministerial statement on the deployment of troops, unlike the disgraceful circumstance in which the parliament was informed of the decision to redeploy our troops in Iraq to Talil via a dorothy dixer in question time.

Unlike the members on the other side of this House, we treat the deployment of our troops, particularly to areas such as Afghanistan, as a very serious issue. The Liberals like to wrap themselves in military glory at any opportunity but, when it comes to this deployment, where are they? Very few members of the Liberal Party or the coalition have spoken on this deployment, and this deployment is one of the most serious deployments we have seen, certainly in the last two to three years. The most serious decision any government can take is to commit Australian Defence Force personnel to areas of conflict where there will be a significant chance that they will be killed or injured. Make no doubt: Afghanistan at the moment is extremely dangerous, and our troops are going into an area where they are highly likely to be seriously injured or killed.

I do not think the public realise just how dangerous Afghanistan is; we have become somewhat numbed to troop deployment announcements. The way in which troop deployments have been depicted in the media means that we often think we are sending them into peacekeeping areas and, because it sounds as though it is a peacekeeping operation, it seems as though the troops are going into a peaceful situation and therefore will be safe. Because we have not experienced the sorts of casualties—we have certainly experienced some injuries and I will talk about those a bit later—that other nations have experienced, I also think the Australian public are somewhat numbed by the announcements that are made and think that somehow our troops are going into areas that are safe.

But make no mistake: Afghanistan is extremely dangerous. All the more so because, apart from our initial commitment of troops, we and many larger nations took our eye off the ball in Afghanistan, and we left the Taliban, al-Qaeda and the local warlords to regain significant power. Afghanistan has deteriorated significantly, and the area our troops are being sent to is extremely dangerous. In certain areas, the Taliban and their allies in al-Qaeda are very much at large. News outlets report of the Taliban controlling the roads, acting as the police force and judicial authority and openly running offices to recruit fighters to their ranks. A senior British military commander in Afghanistan, Lieutenant General David Richards, has described the situation in the country as close to anarchy, with feuding foreign agencies and the unethical private security companies compounding problems caused by local corruption. Last month the Washington Post reported:

Taliban violence has intensified this year to its most severe since the hard-line Islamists were ousted nearly five years ago after refusing to hand over Osama bin Laden.

The reality is that insurgents are raging across Afghanistan, particularly in the south. It is a hotbed of terrorism. Terrorists are using Afghanistan to train and refine their skills and, in sending our troops to Afghanistan, we are placing them at significant risk—a risk that has been made even greater by the Howard government’s withdrawal of troops in 2002. Labor supported our original deployment to Afghanistan. We entered that war under the ANZUS alliance believing that, if we were to defeat terrorism, Afghanistan had to be at the heart of our operations. There was broad international support for the war in Afghanistan and the political will to deal with terrorism after the terrible aftermath of September 11. The government’s focus moved off Afghanistan and they withdrew our troops way too early in 2002.

Labor supported that decision, on the information the government gave us and in good faith that the security situation in Afghanistan was under control. The Prime Minister did not make public at the time the fact that our troops were being withdrawn. They were being withdrawn in the face of private diplomatic pleas that we not do so. John Howard withdrew troops, despite knowing that the job was far from done and in the face of those pleas, and he left Afghanistan to fester in the mess that it is in today.

Following the visit of our shadow minister and the member for Bruce in 2004, Labor took the difficult decision to call for Australian troops to get back into Afghanistan as soon as possible. We were ridiculed for that. The Prime Minister, in withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, left the job only half done. History, of course, shows that part of the reason for the early withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan was the government’s decision to commit troops to Iraq—that is, to a war, in case anyone has been beguiled by the government’s spin, we entered not to depose the evil dictator Saddam Hussein, who had been benefiting from the government’s ‘wheat for weapons’ deal, but to ostensibly rid the world of his stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. We now know those stockpiles did not exist. The government has now rewritten history on this and is now somehow claiming to all and sundry that it was always about bringing democracy and freedom to Iraq.

Iraq today is an absolute basket case. It has a form of democracy, yes, but the level of civilian and non-civilian casualties is enormous. Having gone into Iraq and literally destroyed all of its public and social infrastructure and institutions, the coalition of the willing is now significantly diminished and facing decades of being bogged down in what even American commentators are saying is a civil war. Insurgency is now rife and it has become, not having been so before, a hot spot for terrorism activity in the Middle East. Despite the fantastic work and the professionalism of the ADF across the areas of operation in Iraq and its surrounds, it is no longer clear to me what the overall objective is for Australia in Iraq or how it—out of all of our national security interests—is our top priority and most costly commitment.

Having recently been part of the Australian Defence Force’s parliamentary program, I was part of the first group of parliamentarians to be sent on an active deployment in the Middle East area of operations. I have to tell you that many of our troops are pretty sceptical about the government’s commitment in Iraq. It is my participation in the Australian Defence Force parliamentary program that has partly prompted me to contribute to this debate today. Having not come from a defence family and not having a policy background in defence matters, my exposure to defence issues has largely been limited to questioning civilian staff via the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit about the various audit reports into Defence disasters in procurement that we review. Having the opportunity to spend time with the Australian defence forces on deployment as part of this program gave me a much better appreciation of the professionalism, the extraordinary leadership skills and the incredible dedication of Australian troops. I was the only ALP member and the only woman on that trip, and we were stationed both with the P3C Orions and on HMAS Ballarat in the Persian Gulf.

One great thing about the program we went on is that we did not do what politicians often do, and we see it in the media, which is fly in and fly out to our troops on deployment. We spent significant amounts of time having meals with our troops, working alongside them, playing sport with them in early-morning training sessions and really having the opportunity, without senior personnel around, to talk to our troops on the ground. In particular, I took the opportunity to talk to many of the women who are on deployment over in the Middle East about their experiences. There are two issues I have serious concerns about with respect to the way our troops on deployment are being provided for. The first is in the area of health services and mental health services. I seriously believe that particularly the mental health services provided for Australian Defence Force personnel whilst they are on deployment, post deployment and post leaving the Australian Defence Force are seriously underdone. I was told about this experience by the medical personnel in the Persian Gulf. There was only one doctor for all of the ships the coalition had within the Persian Gulf at the time we were there.

There had been serious psychiatric disorders displayed by some of our troops during that six-month deployment and there was inadequate provision for medical staff to be able to deal with those mental health conditions. That was raised directly with us by the medical people on the HMAS Ballarat. We are seriously underdone in relation to the number of psychologists and psychiatrists, given the nature of the work that those psychiatrists and psychologists are doing for our troops on deployment—and that is just in the area of mental health.

In terms of general health, when we were on the HMAS Ballarat there was one doctor. Again, the doctor on the HMAS Ballarat provided medical services for all of the troops and all of the other people within that gulf—an enormous number. There were 188 on HMAS Ballarat itself, and there were a number of other coalition ships. When HMAS Ballarat left to go to port in Dubai there were no medical personnel within the Persian Gulf at all. The sorts of conditions that they are seeing range from minor injuries that just happen with the nature of the ship, with people falling and cutting and bruising themselves, to breaking arms and legs—often those sorts of injuries occur—through to serious heart conditions, very serious heatstroke and right the way through to the very serious psychiatric conditions that people were exhibiting while on deployment as well.

I am seriously concerned and at every opportunity I have will be raising the issue of the way in which the Australian Defence Force personnel have access to mental health services while on deployment, when they experience a mental health condition and also post their departure from the Australian defence forces. The reason I feel so concerned about this issue is that I, like many people in this place, work with an enormous number of Vietnam veterans. I have some very close friends—I would like to call them my friends—who are Vietnam veterans, and I see the pain and the sorts of conditions that they are experiencing because they were not treated properly for mental health issues on deployment and certainly post deployment and I see what those experiences have meant that they have had to face with their families.

The second issue that was raised with me whilst I was on the Orion P3C base in the Middle East area of operations was one of equipment. I have raised this previously with our shadow minister directly. We arrived on the shooting range with the ground force protection personnel to learn how to fire several weapons, and immediately on arriving there those personnel threw down the webbing and they said: ‘We want to tell you as politicians that this webbing is absolutely useless for the task that we have to do. We’ve all gone out and purchased our own webbing at $300 a pop. This webbing is dangerous. Our weapons tangle in it. It does not have enough capacity for us to carry bullets, the water that we need to carry and our weapons themselves, and we are at serious risk when we are wearing this webbing. We do not want to have this webbing. We actually believe it’s dangerous and we’ve gone out and bought our own at $300 a pop.’

I then asked them if they had lodged complaints on the RODUM system, which is a system that Defence Force personnel have to complain about their equipment, and frankly they just laughed. They said: ‘RODUM is a joke. We have lodged complaints on it, but the complaints go nowhere. The department doesn’t treat them seriously, and it is just not a system that allows us to have any confidence at all that, here on the ground, on deployment, when we say something is not correct, that we need another piece of equipment, we can get a fast response and get those issues fixed.’

The lack of mental health services provided to troops on deployment and the webbing are just two issues that were raised directly with us over a 10-day period in the Middle East area of operations. I have no doubt that on both of those issues I am going to hear some pretty terrific departmental spin about why those issues are really not a problem. In fact, I have already heard some. When we arrived back in Australia after the deployment, we hit Darwin and we were all a bit jet-lagged. The department had already provided us with some dot points as to why the webbing really was not an issue at all. One of the more offensive things I heard was one of the media people telling us: ‘It’s really like choosing to have a Gucci handbag or not a Gucci handbag. That’s why our troops are deciding to go and buy their own webbing.’

It is a very serious issue and I think with this deployment of our troops to Afghanistan we need to look very seriously at the issues that are raised directly by troops on deployment and not listen to the media spin. To this end, I ask the minister to look seriously into both of the issues that I raised, but I also put him on notice that there are a number of us on this side of the House who are extremely concerned about what is happening to our troops on deployment and post deployment and that we will be keeping a very close eye on this issue.

As I said at the start, for the men and women of the ADF deployed to Afghanistan, this is a very dangerous deployment. There is a high likelihood of Australian casualties before the end of the year. In the current deployment of troops in Afghanistan there have already been several wounded, with very little information available publicly as to the nature of their injuries and the circumstances in which they have occurred. Labor know how dangerous this deployment is. We also know how important the task is that our troops are being sent in to do. Afghanistan is at the centre of the terrorist operations and it is in our national security interests that we participate with other nations and do all we can. I wish our troops and their families well at what is a difficult time. The Labor Party have taken the decision to support the deployment in full consideration of the nature of your task. We know what we are asking you and your families to do and we wish you a safe deployment and we pray for your return.

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