Alexander Downer (Mayo, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

The Leader of the Opposition may think the Iraqi people are just a funny subject for little interjections, but I actually think this is a very serious issue. The vast majority of Iraqi people are glad that their dictator was overthrown. Although they know that this is a difficult environment—and of course in the Sunni triangle it is a particularly difficult environment—Iraqis are glad their dictator is gone. That should not be ignored. The Leader of the Opposition, in his comments, thought there should be a re-emergence of Sunni dominance in Iraq. He thinks that is the right approach. If he reads through the Hansard of his remarks, he will see that that is the case.

That brings me to the last point I want to make, and it comes back to what the Prime Minister has said. Although the hypocrisy of the Labor Party has been exposed here, claims of lies and so on have easily been refuted—and, by the way, if you claim someone is lying and you are lying yourself, that is not a good look, and that is what we have seen from the Labor Party—but the Labor Party never answers the question about what to do next. The Labor Party thinks that the best strategy is not just for Australia to leave Iraq but for Britain to leave Iraq and for the United States to leave Iraq—and to leave now. If that were to happen, there would be a human catastrophe in Iraq. But, more than that, it would give enormous energy to the terrorists. To have defeated the United States of America in Iraq, to have defeated Great Britain, to have defeated the international community, to have defeated Western interests in Iraq, to have won that war against our allies, in particular the United States of America, would be the greatest victory achieved by people of that ilk in the history of humankind. It would be a massive victory. I find it almost unbelievable that the leader of a political party, who claims to be some sort of an expert on strategic policy, thinks that that would be a good idea. That would be an absolute catastrophe and I do not think there is any doubt about that.

Sir Richard Dannatt has been quoted endlessly by the Labor Party today. Bits are quoted here, other bits ignored there. I will tell you what Sir Richard Dannatt said:

The mission in Iraq that we have been getting on with for the last 3½ years is important to see through a conclusion. You talk about craven surrender, I’m a soldier, we don’t do surrender, we don’t pull down white flags, we’re going to see this through.

So the Leader of the Opposition does do white flags. He does do surrender. His strategy is not just for Australia to surrender, not just for us to wear the ignominy of defeat and surrender, but his strategy is to go to Washington, as he explained on 28 August, and tell the Americans—just imagine it—‘You should surrender in Iraq.’ Imagine we have a new Australian Prime Minister who wins an election in glorious Labor circumstances, jumps on his plane and goes to Washington. The President says: ‘What is your message, Mr Beazley? We’re going to try to get on with you. We haven’t found the Labor Party very sympathetic to the cause of freedom, but we are prepared nevertheless to make friends with you.’ That is what they would do, and what is the Leader of the Opposition, the new Prime Minister, going to say? He is going to say, ‘You, the United States of America, should surrender in Iraq.’ I can only say that I regard that as absolutely contemptible.

Of course, the only political party that would have a policy of weakness like that is the Australian Labor Party. I think the Labor Party has done its polling and it thinks maybe this is a bit of an issue worth running. I think in the end this is the wrong judgement because, as I have often said, I do not think the Australian people take kindly to the idea of surrender and they do not take kindly to the idea of defeat.

The challenge here is quite simple: to ensure that the brave and good people who went out to vote, to democratically elect the government of Iraq, are able to see their government sustain itself in office and sustain itself with the support of their own army and their own police. We will provide them with support until their own army and their own police can do the job on their own, which is obviously the optimal outcome. But Labor’s plan is to dump them in it—to get rid of the government, to get rid of the international troops, to allow the international support for the Iraqis to fade away and to ensure, therefore, that the terrorists and insurgents are able to take over the country.

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