Kim Beazley (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

All that was in that article was all that drives this Prime Minister: the political survival of the government and the political advantage of the Prime Minister. That is what he is guilty of.

The consequence of what he has done has been to make this country less safe. There is no question about that. He is in there, ranting about opinions on JI in Indonesia, criticising the Labor Party for the view that we have that that particular movement, and the general area of South-East Asia, is our top counter-terrorist priority and where we ought to be concentrating our forces and initiating activity. That is what he was criticising us for at that point in time. What he completely neglects is what every serious analyst of what has happened in Iraq says, and what every serious analyst of what is going on in Iraq now says: that our presence there, the conduct of policy, the conduct of the activity, has enhanced the position of the global terrorist movement, enhanced their reputation in the Muslim world, enhanced their capacity to recruit and formed a magnet for those in the immediate region to pour into Iraq to assist them and in all ways act inimical to Australian and Western interests.

It is absolutely clear right now that things are changing in US policy. There is less debate in this country than there is in the United States and the United Kingdom. I have to say that the debate that we have been having in this place over the course of the last week is probably a year and a half to two years behind the debate which is now proceeding in London and Washington. But Paul Kelly had it right when he said this:

DON’T be misled by President Bush’s comments yesterday. In Iraq, the fix is coming. The policy will have to change. Only the politically deaf can miss the drumbeat of change in America. It is concealed now because of Bush’s need to hang tough for the mid-term election.

He then goes on to describe leaks from a study being put in place by James Baker, one of the most intelligent US officials it has ever been my pleasure to deal with. What Mr Baker is suggesting, at least in one of his recommendations, is that the United States, to get itself a cover for the extraction of US and allied troops from Iraq over the course of the next year, should do a deal or make arrangements with Syria and Iran.

Now we have come to this. We see now that two nations, one identified as part of the axis of evil and the other as a co conspirator, in terms of encouraging the international Islamic fundamentalist movement and encouraging state sponsored terrorism, are now the arbiters of our fate, the arbiters of the region. Single-handedly, and without a single casualty amongst the Iranians, the achievement of the Howard government is this: he has revived the Persian empire and he has changed the balance of power by the support he has given this operation in Iraq—against Western interests! So not only, in the narrow sense of our struggle with Islamic fundamentalism, has he disadvantaged this country, we also find that, in the broader geostrategic area, he has encouraged a nation that none of us, since the revolution of 1979, has ever wanted to see encouraged in international affairs. The policy of this government is total failure. When the Italians and the Japanese moved out—

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