John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

The first of the Leader of the Opposition’s propositions is that the position of the government and, in particular, my position is built on political considerations. He read from an article in the Daily Telegraph today which said that the reason the government is taking its position on Iraq is the politics and not the merits. I cast no aspersions on the person who wrote that article but I go to the heart of the Leader of the Opposition’s charge that our policy on Iraq has been poll driven.

I say without fear of contradiction that the decision I took on Iraq in March 2003 was the most poll defiant decision I have taken in the whole time I have been Prime Minister of this country. When I heard the Leader of the Opposition read out this resolution at the beginning of his speech, I recalled an article in the Melbourne Age and the Sydney Morning Herald in January of 2003, which recorded that only six per cent of people polled in an AC Nielsen poll about attitudes to Iraq supported the course of action my government ultimately took.

If we had been listening to the polls and were poll driven on Iraq, we would never have joined our American allies. If we had simply asked the Australian people, ‘Do you agree or disagree with this?’ then, as now, we would have taken the supine advice of the opposition, turned our backs on the Americans and the British, turned our backs on the Iraqis and, being poll driven, had no political courage, no long-term commitment to that great alliance, which has meant more to this country than any alliance in our history, and the whole course of debate in this country would have been quite different.

I say to the Leader of the Opposition: call me anything you like on this issue but the last call that has any credibility is that I have been poll driven. At every point, if you polled the Australian people they would have had reservations about what we were doing or what we contemplated doing. It is the responsibility of any Prime Minister of this country to listen to public opinion, distil it and be guided by it but, in the end, if he is worth his salt he has got to make a judgement based on his assessment of the longer term interests of this country. And so it was in March 2003 that this government took the most poll defiant decision it has taken in the whole 10½ years it has been in government.

If censure motions are meant to be based on arguments, reason and fact, fact No. 1 from the Leader of the Opposition crumbles away immediately. We have never been poll driven on Iraq. We have always had a position on Iraq that has probably not been supported by the majority of the Australian people in opinion polls. It is the job of any government and of any prime minister with a backbone, on occasion and after having listened to people, to back his own judgement and take the decision.

I accept responsibility for that decision I took. I knew that it was in defiance of the polls. I knew that it was in defiance of recorded public opinion. But I took it because I believed it was the right decision. I still believe that it was the right decision that we took. It is still my view and, stripped of all of the verbiage and these long incantations of the discussions he has had with senior American officials from the Leader of the Opposition, it still remains the case—and the Leader of the Opposition knows this—that if we withdraw from Iraq, the Americans and the British have the same right to do the same thing.

If the coalition goes from Iraq it will deliver two great victories to the terrorists. It will deliver an enormous propaganda victory not only in the Middle East. Imagine the impact on the stability of Saudi Arabia of a terrorist victory in Iraq. Imagine the impact on other Arab states of a terrorist victory in Iraq. It will deliver not only an enormous propaganda victory but also an enormous strategic victory to the terrorists because al-Qaeda will be afforded a platform in Iraq in the same way that they were afforded a platform beside the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The Leader of the Opposition quotes people saying that the terrorists have found a jihadist cause in Iraq. If you believe that, you must also believe that in relation to Afghanistan. If you believe it in relation to Afghanistan, then why don’t you withdraw from Afghanistan as well? Why doesn’t the Leader of the Opposition’s logic extend to Afghanistan?

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