Graham Edwards (Cowan, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary (Defence and Veterans' Affairs)) Share this | Hansard source

The motion moved today by the member for Ryan shows just how arrogant this government has become. This motion calls for an open chequebook approach to the lives of Australian soldiers deployed to Iraq. This motion confirms that the Howard government will defend its ill-considered political position on Iraq to the last American soldier or the last Iraqi civilian. Given the way this civil war is raging, it is evident that it will indeed be the Iraqi civilians who will continue to pay the ultimate price of Sunni versus Shiah and Shiah versus Sunni with our forces getting caught in the bloody middle. According to a recent report by the United States Department of Defense, this horror, this bloodshed and this payback is occurring on a daily basis in an environment where some Iraqi politicians are condoning or maintaining support for violent means as a source of political leverage with an increasing number of death squads, including those formed from ‘rogue elements of the Iraq security forces’, where unprofessional and criminal behaviour is being attributed to certain units in the national police and where corruption, illegal activity and sectarian bias have obtained progress in developing security forces.

This motion today calls on us to continue to support this corruption and this sanctioned violence. Compare the stupidity of the words of this government motion, which claims that all is well in Iraq, with the wisdom, strength and courage of what was said by former SAS officer Peter Tinley just two days ago. On the weekend he called for the immediate withdrawal of Australian forces from Iraq. He said that Iraq was a moral blunder and he condemned the Howard government for its handling of the war, yet here today we have a government motion which is full of self-congratulation and incredible stupidity. Major Tinley said on the weekend:

It was a cynical use of the Australian Defence Force by the Government. This war duped the Australian Defence Force and the Australian people in terms of thinking it was in some way legitimate.

Major Tinley did not sit in the safety of Parliament House in Canberra urging some other Australian to go and fight in a dirty, stinking, filthy war; he went where his government sent him, and during his military service at the sharp end he was decorated for his courage.

We are asked today from the safety and comfort of Parliament House to support this jackass motion put before us by the member for Ryan. We can do that or we can choose to listen to someone with the firsthand experience of Peter Tinley, who has immediate and intimate knowledge of how this war is being waged and who has 25 years of military service upon which to base his views. As a veteran, I choose to listen to and to support what Major Tinley advocates, and that is an immediate withdrawal of our troops from Iraq.

The Australian people have indeed been duped over this war in Iraq. Our troops were sent there to find weapons of mass destruction which we were told existed but were never found and which many credible intelligence experts believe never existed. We were then told it was about regime change—it was about getting rid of Saddam. I have no problem with that, but if that is why we went there why were we not told that at the time and why did the government send inadequate force numbers for that task and the subsequent occupation? No wonder the Governor-General came out and criticised them just the other day.

We were then told it was a strike against terrorism, that our troops would be there for weeks and that it would be a short deployment. Then the troops were told they would be there until the job was done. They did the job in Al Muthanna, but did they bring them home? No, contrary to the promise to bring them home, they were redeployed. They are now seen to be an occupying force and are in the middle of a bloody, vengeful and unrelenting civil war, and the members opposite say, ‘Leave them there indefinitely.’

I congratulate Peter Tinley on his courage in speaking out. He is indeed a courageous Australian. I have no doubt that many other senior military leaders share his views, as do many ordinary mums and dads in the community, particularly those with sons and daughters involved in Iraq, sons and daughters about whom this government says, ‘Leave them there indefinitely.’

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