Brendan Nelson (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

Firstly, in strongly defending the Prime Minister’s position on this issue, I think that it is worth remembering that there are three principal elements to this debate. The first is the alliance between Australia and the United States. The second is the role of al-Qaeda and other global terrorist networks not only in Iraq but in the region and throughout the world. The third issue is the role of Australia’s Prime Minister in protecting and defending Australia’s interests not only here and in our region but, indeed, throughout the world.

On the alliance, no Australian should forget that in 1942, when bombs were landing in Darwin and Townsville and Australian soldiers were engaged in a gripping struggle on the Kokoda Track and repelling the Japanese at Milne Bay and Isurava, the Americans were in the Coral Sea and Guadalcanal and they lost many lives. Australia today is a free country for many reasons, but one of them is that United States fought the war in the Pacific. This government, and I am sure also the opposition, does not forget that. That is why the formalisation of that alliance in 1951 is so important to the defence and security architecture not only of Australia but also of our region and, indeed, the mutual elements of that alliance as they are executed throughout the world today.

The second thing is the point about al-Qaeda. In relation to the stated position of one of the presidential candidates in the United States, Senator Obama, regarding a specific withdrawal date, which we understand does not relate to conditions on the ground in Iraq, the Prime Minister said yesterday that al-Qaeda would be putting a circle around that date and with some enthusiasm would certainly be supporting that kind of policy outcome in the United States and, I am sure, in other countries that are involved in Iraq.

It is important, when the heat is taken out of this debate, for us as Australians to understand what we are facing. It is worth remembering that in 1993 there was a bombing at the World Trade Centre. Six people were dead and 1,000 were injured. A number of other terrorist events, principally but not only against US interests, occurred over the subsequent three years. We then had the Kenya bombing of the US embassy by al-Qaeda with nearly 300 dead and 5,000 injured. Then in 1998, the same year, the Tanzanian US embassy was bombed and there were 10 dead and 77 injured. Again, al-Qaeda was responsible.

In 2000 the USS Cole was attacked by al-Qaeda with 17 dead and 39 injured. And then, of course, on September 11, more than 3,000 people, mainly but not only Americans—there were also Australians—were killed in the al-Qaeda inspired and executed bombing of the World Trade Centre and the attack on the Pentagon. Anyone who has seen the film Flight 93 will get just a glimpse of the terror that was inflicted upon the people on that aircraft. We then had a parade bombing in 2002 in Russia—which is rather ironic given the comments of President Putin in the last 24 hours. Again there were casualties: 150 wounded and 42 dead. We then saw some 88 Australians murdered in Bali in 2002. Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for that. Samudra, Hambali, Muklas and others had trained with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Then, of course, we had an attack on Israeli tourists in Kenya.

The fact is our generation and my children’s generation faces something that is no less a threat to our way of life, our security and our values than the one we faced in 1942. It is harder to see, but it is ubiquitous, which means that it is all over the place. It is throughout the world. And, as we know from some of the cases being conducted in Australian courts, sadly, we have some people in our own country that subscribe to this way of thinking.

The fact is that we are facing something that is really a global insurgency. We are dealing with disparate principally Islamist groups who have hijacked the name of Islam to build a violent political utopia. Al-Qaeda, to whom the Prime Minister referred—one of the many reasons, I might add, why the United States government has just increased its troop numbers in Iraq—is an organisation that is fundamentally and fanatically opposed to not only the United States but also the United Kingdom, Australia and similar countries throughout the world, whether they be Judaeo-Christian, Jewish or indeed Muslim countries—countries that are open to other human beings, to other ideas. They have an attitude about the treatment of women which is incompatible with a peaceful world, let alone a civil society. One of the reasons why al-Qaeda, for example, has been targeting teachers in Baghdad, particularly at the Baghdad university, is that they are educating women. They are also people who are fundamentally and fanatically opposed to people who have a different religious affiliation or point of view from their own. That is what we are dealing with.

In this day and age, in the year 2007, the thinking world, Australia in particular, needs strong leadership. We need moral musculature. We need the capacity to stand up to these people. We need a leadership and a vision that make Australians understand that ensuring the security of our country, and our interests, our values and our people is not confined to our borders and our region—to prevent failing states in our region. Australians also need to understand that throughout South-East Asia, Asia and indeed the Middle East we face a common enemy.

It is also important to appreciate that we did criticise the United States for what was described by the Daily Telegraph in Sydney as ‘the great lamb betrayal’. We survived the Whitlam years, and the US-Australia alliance survived that as well. We have survived many other things, and the alliance has grown and, in my opinion, it has never been stronger than it is today.

But it is worth remembering that we are in Iraq today because the world believed—as the Leader of the Opposition knew and said—that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. That was in a post September 11 world, after more than 3,000 people had been killed, murdered, in New York and Washington. The world knew he had weapons of mass destruction, but what could not be established beyond any doubt, because he would not allow the United Nations to go in and have a look, was whether he still had those weapons of mass destruction that could then be passed on to terrorist organisations such as al-Qaeda. We made the decision that the world was better off without Saddam Hussein. With all of the carnage and the bloodshed and the sacrifice that we see in Iraq on a day-to-day basis—principally in four of the 18 provinces of Iraq, I might add—no-one should forget that, before the United States, Britain, Australia and almost 30 other countries decided to free the Iraqi people, Saddam Hussein was responsible for the deaths of, on average, 70,000 people a year for 15 years. That is 200 a day. That was centralised killing—government-sanctioned centralised killing by Saddam Hussein.

It is also important that Australians recognise that we have a responsibility to Australia and Australians to see that we go to the heart of terrorist activity in the Middle East and also, of course, in Afghanistan. We also believed it was important, when the United Kingdom and the United States—our key allies, who have fought so hard to see that we are free—said to us that they believed Australia had a responsibility to be part of this, that we stepped up to the plate and said, ‘Yes, we most certainly will.’

The problem is that if we take the easy approach, if we take the approach that the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow spokesman for foreign affairs just articulated, we will leave our children hostage to forces they may never control. We will also diminish ourselves and demean the values for which that alliance has stood and for which our country has stood in its relatively short history. Never let it be said that my children will look back and say of John Howard and the Howard government: why did they not stand up to al-Qaeda and other global terrorist networks when they had the opportunity and the responsibility to do so? That is what a premature withdrawal from Iraq is really all about. And it ought to be remembered that we are in Iraq, the United States are in Iraq and the United Kingdom are in Iraq at the request of the democratically elected Iraqi government, as endorsed by the United Nations. The media over the past week, particularly in the American press, has actually been for the Iraqis to request that the Baghdad security plan be implemented more quickly. This is hard going, but, as any Australian well knows, when the going gets tough the tough get going.

The member for Barton reminded us of John Williamson’s song True Blue. I would remind him of Beccy Cole, who just won an award in Tamworth for her song Poster Girl. She said late last year:

My Australia is a country of fiercely loyal buggers who stand by their mates and who won’t back down from their beliefs.

We are never going to take the view that the defence and protection of Australia in the modern world, in the 21st century, is solely about the 500 defence personnel on our borders and about support and protection and assistance to countries in our immediate region. What happens in Iraq and Afghanistan has everything to do with Australia and Australian interests. Sadly, the cruellest price has already been paid by almost 100 Australians in Bali and in other parts of the world. It is also important to remember that isolationism will never make us safer. The biggest threat that the United States strategic policy represents to not only Australia but the rest of the world is not military adventurism; it is isolationism.

When the Prime Minister of Australia stands up and criticises a presidential candidate for election in the United States for setting a specific date for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, our Prime Minister has a responsibility to stand up and protect the interests of Australia. If al-Qaeda prevails in Iraq, we will most certainly leave the Iraqi people—12 million of whom showed enormous courage to vote—at their mercy. Many Australians grizzle and groan about having to go and vote every three or four years, whereas 12 million Iraqis risked their lives to say, ‘We believe in what the United States, Britain, Australia and the thinking world wants to help us achieve.’

We will also leave those Iraqi people at the mercy of the sectarian death squads of al-Qaeda. We know from al-Zarqawi’s letter to Osama bin Laden in January 2004 that al-Qaeda’s entire strategy in Iraq was to foment sectarian violence. It planned the al-Askari shrine bombing in Samarra in January last year to make sure that the Shiah would start to respond to a litany of attacks against Shiah interests so that there would be a sectarian war. Since when has it ever been the Australian way to say in response to that, ‘Ah, well, we’re out of it; we’ll just look after ourselves’? Since when has it been the Australian way to say to the United States of America, ‘We’re dropping our bundle; you can go and lift it for us’? It is delusional to say that only the US, Britain and these countries can take up the war against al-Qaeda and these global terrorist networks.

It is extremely important to appreciate that the Leader of the Opposition has chosen to criticise and attack the Prime Minister of Australia for standing up for Australian interests in relation to what is being said in the United States because the position presented by Senator Obama is precisely the position I suspect we are about to get from the Leader of the Opposition. In other words, he will not have the guts to go through the year 2007 declaring any real position, but as soon as he gets to the other side of the election—God forbid if he were to become the Prime Minister of Australia—he will suddenly do the thing that Australia has never done and simply say to our mate, our ally, the United States of America, ‘We’re leaving it all to you.’ Under no circumstances will this government or our Prime Minister expose Australia’s interests.

Question put:

That the motion (Mr Rudd’s) be agreed to.

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