Mike Kelly (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Support) Share this | Hansard source

Over the past year and a half in this place, I have come to appreciate that we do experience some very special moments and chances to contribute on very significant issues. This is definitely one of those moments. I deem it a very great privilege to be able to speak on this condolence motion for Private Gregory Sher. He was truly a great Australian, an extremely proud Australian. He lived all of his formative childhood years in this country and considered himself an Australian. He did not really know much about his background in South Africa; he was very proud to be an Australian. His family, his brothers and his partner admired and understood that about Private Sher.

As we have heard, Private Sher was killed in a rocket attack. During my year in Iraq, I came under rocket attack many times in that place and watched the destruction and devastation that can be caused by those attacks. I know what it is like to sit there and wash from your gear the blood of your friends; those consequences become apparent from those attacks. Today I send out my thoughts and prayers to Private Sher’s colleagues, because I know the impact of that experience on them. But I also know that, being the proud professionals they are, they will use this experience to steel themselves for further effort in our cause in Afghanistan. I salute their service.

I have spoken to Private Sher’s family, and they are wonderful people—Yvonne and Felix, Stephen and Barry, and Gregory’s partner Karen. They have made wonderful contributions to the Australian community in their own right. It was wonderful to hear Felix talk about the Australian Defence Force and the reserves who serve it. It was wonderful to hear his encouragement for those members, and for people who think about joining the ADF, to continue in that path. He understands the importance of that service and what it means to this country and the international community. So I salute the family of Greg Sher as well.

We have heard a lot about Greg’s biography, his background, and I will not go over that ground. I thank the members for Fadden and Patterson for their contributions, and I particularly thank the minister for his. But there is one aspect that I would like to highlight about Greg’s service—that is, he was a reservist. It is a privilege in my work in this portfolio to be responsible for the reservists. I do not think people truly appreciate, given that Greg Sher was a commando, what extra effort is required to achieve the qualifications of being a commando in the special forces, to pass all those courses we have heard about and at the same time to be an ordinary citizen going about your day-to-day life. Effectively, our reservists amount to twice the soldiers because of what they contribute to the community and then the extra effort they make, those extra yards they go, to serve this country as reservists.

We are so well served by our reserves. In recent years we have become more and more dependent upon that service. In the last financial year, over 1,800 man-years of service was provided by reservists employed on continuous full-time service and a further 4,500 man-years of service was delivered using reserve days. In addition to that, of course, we have had 3,000 reservists serving on ADF operations, both overseas and within Australia. Over the past two years those operations have included individual deployments involving particular specialties and skills. Our reservists have provided capability bricks in the Middle East and East Timor, carried out border security and UN duties and also served as subunit groups in the Solomon Islands. They took part in Operation Acolyte, which supported the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, in Operation Deluge, which was the APEC effort in Sydney, and in Operation Testament for the Papal visit to Sydney. So we are entirely dependent on our reserves to maintain our operational tempo. They are out there making every effort and committing themselves to the extra effort that is needed to prepare themselves for these operations, make that separation from their businesses and their employment and then come back and pick up the rope again to continue on. It was very special for me to welcome back recently the company group at Holsworthy from the Solomon Islands. I salute the service that our reserve forces are doing in the Solomon Islands. It will be a privilege to visit them later in the year. So that is a special thing to note about Private Greg Sher.

We have heard that Private Sher was also a member of the Australian Jewish community, and a very proud member of that community. That community has contributed great things to this country over the years. In fact, as has been referred to, our finest commander, Sir John Monash, was a member of the Jewish community. Private Sher was someone who imbibed the values of that faith very deeply. One key principle of that religion is the concept of the Mitzvot, in effect the need for every citizen to do good deeds. Private Sher lived that credo in his day-to-day life, not just in his ADF service.

He also imbibed the philosophy of the great Jewish philosophers over the years—this is really something we should absorb in relation to our struggle in Afghanistan and internationally against terrorism, or Islamist extremism—that there are great daunting tasks in front of us and we sometimes face them and say: ‘What can I do? This is a long battle; it will never be won through anything that I can do. I can’t see the end of this, maybe even in my lifetime.’ But the philosophy of these great Jewish philosophers was, ‘Certainly you may not be obligated to complete this task, but it is up to you to make your contribution, to make a beginning and to make an eventual contribution to success.’ Private Sher understood that—he understood that we were involved in an international struggle against this extremism. He understood the effort and the sacrifices and the threats of his coreligionists in Israel, and that these integrated and networked groups—Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, Taliban, the Jemaah Islamiah group—all have similar characteristics at their heart. It only takes a cursory reading of the charter of Hamas to understand the medieval and desperate ignorance of these people and the destruction and negativity and nihilism that they represent.

I think it is important for us to understand that we are not involved in an international war on terrorism. We should take these opportunities when we have these casualties to continually remind the Australian public about what it is we are engaged in in this struggle at the present time. It is in fact a war on ignorance. That is what is at the heart of this struggle. That effort must be fought on many levels and the minister has made comment many times about the different levels, nuances and sophistication that we must bring to the effort in Afghanistan and about how it cannot be won purely as a military effort; how it must be won on many levels. So this is going to be a battle as much in the classrooms and madrasahs as it is in the battlefield. Notwithstanding that, we still need warriors like Greg to deal with those whose goal it is to deal out death and destruction to the innocents. So we continue to need people to join our struggle, to join the defence forces and to join the reserves, to make our contribution to that international effort. We have physically lost Greg in that battle, but as a member of the ADF I know and understand that you never lose one of your own. We will always preserve the memory of Greg in our hearts and our minds, and Greg has now added his own page to the proudest history in this country, the Anzac history. I salute Greg and I salute his family.

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