Mark Butler (Port Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

As the shadow minister for defence science just indicated, the Defence Legislation (Miscellaneous Amendments) Bill 2008 deals with three very distinct elements. Really, the only commonality between the three elements to this bill is that they reflect an ongoing commitment by this government to make whatever legislative change is necessary from time to time to give our defence forces all of the support that they need to do their job.

In no particular of order of priority or importance, the first element of the bill, as the shadow minister indicated, seeks to give effect to protocol III, the third additional protocol to the Geneva conventions. That protocol modifies the Geneva conventions to add a third distinctive emblem for the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, which previously was called the Red Cross Movement. As the shadow minister has outlined, and as I am sure is well known to all members of this House, the red cross and the red crescent have been the two symbols for that movement since about 1929. Protocol III, the third additional protocol, adds a third symbol, namely, the red crystal.

The red cross was adopted almost 150 years ago as a symbol intended to protect those who were providing aid, comfort and medical assistance to people injured or at risk of injury in war, whether an internal war or an international war. The Red Cross was established under that symbol at the Geneva convention of 1864 and now some 185 Red Cross or Red Crescent societies operate around the world including, as the shadow minister indicated and as has been said so many times in the condolence motions this week, the Australian Red Cross, which has been performing extraordinary work in the Victorian bushfires. All of those Red Cross and Red Crescent societies are coordinated by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, which is also located in Geneva.

The purpose of the symbols, the distinctive emblems, is largely twofold. Most importantly, it is to serve as a protective symbol in times of armed conflict to provide a protection recognised by armed forces and hopefully militias around the world so that they do not attack or endanger people, buildings, vehicles and any other equipment being used to provide succour, comfort or assistance to people injured or at risk of injury in that conflict. Also, the emblems have an organisational purpose, which is to provide an indication of the belonging by an organisation to the international movement. Usually in that case the emblem is accompanied by a title such as, in our case, the Australian Red Cross. The two symbols, the red cross and the red crescent, are now used in about 190 countries.

As the shadow minister indicated, historically the red cross in particular has caused some problems and some sensitivities because of apparent or perceived Christian connotations. It is absolutely clear that the red cross, when adopted in the 1860s, was adopted with no religious affiliation, but it has been recognised around the world over the decades that there is some scope for connotation, even if there was no affiliation. It is well known that the red cross is a reversal of the Swiss flag, or the Swiss Cross. The Swiss Cross, or the Swiss flag, certainly does have religious or Christian origins. The Swiss Cross was adapted as the national flag in Switzerland in 1840 but, before that, for some 600 or so years, it was the flag of the Schwyz canton, one of the original three cantons that created the Old Swiss Confederacy in 1291.

The Swiss Cross, or that flag, was granted to the canton in about 1230 by Emperor Friedrich II, who was one of the successor emperors to Charlemagne in the Holy Roman Empire. It is quite clear that the cross that was added to what was simply a red flag of that canton was a symbol provided by the emperors of the Holy Roman Empire to indicate leadership over the Christian continent of Europe. So there is, in the government’s view, some reason for the connotations that have been ascribed to the red cross over the 150 or so years since its adoption and some reason for the sensitivities that have arisen since then.

After its adoption the red cross very quickly gained wide recognition in times of war, even back then, but only a decade or so later, during the Russian-Turkish war of the 1870s, it became clear that the red cross was going to be an insufficient or inadequate symbol for universal application. The Ottoman Empire, in that war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire in the 1870s, decided therefore to use the red crescent, taking the view that its soldiers, being Muslim, would not feel comfortable with the red cross. After the intervention of the Red Cross Society, the international Red Cross movement back then, the Russian army agreed to recognise the red crescent as having the same effect for protection purposes as the red cross. That de facto equality between the two symbols continued until it was formally, in a de jure way, enshrined in an amended Geneva convention in 1929.

So too in 1929, the Geneva conventions recognised the red line with sun symbol which was used by Iran from that time in the same way until the revolution in 1980, when the new republic of Iran adopted the red crescent in its place. This has been a problem for a couple of societies, most notably Israel, whose equivalent of the Australian Red Cross, the MDA, has since the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 used the red star of David or the red shield of David. As a result, Israel has not been a member of the international movement and, strictly speaking, has not been entitled to the protection of the conventions because that symbol is not enshrined in the convention. It is a position that from any reasonable person’s perspective is obviously untenable and one that has given rise to discussion, as the shadow minister indicated, over many years with a view to trying to adopt a symbol for societies that do not feel comfortable with the red cross or the red crescent.

As the shadow minister indicated, in December 2005 the Swiss government convened a conference of all 192 signatories to the Geneva convention, including our own government, the former coalition government. After a couple of days that conference not unanimously but overwhelmingly decided upon the red crystal, which is now known as the third protocol emblem. There has been lots of support since, including, importantly, the ratification by the state of Israel and a range of other countries. Australia signed the new protocol in 2006, and the number of countries required to sign the protocol ticked over in January 2007 with the result that the protocol entered into force at that time.

Our ratification requires a couple of things. It requires the amendment by this parliament of different pieces of legislation protecting the status of the Red Cross emblems—the red cross, the red crescent and now the red crystal—which is the purpose of the debate tonight. Importantly, it also requires the Australian government to disseminate the protocol, most particularly through military training so that our defence forces serving overseas will recognise the importance of the third emblem in the same way as the ADF has always recognised the importance of the red cross and the red crescent and also to disseminate it in civilian education so that our school students come to recognise that the red crystal has the same effect as the red cross and red crescent around the world.

It is recognised—and was in the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties debates—that the red crystal is unlikely to be used in or by Australia. We have a long and proud history of adopting the first of the emblems, the red cross, but it is important that the red crystal be adopted by all Australians, whether serving in the ADF or otherwise, when overseas. This is an important development which brings some greater unity to the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and deserves the parliament’s support, and I note the enthusiastic support of the opposition, particularly given that a lot of these developments occurred while the Howard government was still in power.

The second element to this bill took a great deal of the shadow minister’s attention—namely, the addition of regulation-making powers to extend protections to personnel providing defence related medical care. As the shadow minister indicated and is well known by members of this House, the ADF is obliged by the Defence Act to provide medical care to ADF personnel to ensure that those personnel are healthy to discharge their duties as uniformed personnel. But we also know that much of that care is provided by nurses and medics. The Defence Act provides for exemptions from different pieces of state and territory legislation relating to the supply and the prescription of medication, recognising that medical care in a defence context is quite different to the civilian medical care at which the state and territory legislation in question is directed.

This is particularly important so far as it concerns obligations imposed by the legislation on doctors supervising nurses and medics. The exemption in the Defence Act currently only applies to uniformed medical personnel and, as I have learned as I have gone around the different bases in Australia in my capacity as chair of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works, uniformed medical personnel are particularly difficult to obtain and retain in the defence forces. It has been my experience that medical care at many bases in Australia is provided to ADF personnel by contractor medical staff or in some cases APS staff, neither of which categories are covered by the Defence Act exemptions.

The legal advice provided to the government by the different legal agencies of government indicates that it is unclear whether those exemptions apply to those personnel. It is clearly in the interests of a properly functioning ADF that those exemptions be extended, and that is in a nutshell the regulation-making power that is provided by this legislation. The shadow minister spent some time discussing the rollout so far of the groundbreaking election policy commitment made by the Labor Party before the 2007 election to extend free medical care not only to ADF personnel, as currently is the case, but also to their dependants and spouses. This was an extraordinarily popular and well-received election policy and it is very easy to understand why the shadow minister and others on the opposition benches are so sensitive about it—as they did not think of it for the 11½ years during which they occupied the government benches.

The shadow minister appears to have taken the view that after that period of neglect the new government would be able to implement this policy in a matter of days and the fact that we are rolling out trials in a progressive way is not a proper approach to public policy making and service delivery. On this side of the House we disagree with that assessment. Labor made a commitment to progressively extend basic medical and dental care to spouses and children of ADF personnel, and we are well underway in delivering on that commitment. Over the course of the development of ways in which to do that, the government came to the view that there was a better model than the original proposal of building family health clinics for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, as I indicated, it is particularly difficult in regional areas to obtain the sort of medical and dental personnel who are contemplated by that policy. But we also took the view that the trials that are in place using a card system to directly pay GPs an agreed amount when the trial participants see the GP provide those defence families with a much greater sense of choice over the doctor or the dentist that they can go and see. The first stage deals with a range of remote bases, which is where this service is most needed. The second stage deals with three other significant regional bases in Townsville, Darwin and Puckapunyal, and in total those two trials will see the delivery of this free dental and medical care to some 16,000 spouses and children. This is a policy that we continue to be very proud of and intend to continue to roll out in a progressive but sure way.

The third element of the bill deals with the legal status of the joint facility at Pine Gap, near Alice Springs. As the shadow minister indicated, Pine Gap was set up in the late 1960s as part of a suite of joint facilities that until 1999 included Nurrungar, near Woomera in South Australia, and the North West Cape in Western Australia. Pine Gap remains, and together these facilities were, of a very high strategic value in terms of the Western alliance’s capacity to communicate and gather intelligence around the world, particularly concerning the early detection of ballistic missile launches, especially nuclear ballistic missile launches.

As the shadow minister indicated, this was not a policy without controversy. Firstly, the view was taken by many that the placement of these joint facilities on Australian soil made Australia a nuclear target, particularly a first-strike target. However, were an all-out nuclear war to have broken out during the Cold War it is very clear that Australia would have been a nuclear target with or without the joint facilities in place. The second concern raised by opponents of the joint facilities being on Australian soil was essentially to do with sovereignty issues. The debate raged for many, many years about the degree to which these were joint facilities run jointly by Australian and American forces or whether they were simply US bases on Australian soil. It was an endless debate which really does not require continuation in the context of the debate on this bill. Suffice it to say for the purposes of this bill that very regular protests took place, particularly at Pine Gap but also at Nurrungar before its closure in 1999. The now member for Fadden took part in those protests as a very youthful and perhaps radical individual. I am sure he will expand upon that in his contribution after I am finished. I suspect friends of many members of parliament and perhaps members of parliament themselves took part in those protests.

It is very important to make clear that this bill is not about infringing on the right to protest about Pine Gap or any other aspect of government defence security policy—or any other policy, for that matter. We are not about curtailing that right. What we are about doing is amending the Defence (Special Undertakings) Act, the D(SU) Act, to clarify the security of that joint facility to protect it from unauthorised entry, which is an entirely different proposition to protest. As the shadow minister indicated, this arises from a well-known case where four protesters cut through the wire surrounding the joint facility at Pine Gap and were subsequently charged, with a hearing taking place in 2007. There is no question, factually, that this entry was unauthorised. There is no question that it went beyond protest at the point of unauthorised entry. The point that gives rise to this legislation is that the defendants in that case made the argument before the court that the base was not a prohibited area and was not undertaking defence work. In a belt-and-braces way, the purpose of this bill is to make very clear, from the Australian government’s perspective and from the Australian parliament’s perspective, that the whole of the facility is a prohibited area for the purposes of the D(SU) Act and that the work in the facility is a defence undertaking and is defence work. For that reason I commend that part of the bill to the House.

The government is committed to making sure that the defence forces are given all necessary legislative, executive, capital works and other support to do their incredibly important work. This bill in its three different aspects continues that job and I commend it to the House.

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