Fran Bailey (McEwen, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is with great pleasure that I support this report by the parliamentary delegation that attended the 55th annual session of NATO’s parliamentary assembly in Edinburgh in November last year. I would firstly like to express my thanks to the member for Brisbane for his leadership of the delegation and to Mr Richard Selth for his assistance and organisation. As the member for Brisbane has said—but I too want to put it on the record—many people from DFAT and our embassies in both Belgium and the UK provided professional staff and briefings. I too want to particularly place on record my thanks to Dr Alan Thomas and Colonel Mick Toohey; and to Mr David Hobbs from the NATO Parliamentary Assembly’s secretariat.

I too believe that the decision to attend detailed briefings by the secretariat in Brussels before attending the NATO assembly in Edinburgh was the key to the success of our attendance as a nation with observer status. Not only did these meetings provide delegation members with an understanding of how the assembly would operate in both the committee stages and the general assembly but they demonstrated our keen interest as observers from a key contact country and reflected Australia’s expanded relationship with NATO. This was reinforced by the fact that the presence of our delegation was welcomed by the Chairman of the Defence and Security Committee and by the acknowledgement of the contribution Australia is making in Afghanistan by the incoming secretary-general, Mr Anders Rasmussen.

We were also honoured to have the President of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, the Hon. John Tanner, chair our meeting with the full Dutch delegation. This was an important meeting. As the member for Brisbane also has alluded to, it was a forum in which we were able to speak openly and freely. The Dutch did express some degree of surprise at the bipartisan nature of the Australian delegation and at the fact that we were in complete agreement on our position. As the press has reported, the government of the Netherlands has fallen, reportedly because coalition members have disagreed on a request to extend the Dutch military mission in Afghanistan.

In listening to the debate in both the Defence and Security Committee and the environment committee, which I also attended, as well as the debate in the general assembly, I was impressed by its openness in relation to NATO’s commitment to Afghanistan and, importantly, to the security challenges of the 21st century, including the increasing problem of international piracy and how to build a more constructive relationship with Russia. While there was much discussion on strategic alliances—how they should be shaped in the future, developing NATO’s new Strategic Concept, the changing role of military power and the cost of casualties, which many delegates from member countries raised in both the committee and the assembly fora—there was an overwhelming acceptance that Afghanistan is NATO’s No. 1 priority. NATO will support the reconstruction and development of Afghanistan, strengthen the capacity of the Afghan National Security Forces and work to establishing a transition to Afghan led responsibility. In fact the new incoming secretary-general, Mr Rasmussen, told the general assembly that NATO’s mission in Afghanistan ends when the Afghans are capable of securing and running the country themselves.

I too want to place on the record the enormous privilege it was to attend Tyne Cot cemetery to see those thousands of young Australians recorded as having given their lives in those horrendous battles and to attend the service at the Menin Gate. I will never forget the sound of the bugles and the bagpipes and those thousands of red poppy petals fluttering down from the arched gateway and being picked up and carried off by the wind. For me that will always be a permanent reminder of the sacrifice that those young Australians made so that we might enjoy the democratic freedoms of this place. (Time expired)

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