Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Action, Environment and Heritage) Share this | Hansard source

On 12 October 2007 I stood in the courtyard of the Australian compound in Bali, with the task of representing the Australian government at the 5th anniversary commemoration of the 88 Australians who lost their lives in the Bali bombing of 12 October 2002. On that day I met the brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, sons and daughters of those who had been lost in the Bali on October 12. Their loss was profound. It was put to me that five years had been both the longest of times and the shortest of times. The additional three years that have bridged the gap since then would also feel like both the longest of times and the shortest of times. These losses were the human face of the Australians who had been ripped from loved ones. They represent the cost, the tragedy and the task we face in an ongoing moment of great global challenge.

When we step back a year to 11 September 2001, it is to the genesis of what we face today. It is the defining moment in the last two centuries of global history. It was the moment when the notion of security switched most tangibly from the classic power confrontations during the First World War, the Second World War and, in particular, the Cold War to asymmetric threats from terrorist groups and particularly from an extremist sect within the Islamic world. That moment changed our task, our role and our lives. By now, I would have expected that we had faced worse challenges and worse outcomes. We have had Bali, London and Madrid. But the horrors of September 11 have not been followed by the level of violence against our societies that we might have expected. The reason is that there has been a profound, concerted and widespread international effort to confront the causes, the leaders and the carriage of those acts which would destabilise not just our society but the Islamic world itself at its core.

I also note that, in addition to the 88 Australians whose lives were lost in Bali and the other 100 or more Australians whose lives were lost as a consequence of the terrorism which followed from 11 September 2001, 21 beautiful young Australians have given up their lives in the pursuit of achieving a lasting solution of peace and security for the people of Afghanistan and the people of the broader world. There are no free passes for anyone. The price that has been paid has been profound, real and tragic and the echoes of those losses will pass through generations of Australians. In my own family, a great-uncle, Colin Alexander Grant, lost his life on the Western Front during the First World War. Over the next 50 years, his parents, my grandfather and my mother never lost feeling the impact of that tragedy. For the families today, their losses will last throughout their lives. We offer our profound sympathy and most profound ‘thank you’ for the courage and the commitment of your sons, your brothers, your fathers or your husbands.

What then is the global threat which we face? I want to put this challenge into its grandest context. The goal of the Wahhabist movement, which developed most profoundly in Egypt in the postwar period, is nothing less than an Islamic caliphate. It is a 100-year goal. It is a fantasist’s objective but it is nevertheless a real and abiding motivation for those at the heart of the Wahhabist movement who seek to distort and pervert an otherwise beautiful faith. They seek a global world under Islamic rule of its most extreme and barbaric form, as was evident under the Taliban. And they are patient. The 30-year objective, the generational objective, is to establish a beachhead in one of the great Islamic states of the world. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Indonesia are all part of the push towards a long-term caliphate, and the goal is to destabilise and fragment these countries and ultimately to secure control.

I do not believe that the movement will be successful in any of these countries. But it was successful in one place—Afghanistan—and we should never lose sight of that fact. The Wahhabist movement, driven through the agency of al-Qaeda and manifested in the form of the Taliban, assumed control of one of the poorest countries of the world and, from that country alone, was able to carry out and lead the attacks of September 11. They trained the architects, such as Hambali of the Bali bombings, and contributed, through the network of al-Qaeda and its affiliates, to London, Madrid and the numerous attacks throughout the Islamic world.

Their immediate task, the immediate objective, is to fragment and destabilise an Egypt, a Saudi Arabia, an Indonesia or, in particular, a Pakistan, and thereby assume control of a more powerful state and have a stronger base as part of a longer global objective. However wild that idea may seem to us, it is real and it has profound consequences for security in a world where asymmetric capabilities are able to lead to catastrophic consequences.

That also brings me to the issue of a great security threat which is abiding and with us today—the dirty bomb. The dirty bomb is the risk that we all face and it will be with us throughout our lives. So long as there are nuclear weapons in the hands of states which are at risk of fragmentation, the nightmare possibility remains of a perversion of some of those materials, the conversion to a dirty bomb and the detonation in one of our cities. This is not fantasist material. In 2002 and 2003 there were warnings of future attacks on UK cities and on Spanish cities, and sadly these attacks came to pass in almost identical form to those warnings. I believe today that that same threat remains tangible, real and germane. That is why we face a profound and abiding security task.

Our task in Afghanistan has been and remains twofold: firstly, it is to guarantee that Afghanistan is not a safe haven—and I agree with the words of the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition on this, and indeed have proposed such terms for a long time now. It cannot be a safe haven now and it cannot be a safe haven in the future for al-Qaeda or its governmental manifestation, the Taliban. Secondly, we must ensure that Afghanistan is not allowed to become a wedge into regional security and thus lead to the fragmentation of Pakistan or the destruction of democratic rule there. That can occur either through the complete breakdown of order and security in Afghanistan or through the mass flow of population across the border. Both of those risks are profound. So that remains our task. That remains our purpose.

Coupled with that is the high human objective of doing all that we can to secure and advance human rights within Afghanistan itself. This is a noble, real and profound task and one which the West has taken upon itself on many occasions over the course of the last 60 years, with great cost to itself but with a genuine and elevated sense of common humanity and purpose. It is never easy; there are always costs of action and costs of inaction. In this case, we believe that the costs of inaction are greater.

This brings me to the issue of progress. Progress is about both success and an honest accounting of failure. The progress we have seen in Afghanistan is real. We have 1,550 Australian troops in Oruzgan. We are helping to train the 4th Brigade of the Afghan National Army. We are part of 120,000 international troops—on the way to 140,000—and of 20,000 local recruits in training at any one time, rising to about 134,000 local soldiers and 109,000 police. So real security progress is underway.

I would note that we have also seen educational and health progress. In particular we have gone from one million students in school in 2001 to six million today, and two million girls in school compared with none in 2001. This was a society based not just on some form of gender inequality but on a brutal repression of females and a brutal repression of educational opportunities for women in Afghanistan. There is much to be done there but that development is real, profound and significant.

The honest side of the accounting, though, must call us to say that there have been significant failures. The democratisation process has advanced in fits and starts and there are real questions over much of the conduct of the recent election. Secondly, there is clearly endemic corruption in much of the government and in much of the society. That corruption must be rooted out, and the Karzai government has failed to take the steps necessary to ensure that the corruption disappears. We must never be apologists for what is occurring now—real progress but deep failures to date.

This then brings me to the question of where we should go from here. I am deeply cognisant of those 21 families who have lost sons, fathers, brothers and husbands in Afghanistan. We have three options. We can withdraw, straight up. But that will create a vacuum in Afghanistan with a profound and tragic set of human consequences. There will be bloodshed, there will be the eradication of opportunities for young women and girls, and there will also be a great security vacuum which will see destabilisation in Pakistan. That is a consequence of nightmarish proportions and one which should send shudders down the spine of anyone who looks at the great global challenge of security. If Afghanistan falls then there will be profound issues for security in Pakistan; there can be no question of that.

The second option is the endless blank cheque, which is simply unacceptable. Along with many in this House I believe there must be a third way, which is conditionality—a progressive draw-down once security has been obtained in return for greater development of democratic participation. We must seek to hive off and to shatter those elements of the insurgence who will never be accommodated from those who can be part of a democratic future, much as has occurred in Northern Ireland and Bougainville. I am realistic about the future but optimistic about the potential and resolved in our commitment. We have a great challenge; it is one which the world must meet. I support Australia’s engagement in Afghanistan and I commend the motion to the House.

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