Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Todd Matthew Langley, Sergeant, 2nd Commando Regiment, Special Operations Task Group. He was a Western Australian and the thing that Western Australians and Queenslanders have in common is an adventurous spirit, so it is only natural that he would have been drawn to the outdoors. It is only natural that he would have been drawn to being a team player. It is only natural that he would have been drawn to taking more risks than a lot of people would. He was a father, a husband, a son and a friend. To become a soldier of his calibre—five tours, decorations, toughness—requires a great deal of discipline, heroism and training.

I have had conversations with the men and women of 3rd Brigade in Townsville at the RAAF base. The training they do involves making sure that when they are in a situation they rely on muscle memory so that there is nothing left to chance. The 3rd Brigade in Townsville is our ready-deployable part of the service. They spend day after day training so that, if something happens, they know exactly where they are going to be. If they are not trained in that way, someone will get hurt or die. Even though these guys are so brilliantly trained, even though they are so brilliantly ready, there are always going to be tragedies.

Sergeant Langley is the 28th person to die overseas in this conflict in Afghanistan. It is a loss we all bear greatly. I note the words of the minister when he said that as members of this House we all share the responsibility of sending our men and women overseas. When they fall we obviously do not take it as hard as the family, but we are very aware of the responsibility we have. When you talk to the soldiers and men and women of the ADF that come back from Afghanistan, and indeed our parliamentary colleagues who go over there, you understand the work we are doing in training the Afghan army and trying to make that place a better place. We take education and human rights for granted. I am the parent of three children. I have one daughter now at university and one in year 12 weighing up her options. In the Afghanistan of old, before we got involved in this, the people did not have options. We are now seeing kids there go to school, and through school is education, through education is power and through education and power is freedom. That is what we are there for. We are not there to fight a war; we are there to make them masters of their own country, to give them the opportunities that we take for granted. While I understand extremely well people's reservations about us being in a foreign land, I think when you put these things into context you see we are able to say these things because we are in a country that is defended by our men and women of the ADF. We are able to have those debates openly and frankly, and more power to us. But when you talk to the soldiers that come back, when you talk to the airmen that have been there, you realise they want to be there, they need to be there and they feel that they are doing a great job, that they are making progress—and those are the things that we have to watch out for.

People often say—and I suppose for Todd Langley it would be very much the case—and I say it myself, 'I could be a world champion if no-one hit me back.' To be tough, to be a soldier of Todd Langley's calibre, you must first be able to play while injured, you must first be able to cope with the pain that comes with being in a very, very rough environment for long periods of time, away from your family and friends. To do that takes a special kind of person. To be at his age, to be in peak physical condition, to be the man whom everyone back here loves and to be capable of divesting himself of that to become the ultimate warrior in Afghanistan, he must have been a tremendous person. As the dad of four kids it must have torn him inside to be away from them.

Todd was ex-1RAR, so he has spent time in Townsville, and the community there is very much behind all our men and women in the ADF. We are a huge veteran town and a huge defence town, and we take our involvement in this very, very seriously. When one of ours goes down, there is always someone in Townsville that knows them or has worked with them. We are currently seeing the 2RAR Townsville based regiment being deployed in various stages for various fields of fire and training organisations in Afghanistan; when these guys are going overseas, we know that we are at risk. Our schools and our workplaces are full of defence men, women and children, so when these things happen there is a little bit of reflection by the whole city of Townsville.

I will finish by saying that we respect what our men and women of the ADF do in trying to make this world a safer place. For Todd's parents, wife, children and friends, it is cold comfort that we in this House speak of him, because it is their loss. Sometimes I feel when we are doing these things that we are in fact intruding on someone else's grief. But it is right that you should grieve. You should be proud of Todd—your son, your husband, your father and your friend. So grieve but please remember him for all that was good, all the good things he did, all the good times you had and not the tragedy of his death. Sergeant Todd Matthew Langley will be missed—a great Australian gone. Lest we forget.

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