Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This year is the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in the United States. These events have probably done more to reshape the future of the free world as we know it than almost any other event, certainly in recent history. I want to speak on this motion and on these events because I want to be on the record as having supported the comments by members and senators. I also want to support the United States of America, the American people and the Australians who lost their lives and their families. As well, I want to support the comments of the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and all those who have said things about what this anniversary means to the United States, to Australia and to the world.

It is important that we pause to remember and reflect because of the significance of what took place. Ten years ago here in Australia we woke and turned on our TVs to be confronted with scenes that we could not believe—planes flying into buildings and destroying those buildings and eventually killing more than 3,000 people, including the Australians who lost their lives that day. They were people from all walks of life, from all backgrounds, from all faiths and from all parts of the world. While it may have been an act that was directed at the United States, in the end it was an act against all decent human beings. No-one who saw those scenes that day could possibly in any way forget them. It was truly a tragic day.

They were almost impossible scenes. I think we all remember what we were doing and where we were. I remember looking at the news on the TV and not actually believing what I saw. I thought it was a hoax. I just could not believe that it was possible. They were impossible images; they were impossible thoughts. It was something that I thought just could not happen. But it did, and we realised our own frailty in a whole range of different ways. We saw all those images of the tragedy of death: the people on the plane, having lost control of their ability to do anything about their fate; the people in the buildings, having lost control of the ability to do anything about their fate and, as we heard from the previous speaker and others, people going to incredible lengths to either try to save themselves or decide it was better to perish by leaping from a building than to be consumed by fire or overcome by smoke; and, those that could not be rescued, finding their fate in the end by being trapped in a building that collapsed. It did change all of our lives. It did change a whole range of things about us, including the way we look at the world and the way we look at ourselves.

September 11 also changed ordinary people's lives. It certainly changed nations and it has changed the way we approach a range of things. But I think an even more profound impact has been the way it is has changed ordinary people's lives. It has changed the way we travel to and from certain places, such as domestic airports and international airports, in the way travel documents are inspected and the way that we are screened at particular airports. It has changed the way that we visit government buildings, with no better example than Parliament House itself. The amount of change that has taken place here, while all for the better in terms of our security, means we have lost a little piece of innocence from our lives as ordinary people. It has also had an impact on going into any metropolitan city or even regional cities; just getting into significant buildings and places, tourism places, has changed. There has been a profound impact.

In the end, that is what terrorism does. I do not think we can walk away from that. Terrorism does have an enormous impact. But it has also created a resolve amongst the free world, the Western world. For Australia, it meant we invoked article 4 of the ANZUS treaty to stand shoulder to shoulder with our allies the United States. We decided that we would face terrorism, that we would not be driven into a dark, deep hole and cower in the face of terrorism, but that we would face it—and we would face it wherever it was, whether it was in Bali, in South-East Asia, on home soil, in the United States or any other country. US Ambassador Bleich put it succinctly at the commemoration here in Canberra when he said:

Confronted with hate, we choose not to hate.

Confronted with death, we choose to live.

Confronted with fear, we choose to hope.

Australia has played a significant part in choosing to do those things. Part of our response was that we sent Australian troops overseas to fight terrorism in all its forms and in all its places, in Iraq and in Afghanistan in particular. To date, 29 Australian soldiers have given their lives in Afghanistan. But our commitment to ensuring that Afghanistan does not fall into the grip of the Taliban or terrorists continues to this day. As we have heard from other members in this place, we will stick to our mission and we will continue to do what is required of us. Terrorism is not a problem that is faced by any one country, any one nation, any one people at any one particular time. It is something that faces all of us all of the time. The attack on American soil was also an attack on us. I believe that, while we do have choices, we do not have a choice in these matters. We do not step away from what has been presented to us. We need to respond.

If the goal of al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden—and, I imagine, of other people who organise terrorist attacks—was to weaken us through such attacks, they were wrong. If their thought and their strategy was that killing Americans on American soil in an act of terrorism that was almost unimaginable would weaken us, frighten us and eventually defeat us, they were wrong. If they thought that this would cease the progress of free, democratic nations in the world, then they were wrong—and they failed, because it did the complete reverse. It has been a long road—it has been 10 years since that terrorist attack—but we have not weakened. We have not lost our resolve. We have not lost our belief and our faith in democracy or our belief and faith in freedom—freedom of expression, of religion, of speech and of people to choose a government. If their goal and their strategy was to end the freedom of people by attacking the United States on home soil with a great act of terrorism, then they failed; in fact, I think they failed miserably because, in the end, it has done the complete opposite. We will make mistakes along the way. Anything that we have done in the past 10 years has not been a perfect response to what took place, but I do not think anything could be. This is new ground, new territory, and nothing that we do is a perfect answer or a solution. But we must continue to respond. We must continue in the face of what is presented to us and do something that is just and right. We must protect our people and also people in all parts of the world who deserve the protection and the freedom that we all enjoy—not freedom according to our own definition but in the way that it is defined by different people in different countries according to their own beliefs and their own cultures.

I wanted to take the time to place on the record the fact that those events have reshaped our nation, they have reshaped the world, and I believe that this government and the previous government took the right course of action. We will continue to do that and we will continue to support our allies the United States. We will always be united in our resolve against terrorism.

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