Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Communications and Broadband) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker Slipper, when I was interrupted last week shortly following your remarks I was about to compliment you on the very fine account you gave of the scale of the attack and the consequences of it in New York. It was one of those extraordinary moments in world history. I have no doubt all people who were alive at the time can remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news, just as many of us can remember quite precisely where we were and what we were doing at the moment we learned that John Kennedy had been assassinated.

On the occasion of the attack on the World Trade Centre my wife and I had come home. It was late in the evening. We were rung by her brother who told us that he had seen pictures on the television of one of the towers being hit. We were horrified. We were particularly anxious, not least because our own son had just recently travelled to the United States to go to college in Boston, and we were not sure whether he was still in New York or not. He had, in fact, left shortly before, so he was in Boston at the time, but we were not sure of that when her brother rang. So we turned on the television and saw one tower burning and smouldering, then saw the second plane hit. It was an extraordinary moment.

Those towers—probably more than any other buildings in the world—symbolised the triumph of American capitalism, the triumph of New York as the great global city. They were symbols of modernity, symbols of modern civilisation, and they were brought down before our eyes and the eyes of millions of other people watching at the time.

The tragedy of the attack is indescribable. Who will ever forget the pictures of people leaping out of the building? Why were they leaping? Were they leaping hoping for a miracle, hoping that perhaps they might fall on something that could save their lives or had they given up all hope and felt that anything was better than being burnt alive in that inferno? It is very hard to say. But it was a day of indescribable tragedy and a day also of great courage. Who will ever forget the heroism of the firefighters who battled their way into those buildings to bring people out, so many of them losing their lives in the process? Who will forget the courage of the passengers on United Airlines 93 which, so we believe, was headed for the US Capitol?

Those passengers, becoming aware of what was going on through their cell phones, took the self-sacrificing step, clearly, of breaking into the cockpit and overpowering the pilot with the consequence that it fell, crashing into a field in Pennsylvania and killing everybody on board but saving the US Capitol from that attack.

We can only imagine what the impact of 9-11 would have been if, in addition to bringing down the Twin Towers and attacking and destroying a wing of the Pentagon—the symbol of American military might—that the home, the symbol, the place of American parliamentary democracy in the United States were turned into a smouldering wreck like the Twin Towers by that plane. It would have been an even more extraordinary day than we witnessed. There were many things to be appalled by and there were many great things to remember. As always on these occasions these tragedies seem to bring out the worst but also the best of the human spirit.

On 11 September this year the US Consul-General in Sydney, Mr Niels Marquardt, and the former Australian Consul-General in New York, Ken Allen, and their wives, Judy Marquardt and Jill Allen, organised an interdenominational ecumenical memorial service, which was held in St Mary's Cathedral. There was present, of course, the host, Cardinal George Pell, the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney. There were also present the Imam of the Zetland mosque, Sheik Dr Mohammed Anas, and many other clergyman and religious and community leaders.

Among the faith leaders there was the senior rabbi of the Great Synagogue in Sydney, Rabbi Jeremy Lawrence. In the midst of that enormous congregation, and in the midst of some outstanding speeches by the two diplomats and by the other clergyman, Jeremy Lawrence gave a most remarkable speech. I want to read a portion of it into the record today. He asked:

How do we respond to the evil destruction of an iconic landmark and symbol, thousands dead, thousands more lives ruined?

He said:

This very question was posed by the rabbis of the Talmud writing of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, the magnificent home of monotheistic belief.

the home of the Abrahamic faiths, the three largest faiths in the world: the original Jewish religion and then the two faiths derived from it, Christianity and Islam. Of the three remarkable faiths, two, Christianity and Islam, are the largest faith communities in the world. He said:

When the Rabbis of the Talmud posed the question after the fall of the Temple, one school, the Mourners of Zion decreed that there could be no further happiness. Jerusalem should remain without music and celebration until it was blessed with messianic redemption. In Hebrew, the expression “Zecher LeChurban” means remembrance of destruction. Within Jewish practice today every home is supposed to have a “Zecher LeChurban” a remembrance of the destruction with a prominent area left unpainted or undecorated. We should have a constant reminder that our lives have lost some of their lustre. At every Jewish wedding we shatter a glass, Zecher LeChurban. However great our joy at the occasion, we remember the Temple with solemnity and sadness. All joy is incomplete and fragmented in the remembrance of what has been lost. Another school—

Rabbi Lawrence notes—

remembered the Temple with a different slant. "Zecher LeMikdash" means a remembrance of the sanctuary. Every Passover we eat unleavened bread in a sandwich that the sage Hillel recalled as a Temple practice. On the feast of Tabernacles today we process for seven days with the palm, which used to be done only in the Temple. "Zecher LeMikdash" exhort the rabbis. We should celebrate and honour the buildings and the lives lost by incorporating their memories, their virtues and their values into our ongoing lives.

How must we respond to tragedy? Do we focus on the churban, the destruction or the mikdash, the sanctuary and its vibrancy. For sure, we do not forget. We do not abandon. Nor do we lose ourselves and augment the ruin.

With twin responses we confront the ambivalence of our psyche expressing on the one hand our profound grief that our world is damaged and that we are bereft. But we express on the other, defiance and ongoing struggle; a striving to renew and rebuild. The physical may crumble but the spirit endures.

We must not let ourselves be defeated by acts of destruction; nor may we lose hope that we shall see reconstruction and redemption; nor ought we dishonour those who showed faith and resilience in the face of adversity through our own hesitation. We respond by living better lives, through celebrating life and imbuing it with meaning.

Rabbi Lawrence there, reaching back to the destruction of another great building, beautifully describes the two emotions, the two approaches that we have to the destruction of the World Trade Centre. We remember the disaster but we also remember the values for which those towers stood—values of freedom—and our commitment to defend those values now and in all the years to come.

And a very costly battle it has been. The wars that 9-11 spawned have spanned the world. There is a war that goes on in our own midst: the war against Islamist fundamentalist terrorism. It is a war that is being fought by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan. It is a war that has been fought by Australian soldiers in Iraq. Hundreds of thousands have died in the course of these battles, and they are not yet over.

Are we winning in Afghanistan? We believe we are winning, but it is a war, as General Petraeus said, that cannot be won in the sense of a complete military victory. Any victory inevitably will be a negotiated one; any outcome will be one negotiated with the Taliban. Already, we can see that there are considerable steps being taken by the Americans towards achieving that.

In the battle in Afghanistan, the counterinsurgency has been undermined or weakened by the fact that the Afghan government itself, the official government headed by President Karzai, is, in many parts of the country, corrupt and inefficient. So persuading the local people that they should abandon their ties with the Taliban and cleave instead to the new government will be unconvincing if that government itself lacks appeal, legitimacy and authority or is seen as not acting in their interests.

The whole objective of counterinsurgency of course is to suppress the insurgents for long enough for the legitimate government to take charge, but if that government we regard as legitimate is not an appealing and attractive one, a government that can obtain and secure the support of the people, then all of the counterinsurgency efforts will be for nought. So, while there are many people who criticise the business of nation building and disregard it, the fact is that without effective nation building the counterinsurgency cannot succeed.

We are also faced in that arena with a very dangerous combination of elements in Pakistan. We have there a country which is unstable, which has nuclear weapons, and which has, or has through the operation of certain individuals in Pakistan, in the past shared nuclear weapons secrets with other states, notably North Korea. We have a situation in Pakistan, if you note Anatol Lieven's recent, excellent book Pakistan: A Hard Country, where a majority of the population, in Mr Lieven's view, regard the 9/11 attacks as having been an event staged by the Americans to justify their invasion of Iraq. That seems incredible. If someone stopped you on a bus or a train, as people have occasionally stopped me, and told you that 9/11 was essentially a fraud perpetrated by the Americans to justify an attack on the Islamic world you would regard that almost as the utterings of a madman, but it has very wide currency in Pakistan.

We also recognise that the Taliban in Afghanistan are now regarded in Pakistan as a group worthy of support because, firstly, they are seen as the group that will be there after the Americans inevitably leave. Of course, after the Americans leave, the Pakistanis will still be in Pakistan. The Americans and Australians may have gone but the inhabitants of the countries in that region will still be there. Secondly, the Taliban are seen as being a counterweight to the power of India asserting itself in Afghanistan. From a Pakistani point of view, focused always on the rivalry with India, more strength is given to the Pashtun Taliban in Afghanistan as that counterweight.

There are no easy solutions in sight, nor is there an easy end in sight to the wars that 9/11 began. Nonetheless, we have no choice but to continue waging them, perhaps in different ways and perhaps more effectively—we should always aim to do that. But the thread that ties all of our efforts—some more successful than others—together is the thread of freedom. It is the thread of those values of economic freedom, political freedom, modernity and liberalism, in the truest sense of the word, that were symbolised by the World Trade Centre, which was attacked by al-Qaeda because of the values it symbolised just as the Capitol would have been attacked, had it not been for the heroism of the passengers of United Airlines 93, because of what it symbolised.

We mourn the events of 9/11. We honour those who lost their lives on that day and those who have lost their lives defending freedom ever since. The words of the rabbi were profound, reminding us that in the midst of grieving we must also celebrate the values which we have stood for and which were represented by the structures we have lost. In conclusion, I seek leave to table the speech of the senior rabbi.

Leave granted.

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