Andrew Wilkie (Denison, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

There is no doubt that the situation in Iraq is dire. To quote Amnesty International:

The Islamic State is carrying out despicable crimes and has transformed rural areas of Sinjar into blood-soaked killing fields in its brutal campaign to obliterate all traces of non-Arabs and non-Sunni Muslims.

I agree that the international community must act and must act quickly. Indeed, I am open-minded about what shape that action should take, even though many people would be aware of my strident opposition to the war more broadly, and in particular opposition to Australia's decision to join in the invasion in 2003 which started this war.

My concern today is twofold. Firstly, how did Australia help to create this mess that we are now forced to deal with? How did we get ourselves into this mess? My second concern is how do we properly go about dealing with it. What are the proper processes for government and the parliament to make the decisions—the best decisions—to now come up with the best solutions?

Regarding how we got into this mess, let us not forget that Australia helped to start this war 11½ years ago when we joined in the invasion of Iraq. We removed Saddam Hussein, we dismantled their administration and we disbanded the Iraqi military. In fact, what we did—starting 11½ years ago—was help create the vacuum which was subsequently filled by terrible violence, the vacuum that very much is being filled today in parts of Iraq by the Islamic State.

Today's tragedy is all the more tragic because it did not need to be this way. There were other ways to deal with the odious Saddam Hussein 11½ years ago—for example, giving the weapons inspectors the extra time that they were asking for to search for these weapons of mass destruction. But instead, what did the Australian government do and, in particular, the then Prime Minister, John Howard, supported by the then foreign minister, Alexander Downer? They built a framework of lies to justify us joining in the start of this 11½-year war. People would well remember the nonsense about Iraq having a massive arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, that it was cooperating actively with Osama bin Laden and it was only a matter of time before those deadly weapons would be passed to the terrorists and used against us. Remember all the talk that Iraq could launch missiles at the United Kingdom within 40 minutes. All of these stories were subsequently debunked and found to be false.

More recently, we have made more mistakes. Australia, of course, has been diplomatically, at least, a very strong supporter of the anti-Assad rebels in Syria. Part of those rebels was, and is, the Islamic State. For quite a long period of time now, the Gillard government, then the brief Rudd government and now the Abbott government, have been giving succour to the very people who are now causing the problems in Iraq.

No wonder then, given history of this, that many people are questioning and are restless about what we are doing—and, in fact, about whether we are doing the right thing. That helps to explain the position of many people, which I hope to represent faithfully. The position of many people is that decisions like this really need to be decisions for the parliament. There is, I suggest, no more serious decision for a country than to go to war. And we are in a war now. In fact, some of the dishonesty is already emerging in recent days, talking about, 'We are involved in more humanitarian missions in Iraq.' The military would say that flying munitions and weapons around a battlefield is combat support. It is a key part of war fighting. So I reject the notion that what we are now doing is humanitarian. We are providing combat support operations for the Kurds, and it needs to be seen as that. That may well be with the approval of the vast majority of the parliament, perhaps including myself, if it were to be put to a vote. But let us be honest with the Australian people about what we are now involved in.

Hence I make the point—and I have been saying this consistently for some time now—that the decision to go to war and the decision to commit troops or military forces to a war zone, to put them in harm's way, really should be taken out of the hands of the Prime Minister. It really should be a decision for the parliament. When I have said this publicly in previous days, the Prime Minister has described my suggestion as a novel idea. I reject that criticism—or at least observation—by the Prime Minister. It is not novel to have the parliament directly involved in decisions about war and peace and sending troops or military forces to war. In fact, it is already the law of the land in countries as diverse as Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and even the United States. It is their law that the congress be involved in making decisions about sending troops into a conflict, and certainly declaring war. Yes, in the United States, sometimes presidents ignore that requirement, but it is their law. So if it is good enough for these countries that we hold in high regard, why do we in Australia still have this historical oddity, I suppose you could call it, where the Prime Minister can act virtually unilaterally and take us to war—as was the case in 2003 when John Howard, virtually unilaterally, took us to war in Iraq?

Even in the UK, it has become the convention that the House of Commons will be involved in decisions about becoming involved in a conflict. It is very telling that, last year, British Prime Minister David Cameron took to the House of Commons whether or not Britain should provide material support to the rebels in Syria. And the House of Commons, in what was a stunning defeat for the British Prime Minister, voted that down. It might have been a stunning defeat for the British Prime Minister, but I think it was a triumph for democracy in the United Kingdom. It is something we should seek to emulate, because the House of Commons decided that it would be a bad idea to provide support to the Syrian rebels, part of which is the Islamic State, which we are now battling in Iraq.

I make the point again that the situation is dire. We need to do something, and I am open minded about what we do. But is it not a crying shame that we helped to create this mess in the first place? Is it not a crying shame that we live in an otherwise wonderful country, but we still allow our Prime Minister to make decisions as weighty as this?

In closing, I think this issue highlights that the government is not as strong on national security as it would like us to believe. The fact is that it is not allowing a proper parliamentary debate on this matter; instead, it has shunted it up here to the Federation Chamber, where it will end with a whimper and there will not be a vote in the main chamber. I think the government is letting us down on national security by handling it this way—just as I think, more broadly, the government is letting us down in some other areas on national security.

The government is, understandably, wanting to progress some reforms to our security legislation, many of which are very good reforms. But when those suggestions came to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, and the committee reported last year, the committee in fact recommended that any reforms be prepared in detail, be put into an exposure draft, be put out for public comment and stakeholder consultation and be subject to proper parliamentary scrutiny. And that is not going to happen.

Another misstep: despite all the talk about home-grown terrorism and the fact that terrorists look for soft targets—we know that—the government is withdrawing the federal police from my own home state of Tasmania, including Hobart airport. That is another misstep by the government. But I hope that by highlighting these things publicly I can encourage the government to look to rectify them.

In closing, all I can say is that we can but hope that things turn around quickly for the better for the Iraqi people. A decade of UN sanctions followed by 11½ years of war, continuing violently to this day, have cost the lives of millions of Iraqis, and every one of those casualties is a human being with families and friends, and every one of those deaths is a tragedy. It brings me to tears that it did not have to be this way. But I genuinely hope that whatever the international community decides to do can at least bring some peace to some part of their country. And I say to the Iraqi people, as I have said to them before: please forgive us for what we have done to increase your suffering over the past 11½ years.

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