Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a privilege to rise on this important statement by the Prime Minister in relation to the unfolding events in Iraq. I congratulate the Prime Minister for his strong leadership on the international stage and on behalf of all Australians in what is perhaps one of the most disturbing international crises of recent times given the unfolding humanitarian disaster that we are witnessing in Iraq. I also thank and compliment the Foreign Minister for her enormously important work internationally in advocating for all decent and reasonable states to get involved in this unfolding humanitarian disaster. I thank the opposition—in particular, the member for Melbourne Ports, who has a strong voice in relation to these matters—who have responsibility supported the Australian government in the completely bipartisan matter of providing aid, rescuing people and saving human life.

I also thank profoundly the Royal Australian Air Force and the crews that are risking their lives in delivering aid. As we have seen recently in newspaper reports, they are delivering aid to save people from absolute calamity. Those crews are serving our nation in a way which, we should all acknowledge, is the ultimate in human bravery and they are delivering for us in very dangerous and complex circumstances. It really is impressive to see the machinery of government in Australia swing so well and so quickly behind what is going on in the world—our Defence Force, our security services and all of those agencies that have the capacity to respond so quickly and effectively to unfolding crises.

We stand in very good stead internationally as a small nation that constantly achieves well above our population size, our economy size and our Defence Force size and is always contributing to the needs of humanity. I think most Australians acknowledge that this is a great role for Australia to fill on the world stage, particularly at a time when we hold a vital UN Security Council seat. We are behaving very responsibly, but not just when we hold that seat. I think Australia always seeks to lead the way in supporting and helping human beings.

We have heard so much about the serious nature of what the ISIL movement represents. I acknowledge in this place that it is genocide—the deliberate and forced execution of minority groups. Predominantly we are speaking about Christian groups—and I have seen so many of them in the suburbs of greater Sydney. Assyrian Christians, Chaldeans, Yazidis, Mandaeans and other religious and racial groups in Iraq are the subject of ongoing violence, intimidation, harassment and discrimination on purely religious and ethnic grounds. This is violence of the most abhorrent and serious nature—profound genocide which has exercised the world's attention.

I thank the Americans and President Obama for their intervention on behalf of those people. In particular, the missile strikes have been critical in turning the tide on the ISIL movement's reach. Of course, the vexed issue of arming different groups and minorities is once again with us.

What the Prime Minister said is true—Australians are understandably apprehensive at the risk of being involved in another conflict. He made that point to take account of all of the concerns that people have about drawing our nation into other people's conflicts and concerns. However, the Prime Minister made the very compelling case that, if we do nothing, we will leave millions of people exposed to death, starvation, forced conversion and ethnic cleansing. I think that most Australians, when presented with this case, would accept that, with the capacity to do such good and ensure that millions of people will not die or be forced to convert or be ethnically cleansed, we should act.

Hence we are joining with the United States to deal with the immediate humanitarian relief and logistical support requests—and I also acknowledge the British, French, Canadian and Italian aircraft involved in the humanitarian aid drops. The Prime Minister has indicated that, like the Americans, we will not be committing to combat troops on the ground. I, like the member for Melbourne Ports, say to the minority parties in the Australian parliament—the Greens and others—that this is not the time for a debate. We are having a discussion here today to acknowledge the support of the Australian government, but international events that move at the pace that they do require the executive to have the authority of the Australian people and the parliament to act first and consider later. It is entirely appropriate that the government has taken decisions to enable the RAAF to provide humanitarian aid. Indeed, as the member for Melbourne Ports eloquently put it, you would have thought that the Greens would have welcomed that Australia was intervening in a way to prevent such profound human rights abuses, such as genocide and ethnic cleansing. It is a welcome thing indeed for most Australians.

An honourable member: Mass rapes.

And mass rapes—all of the things we have heard about from so many members. Indeed, I do think that it is not the time to be having a domestic dispute about the nature of our debating here in the parliament when you are required as a government to use your executive authority to enable the support mechanisms, the supply mechanisms—all of the things that can require early action to ensure that you have the capacity to intervene. That early action is absolutely vital.

Once again I would like to thank, in particular, the opposition for joining with the government in such a strong way to ensure we have a united front as a country to the world. I know that many of the minority communities in Australia are so grateful to this parliament for what we are doing. We have, of course, many requests before us. I want to also thank the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection for announcing that, under the special humanitarian visa program, 4,400 places will be made available, with the capacity and potential, hopefully, for more at some point in the future.

Given the nature of the crisis, it is not the case that Australia can solve this individually. This will require United Nations action. I want to acknowledge the requests from many of these minority groups, particularly in Sydney, for the concept of a UN safe haven: a place where particularly the Christian minorities and the Syrians, who have been removed completely from the Nineveh Plains and their homes, can exist in peaceful safety, considering that there is really—even the Americans confessed—at this stage no early strategic goal that we have in mind in relation to the future of Iraq, other than saving lives, protecting people, stopping mass genocide and interdicting these people of great evil.

The next step, in my view, and in the view of many of these minorities, should be the United Nations working to provide a safe haven for the many hundreds of thousands of refugees that there will now be from the Nineveh Plains in northern Iraq. If it cannot be the defeat of ISIL, it will have to be the protection of civilians, and that will need a particular area and region. The world will not have the capacity to protect large regions of any country in particular. So it is a reasonable request. I know that the foreign minister is in negotiation with all of her counterparts in the world at the moment about how to best address the upcoming crisis—when winter hits, all of these civilians are out of their homes and displaced—and how to deal with the unfolding humanitarian crisis affecting so many hundreds of thousands of civilians.

It is a privilege today to speak to the Prime Minister's statement. I thank the Prime Minister and the foreign minister for their strong leadership and all members of this House who have supported what I think is a great role for this country to play on the international stage. Of course, Australia remains committed to protecting civilians' lives and the human rights of individuals anywhere in the world where we see these mass abuses of human rights in civilian populations.

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