Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

I am grateful for this opportunity to discuss the decision by the government to provide assistance in the fight against Islamic State. But I am disappointed that the opportunity for parliamentary consideration remains a fundamentally token gesture. We have had more than a decade to reflect on the folly of 2003. Yet nothing much has changed. The executive function of the Australian government should not be unfettered in this area of decision making. It is simply too complex and its consequences too serious for that to be the case. At this point, let me be clear, I do believe these circumstances, with Islamic State perpetrating atrocities in a widening zone within Iraq, raise a legitimate option of Australia's involvement in an international humanitarian response. But, there are two key matters that should be resolved every time there is reason for Australia to consider military involvement or action in circumstances where our security is not directly under threat.

The first is the question of the basis on which we are involved. For, clearly, Australia should not make a military commitment without a legitimate basis for doing so either in the form of a UN Security Council resolution or through an appropriately constituted request from the Iraqi government. There is no UN resolution on this matter, though I note the supportive statements from the UN Secretary-General on international cooperation to address the threat in northern Iraq. I am concerned, however, that there has been no apparent attempt by Australia, as a member of the Security Council, to bring this matter before the United Nations. As a country that played a pivotal role through Labor's Doc Evatt in drafting the UN Charter, which provides for the Security Council to have the primary responsibility for international security, and as a nation that fought so hard to have a seat at the table, it is surprising that we would not raise the matter in that forum for urgent discussion, if not resolution. I note that Don Rothwell, Professor of International Law at the ANU, has made comments this week to the effect that Australia, as a member of the Security Council, has a responsibility to address the council.

On the issue of a formal request from the government of Iraq, the conflicting versions presented by Iraq's ambassador to Australia in the last few days on this point are far from reassuring. The ambassador initially suggested that the delivery of arms to the Kurdish regional government was akin to a foreign nation supplying weapons to the Victorian government without the sanction of the national government in the case of a threat to Australian sovereignty. Later, he adjusted his position. In any case the analogy is valid, and it begs a sequence of questions about our involvement and its potential consequences. What are the possible side-effects of arming the Peshmergas in Kurdistan? Does this increase or decrease the likelihood of a stable and unified Iraq? Can we be confident that the supply of arms will not subsequently be the source of further conflict, civil war or atrocities?

The complexities of the situation in Iraq and the region are brilliantly described by Peter Harling in an article entitled 'IS back in business' in Le Mond Diplomatique this week. Surely, these issues deserve to be aired and examined more fully both within forums such as the UN and here in our own parliament. Yet, at present the community is being asked by the government to take these decisions on trust. Just look where that got us in 2003.

Finally, in terms of the basis for our involvement I acknowledge the doctrine of the 'responsibility to protect', which aims to save civilians from imminent genocidal danger in situations where their government is not able or willing to do so. This principle was explained in an article in The Australian on Tuesday by former foreign minister and former head of the International Crisis Group Gareth Evans, who deserves significant credit for helping to achieve the unanimous adoption of R2P by the UN General Assembly in 2005.

Mr Evans observed that the generally accepted criteria for a military response in the context of R2P are the three elements: legality, legitimacy and likely effectiveness. He considered that the request of the Iraqi government was sufficient to satisfy the legality requirement in the absence of a UN Security Council resolution. He then noted the criteria for legitimacy and likely effectiveness as being that the seriousness of the atrocities that are occurring or are in prospect must justify a military response; that the response has a primarily humanitarian motive; that no lesser response is likely to be effective in averting the harm; that the proposed response is proportional to the threat; and that the intervention will be effective, doing more good than harm. Mr Evans considered that 'all these bases seem to be covered here'—a positive judgement to be sure, but also a rather tentative one. Mr Evans cautioned that it would be very difficult to make a case for Australia to do more, saying that to do so would be to take us back into uncharted waters, while to do any less would abdicate our common humanity.

I note too, the view presented in The Conversation this week by Kevin Boreham—a lecturer in international law at ANU—that, while humanitarian missions by the Royal Australian Air Force in Iraq are in accordance with international law, continued political scrutiny of further Australian military action in a highly fluid situation is wholly justified.

The need for continued political scrutiny is the second fundamental issue to be resolved when Australia considers its military involvements. I have consistently argued—including in my first speech to parliament—for parliament to have a properly structured role in any decision to send Australian troops to war in the absence of a UN mandate. Questions about the basis and extent of military involvement in the struggle against Islamic State and the possible consequences are being asked and debated across the world. Why are we not doing the same in the House of Representatives as a precursor to the commitment of military assistance rather than here in the Federation Chamber as an afterthought to that commitment being made? I do not advance these issues in the interests of nit-picking or nay-saying but in the interests of avoiding the serious and harmful mistakes that have been made in the past, most notably in 2003 and before that in Vietnam.

The courageous speech by Labor leader Arthur Calwell as Leader of the Opposition in 1965 when the government had made the decision to send Australian troops to Vietnam contained a cautionary message: 'When the drums beat and the trumpets sound the voice of reason and right can only be heard in the land with difficulty.'

In Tuesday's The Australian,Russell Trood, a former senator for whom I have great respect, suggested—and I acknowledge that this view is supported by the majority of my Labor colleagues—that the prerogative of Australian executive government, when it comes to making military commitments in the national interest, should effectively be absolute and that any form of parliamentary approval process would constitute an abdication of the natural authority of the Prime Minister and an outsourcing of the responsibility placed on a government by its electoral mandate. To my mind there are two issues with this argument.

The first is that executive power in our system of government does not exist separately from the parliament. Indeed, executive authority is effectively derived from and constituted by a workable parliamentary majority and is technically supplied by the recognition of that majority by the Queen's representative in the Governor-General. The majority is formed by members who are each elected to parliament in their own right and who each have the power of precisely one vote in the House of Representatives—including the Prime Minister.

The second is the idea that by winning an election—that is by having the support of enough members of the House of Representatives—the Prime Minister, with or without consultation involving her or his cabinet, somehow acquires the right to a species of executive power that cannot or should not be legislatively constrained or otherwise made subject to parliamentary process. In my view, that is a position without constitutional basis or logic.

Finally, I would note that the argument advanced by Russell Trood and his colleague Anthony Bergin, that parliamentary approval could be subject to the whim of minor parties, of course only applies if one of the major parties does not support military involvement. If this is the situation then perhaps the case for military action has not been well made out—as with Vietnam, and Iraq in 2003.

On the same page of the same paper, Gareth Evans, as mentioned earlier, gives his reasons for believing that Australia's involvement is right and that it is consistent with the responsibility to protect doctrine—again I do not disagree. But that is not the same thing as accepting that the Prime Minister and cabinet ought to make that judgement alone. Indeed in 2006, the UK House of Lords select committee, in a report titled Waging war: parliament's role and responsibility, concluded:

… the exercise of the Royal prerogative by the Government to deploy armed force overseas is outdated and should not be allowed to continue as the basis for legitimate war-making in our 21st century democracy. Parliament's ability to challenge the executive must be protected and strengthened. There is a need to set out more precisely the extent of the Government's deployment powers, and the role Parliament can—and should—play in their exercise.

This is not about abrogating the decision-making authority of the government of the day—it is about ensuring that our government, any government, makes the best and most responsible decisions, especially when it comes to life and death matters like this. The parliament is the most direct expression of the will of the Australian people and that fact should be honoured and respected.

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