Peter Hendy (Eden-Monaro, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to have the opportunity to speak on the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2014. I will restrict my remarks to the reason for the bill in the wider strategic sense of government policy rather than go through the details of the clauses of the bill. I will leave that to the lawyers amongst us and the members of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, such as my friends the member for Bass, the member for Berowra and the member for Wannon. I already raised some issues that I want to address in a short speech in the Federation Chamber last week. As I said then, I want to speak from the wider perspective of someone who has had a career across the public and private sectors, has had a senior job working in the Defence portfolio and has also represented the Australian business community. I also want to simply speak as a person who represents in this place 100,000 New South Wales voters and some 140,000 residents in all, who are alarmed and extremely concerned about recent events here in Australia and overseas in places as diverse as Iraq, Syria, Canada and the United States.

The principal message I wanted to deliver in that previous speech relates to these wider perspectives. We need to boost our counterterrorism effectiveness because of a very specific threat. This issue has been brought home to us because of the actions of Islamic extremists. We now face a continuing threat. As the Prime Minister and senior ministers have informed us, there are at least 70 Australians that we know of currently fighting with terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq and at least 100 Australians who are supporting them. For Great Britain, it is more than 500, and our French ally is immensely concerned that there are over 1,000 French citizens or recent French residents who have joined the Islamic extremists. I will have a bit more to say about that soon.

We are now facing an enemy that calls itself, variously: the Islamic State—IS; the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant—ISIL; and the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham—ISIS. As I have previously noted, many in Arabic countries do not use any of those terms. They instead use the word Daesh, which is an acronym in the Arabic tongue of ISIS but also has a sarcastic negative undertone as it is similar to the Arabic word 'daes', which means 'one who crushes something underfoot'.

As I said in previous speeches, I have lived and worked in the Middle East in the gulf state of Bahrain myself. I was there with my wife, daughter and son. The Bahrainis are warm and hospitable people. I am proud of the fact that Bahrain has joined the coalition to help fight Islamic State. It is a significant development that a number of strongly Islamic countries like Bahrain are joining in the fight.

People should be very careful about how they express themselves so as not to create unnecessary divisions when we need to all work together in facing the current challenges. We need to talk in calm terms. Equally, I think we cannot simply ignore the fact that these extremist events have been done in the name of Islam, even if the mainstream Islamic community opposes what is being done. We need to work with the Islamic community, both here and abroad, to deal with this cancer that is damaging peaceful coexistence. Domestically, the Building Community Resilience grants program is a welcome part of the government's response to terrorism.

As I have previously said, there may be very dark days ahead. Let us hope this conflict with the Islamic terrorists is not protracted. Unfortunately, I think it very well could be. That is a daunting prospect. However, from what we can see now and for the short future over the horizon, we need to stay the course and commit our best effort to this ugly necessity.

Mentioning Bahrain, can I quote from the English language newspaper that I used to read every day when I lived there. It is the Gulf Daily News. It has more information on what Islamic State or ISIL has to say than what I have read in newspapers in this country. The belligerent words of ISIL are breathtaking in their viciousness. For example, the Gulf Daily News dated 17 November, only two weeks ago, reported Islamic State spokesmen making the following statements:

"To Obama, the dog of Rome, today we are slaughtering the soldiers of Bashar and tomorrow we will be slaughtering your soldiers," a masked militant says, predicting Washington would send more troops to the region to fight Islamic State.

"And with Allah's permission … the IS will soon … begin to slaughter your people in your streets."

The article went on to say:

An IS supporter in Syria said: "The message is very clear. This is what the West understands.

"They think they can scare us with their planes and their bombs.

"No, not us. We are out to impose the religion of God and, by his will, we will."

This is what we are dealing with.

As I have said before, what we are facing now, with Islamic extremism, is a new variation of terrorism. It is in some ways new because of who they are fighting and, of course, that 'who' is us—that is to say, the Western world and its civilisation based on human rights: most importantly, freedom of expression, freedom of religion and freedom of association. They are the beautiful children of classical liberalism we should all be proud of.

The new thing compared with past centuries is that the target of terrorism has changed. In the past, it may have been against certain established groups dominating societies, based on previous martial successes. Now it is against basic humanity. I think that there is a difference, and we cannot bow in the face of it. I was reminded recently of a statement by the famous left-wing author Gore Vidal, from 2002, when he stated that we cannot fight 'perpetual war for perpetual peace'. It is a nice-sounding bon mot. However, it is not an acceptable government strategy for the defence and security of the nation.

Instead, the classic phrase by General George Marshall, former US Army Chief of Staff and US Secretary of State, is a much more sensible guide for action. He popularised the phrase, 'The price of peace is eternal vigilance.' That should be our guiding strategy. This is not a case where one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter, as some leftists would have you believe. In this war, we are the fighters for freedom; there can be no doubt about that.

As a Christian I am particularly alarmed at the attacks by Islamic State on Christian targets and other religious minorities in the Iraq and Syrian communities. In fact, you will recall that the event that manifestly brought the issue before the world community was the genocidal attack on the Iraq-Syria border region.

I will quote at length from an email that one of my constituents, Mr Flynn, wrote to me at the time in anguish about what was going on. He wrote:

I am writing to you as my Federal member on an urgent matter.

I write to draw your attention to the unfolding crisis in Iraq, a country where too many of our troops died to defend democracy.

Muslim extremists who make up the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant in Iraq (ISIS) have recently taken over Sinjar, a Kurdish-controlled town with a large population of Yazidi, a Kurdish-speaking group that follows a pre-Islamic religion.

The advancing Muslim militants killed many of the Yazidi who remained in the town, part of a pattern by extremists of stamping out non-Islamic religious observation.

The Yazidi are one of Iraq's oldest minorities and, even as I write, thousands of these people (UN agencies estimate somewhere between 30,000 and 40,000) are stranded on Mount Sinjar as ISIS surround them and cut them off from all food and water.

These people are dying.

Estimates given to the Iraqi parliament are that 500 Yazidi including 40 children have been killed in the past week.

Hundreds more are dying of thirst and starvation.

The brutal fact is that the Yazidi are being slaughtered by the extremist leaders of the ISIS because they don't conform to their Muslim religious beliefs.

A report to the Iraqi parliament says that Yazidi women and girls are being taken as slaves by the ISIS and sold in the slave markets.

This is barbarism—a campaign of genocide against the Yazidi.

To put it bluntly, they are being exterminated off the face of the earth.

As well the ISIS has launched a pogrom against Christians in areas now under its control.

Recently Christians from the town of Qaraqosh fled after it was taken by fighters from the ISIS.

Qaraqosh is a Christian village of 50,000 people and it has been cut off from water and electricity ever since the fighters of the ISIS took Mosul.

The most recent news out of Qaragosh is alarming.

On Wednesday night, overwhelmed Kurdish Peshmerga forces left their posts.

As a result, the town, as well as a string of neighbouring Christian villages, fell to the ISIS.

What is deeply concerning is that under the rule of the ISIS, Christians face a stark choice: convert to Islam or die.

In the last month, every Iraqi Christian has left Mosul, which was once home to a Christian population of 60,000.

Peter, I write today to express my alarm and deep concern about these events and to implore you to please raise your voice, the voice of the good people of the electorate of Eden Monaro, to urge your parliamentary colleagues in the government to take a stand against the pogrom being waged against Christian communities and the slaughter of the Yazidi in that blighted country.

My constituent Mr Flynn went on to write:

Peter I can't accept that the Australian Government should do nothing about these matters.

I don't believe it is morally justifiable for Australia to stand mute on the sidelines while this sickening series of atrocities is being waged against persecuted minorities in Iraq.

After all Iraq is a country where our servicemen died defending the principles of democracy and freedom.

To do nothing now is to say our servicemen died in vain; that their sacrifice is meaningless.

Since Mr Flynn wrote that letter we have acted.

We have joined a coalition of scores of countries to fight this evil. We have sent troops to Iraq, including our very best special forces, and RAAF fighter planes and ancillary crew. The Prime Minister, foreign minister and the entire government have been acting. Unfortunately, we are a long way from resolution. The bill we are discussing today on counter-terrorism matters is part of that response. It is a vital part of that response.

As I said earlier, there are as many as 170 potential Australians fighting for IS and its groups. The French government said that more than 1,000 of their nationals or residents are involved. As the Gulf Daily News reported, on 13 September this year:

The top US intelligence agency has sharply raised its estimate of the number of Islamic State fighters in Iraq and Syria to between 20,000 and 31,500, from its estimate in June of about 10,000.

A CIA spokesman said the new assessment reflected stronger recruitment by the radical Islamist group since June "following battlefield successes and the declaration of a caliphate".

I will state again: this is a major national security threat.

We cannot take our eye off the ball. If we are to deal with these matters we must have legislation like this. We must put resources into the fight in the Middle East, and we are doing that. However, as a matter of utmost priority, we also need to work with the Islamic community so that these young men and women are not recruited to these causes in the name of Islam. I thank the House and commend this bill.

See this speech in context