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

I am grateful to my friend and colleague the member for Wills for bringing this important motion forward for debate. In 2015, there continue to be many serious and dangerous conflicts around the world. Australia is directly involved in some and affected by others. The truth is that we have an interest in supporting peace and reducing conflict wherever it occurs.

The member for Wills is absolutely right to say that there is no security without collective security. History shows, and all our recent experience has confirmed, that without a shared approach and a shared commitment to building a lasting peace conflicts simply tend to morph from one set of antipathies to another. Yesterday's ally by proxy often becomes tomorrow's enemy,; and all those so-called solutions that have involved arming one group to balance the violence of another inevitably prolong the violence and inevitably see the weapons turned against those who supplied them in the first place.

On a number of occasions I have talked about the kinds of structural and procedural changes that can and should be made in Australia to improve our approach to regional and global security and to securing our own national security. These include a greater commitment to active and constructive participation in multilateral fora and associations, especially the United Nations, and in regional multilateral organisations with the UN's oversight, including using the responsibility to protect principle as a vehicle to protect civilians. Necessary change must also involve a preparedness to improve our own decision-making processes, for instance, through the introduction of a war powers act to ensure proper parliamentary consideration of any assignment of Australian forces overseas.

As I noted on 22 September last year in this place, it was profoundly disappointing that Australia, which at the time held a seat on the UN Security Council, did not raise the matter of the global response to ISIS and Middle East security within the council before committing special forces and equipment to the US-led coalition mission, which remains open-ended with no coherent objective or exit strategy.

Just this weekend, Australians have read in the Australian newspaper that in late November last year the Prime Minister raised the idea of unilaterally sending 3,500 Australian ground troops into Iraq. The Prime Minister has denied this report as false and fanciful. Nevertheless, it only reinforces the need for parliamentary involvement in decisions to send Australian troops to war. In my view, it is preposterous in the 21st century that such a significant decision should reside in the hands of a small group within the executive, made up only of the Prime Minister and those he chooses to consult with, under outdated, leftover royal prerogative powers, rather than require a decision taken by the elected representatives of the Australian people as a collective.

The final point in the motion goes to the very worthy recommendation by the Joint Standing Committee for Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, of which I was a member at the time, in its report Inquiry into Australia’s overseas representation—punching below our weight? of establishing a mediation unit within the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The committee's recommendation grew out of evidence to the inquiry presented by Professor John Langmore regarding the Norwegian model of peaceful conflict resolution. This is a model whereby a mediation unit within the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs provides good offices and mediation to other states to help prevent conflict, thereby reducing the potential need for peacekeeping forces, reconstruction and emergency aid, and development efforts that inevitably follow an outbreak of conflict. The committee considered that Australia could play an effective role as a regional leader in mediation and conflict prevention in South-East Asia and Pacific regions where mediation is poorly resourced.

While conflict between nations is still too common, it is conflict within nations that represents some of the worst and most protracted harm. We only have to consider recent events in Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq to understand how intrastate or subnational conflict causes great damage. Of course, that damage is not confined to the borders of the countries that suffer civil unrest.

In my former role as Minister for International Development, I was pleased to have the opportunity to be briefed by a research team from the Asia Foundation on their report titled The contested corners of Asia: subnational conflict and international development assistance. The report begins with the sobering observation that:

Subnational conflict is the most widespread, deadly and enduring form of conflict in Asia. Over the past 20 years, there have been 26 subnational conflicts in South and Southeast Asia, affecting half of the countries in this region.

Of course, Australia has played a constructive and effective role in helping to address subnational conflict, as was the case in the Solomon Islands, where our leadership of the coordinated international effort involving 15 contributing nations through the RAMSI mission, with the support of the Pacific Island Forum, helped create peace and stability out of chaos, violence and danger. It was a privilege, as minister, to be present in Honiara in 2013 to mark the 10th anniversary of the RAMSI mission.

As this motion makes clear, it is only through cooperation and shared commitment to peace within and between countries that we in Australia, as part of the global community, can hope to experience and contribute to greater peace in our region and the world over.

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