Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party, Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

It is a great pleasure to rise in this House and support the member opposite, the member for Kingston, on her motion recognising the 70th anniversary of Australia's first peacekeeping mission. As one of three or four peacekeepers in the House—a couple each side, which was tremendous to see—I have great pleasure in speaking on the motion and noting that Australian peacekeepers have served for 70 years. Over two million Australians have served in uniform since Federation. Of those, 70,000, or seven per cent, have served in the peacekeeping field in peacemaking, peace monitoring, peace enforcing and the full gamut of UN operations.

Our peacekeeping operations go back a long way. I have just gotten back from the Middle East—having been there far too many times—and I again touched base with our UNSTO forces. We've had peacekeepers on the three borders—to the east, north and south—of Israel for a long, long time. We have been guarding the peace, after the Camp David Accords and the Oslo Accords, in the Sinai Peninsula, where right now we have a whole bunch of Australian soldiers in Camp North, some 15 kilometres south of the Gaza Strip. We have 11 or 12 peacekeepers as part of the UNSTO, the UN Supervisory Truce Organization, monitoring the technical fence on the Golan Heights and north on the Lebanese borders. We have just withdrawn peacekeepers from RAMSI in the Solomon Islands, and, of course, after so many decades in Cyprus, the peacekeepers have come home. We continue to have 25 soldiers in the Sudan and soldiers, sailors and air men and women in other points right across the world.

We are a heavy-lifting nation when it comes to monitoring peace, especially when it comes to the Middle East. On 25 April 1915, when we stormed the beaches at Anzac Cove, a very small group of flyers had left Bombay en route for the Middle East and in June they landed at Basra in southern Iraq. In July 1915, the Mesopotamian Half Flight was in combat operations in the Battle of Baghdad. For 102 years we have had soldiers, sailors, air men and women, both permanent and reserve, in combat operations and peacekeeping in the Middle East.

Shortly, we'll celebrate the 100th anniversary of the charge of the 4th Light Horse Brigade at Beersheba, on 31 October. I have just come back from Israel, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration on 2 November 1917, which of course led to the liberation of Jerusalem on 11 December 1917. The Balfour Declaration would not have been possible without the Australian Light Horse. The liberation of Jerusalem at the end of the third battle of Gaza would not have been possible without the Australians. The move of the British mandate which would lead to the foundation of the state of Israel, I argue, would have been severely hampered without the work of the Australian Light Horse. So, for 102 years we have operated in the Middle East and we do so now, continually, through our peacekeepers.

My service was in Bougainville. Others in the House served in East Timor, Afghanistan and Somalia, respectively. It's a long chain of service men and women who have served their nation and served here in parliament, but today in the House—and I thank the member opposite for her motion—we rise as one to mark the 70th anniversary and salute the 70,000 of our finest men and women who have served and will continue to serve. The government that we replaced, this government and the government that will replace this government—governments of all persuasions—have always held dear the notion that we are part of the international community and that we will step up and do our part in the service of peace. We struggle for bipartisanship, but for this government—not more than those that came before or those that will come after—this is one area we can truly embrace, and we acknowledge the service that has been done and the service that will come.

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