Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I seek leave to move the following motion:

That the House:

(1) notes that:

(a) on 19 November 2020 the Australian Defence Force's Afghanistan Inquiry Report was released, revealing shocking revelations of war crimes allegedly committed by ADF personnel;

(b) Major David McBride had been bravely warning Defence about command failings and a deliberate blindness to the conduct of the war in internal reports since 2014 and of course his career was ruined;

(c) when the ADF took no effective action after a multitude of approaches from him, Major McBride disclosed information to the ABC, which formed the basis for The Afghan Files, which raised the alarm on all of the matters now before us in the Afghanistan Inquiry Report;

(d) Mr McBride has been charged with numerous Commonwealth offences as a direct response to his heroic whistleblowing; and

(e) Mr McBride now faces the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison; and

(2) calls on the Government to drop all charges against Mr McBride.

Leave not granted.

I move:

That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent the following motion being moved immediately—That the House:

(1) notes that:

(a) on 19 November 2020 the Australian Defence Force's Afghanistan Inquiry Report was released, revealing shocking revelations of war crimes allegedly committed by ADF personnel;

(b) Major David McBride had been bravely warning Defence about command failings and a deliberate blindness to the conduct of the war in internal reports since 2014 and of course his career was ruined;

(c) when the ADF took no effective action after a multitude of approaches from him, Major McBride disclosed information to the ABC, which formed the basis for The Afghan Files, which raised the alarm on all of the matters now before us in the Afghanistan Inquiry Report;

(d) Mr McBride has been charged with numerous Commonwealth offences as a direct response to his heroic whistleblowing; and

(e) Mr McBride now faces the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison; and

(2) calls on the Government to drop all charges against Mr McBride.

We must deal with this matter immediately because David McBride must not be allowed to suffer for one minute longer. I remind the honourable members of the facts of this matter. David McBride is a specialist in international law. In 2009 he joined the ADF and served as a legal officer in the Special Operations Command. He was deployed to Afghanistan twice, in 2011 and, crucially, in 2013. Whilst serving in Afghanistan he became aware of a serious, systemic issue in our defence forces—in particular, the unlawful killing of civilians, unarmed adults and children. In 2014 he attempted to raise these issues with his superiors, including Major General Hurley, who is now the Governor-General, and was ignored. He then went to the Australian Federal Police and made a formal complaint, and that was ignored too. He then went to the minister and parliamentarians and was again ignored. When no real or effective action was taken, Mr McBride provided information to the ABC in 2016 which formed the basis for the Afghan files. He felt that he had no other option but to go public.

David McBride has been charged with five offences for disclosing the information to the ABC, including theft of Commonwealth property, three counts of breaching the Defence Act, and the unauthorised disclosure of information. He now faces the prospect of 60 years in prison—effectively a life sentence. We need to suspend standing orders and to deal with this motion immediately because, as I've said, David McBride must not suffer one minute longer. We need to start treating whistleblowers in this country as heroes and not as villains. Not only should we urgently suspend standing orders and discuss this motion; just as urgently we should start talking about how we start celebrating, protecting and supporting our whistleblowers, because it's bigger than just David McBride.

What about Witness K and Bernard Collaery, two men also before a court for bravely bringing the public's attention, directly or indirectly, to the illegal intelligence operation conducted by the Australian Secret Intelligence Service when they bugged the East Timor parliament building in a shameless effort to give Australia an advantage in privileged joint treaty negotiations? What about Julian Assange, a man who bravely publicised hard evidence of US war crimes in Iraq? Who can forget the grainy black and white footage shot from a US attack helicopter gunning down Reuters journalists? Why does the government applaud the people who have spoken out in the Special Air Service Regiment for shining a light on alleged war crimes when at the same time it's so determined to have someone else shipped off to the US in a federal penitentiary for the rest of their life for publicising evidence of war crimes? There are others like Richard Boyle, the whistleblower from the Australian Taxation Office who has spoken out on account of misconduct within the ATO.

I ask honourable members to understand this: whistleblowers don't do it for themselves. They don't do it for reward. It's hard, but they do it because it's the right thing to do. All of these whistleblowers I've referred to—that's all they've tried to do. All David McBride has tried to do is to do the right thing. There's no fame, there's no money, there's no certificate on the wall. It's just the knowledge that they've done the right thing and they can sleep at night. In this country whistleblowers lose their job, they lose their friends, they lose their money and they often lose their lives. There's nothing in this for David McBride. So why is the government going after him when all he did, year after year, internally, with the AFP, with politicians, was to try to point out to anyone who would listen that there was wrongdoing going on in Afghanistan?

So, Deputy Speaker, we must suspend standing orders. We do need to debate this motion. We do need to call the government to account on this and to encourage the government, in the strongest possible terms, to drop the charges against one of Australia's great whistleblowers. David McBride tried to do the right thing; he exhausted all other options. The government can't say that he had avenues under the Public Interest Disclosure Act because the Public Interest Disclosure Act explicitly carves out national security issues. He had no whistleblower protection. He tried to do the right thing. He went to a number of people internally, he went to the AFP, he went to the minister, he alerted parliamentarians, and we all failed him. By suspending standing orders, by bringing this matter on and by having a debate to agree among ourselves that the charges should be dropped, finally we would bring some justice to this matter and finally we would do the right thing by a brave Australian whistleblower. I will leave it at that, because I want to leave time within this half hour for other members to speak.

The government is misreading the community badly on this. I hope at least the opposition and my crossbench colleagues will join me on this, because I think we speak for the community. We speak for a community that is outraged at the allegations, which were revealed in recent weeks, about the misconduct of special forces in Afghanistan. Yes, those soldiers should have their day in court for the charges to be brought against them and for them to defend themselves, but they're the only people that should be in court—not the whistleblower that shone a light on it in the first place. The soldiers who have been accused of misconduct should be in court.

While I'm on it, let's not strip units of honours and awards that were earned overwhelmingly by good people fighting hard and heroically for this country. It is completely inappropriate to be talking of stripping a Meritorious Unit Citation on account of the misconduct of hopefully a very small group of people. Let's stop this sanctimonious hand-wringing about the misconduct that we've seen from a number of people in this place who then turn around and want to give a life sentence to the whistleblower who started the whole process of shining a light on the alleged atrocities in Afghanistan. I'll leave it there.

I call on the government to support this motion. If you won't support this motion, you better have a damn good explanation for it, because the community would be absolutely outraged if you didn't support this motion. I'll be on the barricades with the community, shining a light on the government's position on this, because it's rank hypocrisy. There's all this hand-wringing about these alleged atrocities by troopers, junior NCOs and senior NCOs in Afghanistan when at the same time you want to jail for life the man who did the right thing—David McBride. In my opinion, he's a hero. The charges should be dropped. He should be treated as a hero, not treated as a villain. That's what's required.

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