Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Hansard source

Afghanistan; Afghanistan wars—a foul flame for moths of the most arduous and brutal battles noted through history, whether by Darius I, by Alexander the Great in 330 BC or in the evacuation of Kabul and the engagement by Soviet forces in 1979 for a decade. And now, for us, Afghanistan has been a moth to the flame of nefarious and evil purposes availing themselves of the cover between mountains, between tribes and between powers. In that cover they have managed to promulgate the fear and the terror which they have put forward on other people within the world.

I commend the comments of the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, with a few minor exceptions, which I hope to address. The first question has to be: why did we get involved? We got involved because of the fact that a terrorist organisation drove two planes into the World Trade Center. We got involved because a terrorist organisation drove a plane into the Pentagon. We got involved because they tried to drive one into the Capitol—or maybe it was into the White House. They failed only by reason of the exceptional actions of those who were on the plane, who put forward their own lives to crash that plane.

We got involved because of the actions of terrorists—like at the Sari nightclub, where 88 Australians were murdered. We got involved because of the bombings at the embassy in Jakarta. We got involved because of the bombings at the Marriott hotel. We got involved because of the 56 lives that were lost in the buses in London and the terrorist attacks there. We got involved because of the bombings in the African embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.

The role of the infantry corps in Australia is to seek out and close with the enemy, to kill or capture him and to repel attack by day or by night regardless of season, weather or terrain. It's to seek out and close, to protect Australians. Our troops sought out and closed with the enemy in Afghanistan so we did not have to engage with them in Sydney, or in Melbourne or in Adelaide. These people sought out and closed with the enemy because of the protection of the Australian people. These people sought out and closed with the enemy because we honour our agreements, and in the 70th year of the ANZUS treaty we showed the worth of our mettle by standing with our allies in the United States to make sure that we did not let this obscene form of terrorism go unchecked.

Right now there are members of the Australian Defence Force who continue to put their lives on the line. We are making sure that we offer the people the same sort of protection and the same sort of freedoms that we have here. We honour those who worked in the diplomatic service. We honour those who, right now, are trying to give to people the same life, the same freedoms and the same protections which we in this nation take as a birthright. We recognise that we have parliamentarians—the Minister for Defence, the shadow minister for defence, the shadow minister for veterans' affairs and the Minister for Veterans' Affairs—who are making sure that we see this task to the end.

To the 39,000 Australians who served, to the 41 who died, to the hundreds who were maimed and to those who continue on that path to deal with the torments of what they experienced, we want you to know that we will always respect you. To those who died, we will never forget you. Lest we forget.

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