Bruce Baird (Cook, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Minister for Foreign Affairs. Would the minister update the House on democratic developments in Iraq? Are there any alternative views?

Alexander Downer (Mayo, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

First of all can I thank the honourable member for Cook for his question. The Australian government welcomes the certification on 10 February of the final election results coming from Iraq’s general election on 15 December. I congratulate all those who have been elected to what is called the Council of Representatives. What is particularly significant here is that the turnout in this election was 70 per cent. This was of course a voluntary election. In the face of the intimidation of the insurgents and the terrorists—in spite of all of that—there was a massive turnout. Now it is up to the elected representatives to work together to form a broadly representative government. The first meeting of the Council of Representatives will elect a speaker and deputy speakers, and then it will elect a president and vice-president, with a two-thirds majority. The president and vice-president will call for nominees for the position of prime minister. The United Iraqi Alliance has already voted. It voted yesterday for the current interim prime minister, Prime Minister Jafari, to be their candidate, having defeated the vice-president, Mahdi, 64 to 63, I think, with two abstentions.

Obviously the new Iraqi government will have tough challenges. But the point is that this is a government which will have democratic legitimacy, where the ordinary people of Iraq, in the face of the insurgents, in the face of the terrorists, have gone out to vote and to support the whole process of democracy. It simply underlines the point that it is important that we in this country stand by the people of Iraq and the democratically elected parliament of Iraq and that this parliament stand by its democratic counterpart in Iraq. I cannot think of anything, in relation to Iraq, more important for us to do.

The opposition’s position is that we should support democracy in Afghanistan but we should abandon democracy in Iraq. I do not know about any of my colleagues here, but if they can see the logic of that I do not think anyone else can. There is no logic in supporting democracy in Afghanistan and simultaneously abandoning democracy in Iraq—except, of course, a view that: ‘Iraq is not very popular, so let’s abandon the less popular one and support the more popular one.’ Only a weak leader of a political party would do that.