Robert McClelland (Barton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Has the Prime Minister seen comments by respected defence analyst Neil James, who wrote in the latest edition of Defender, the journal of the Australian Defence Association:

The deeper moral question is what kind of person would have no apparent ethical qualms, or commonsense reservations, about contravening the very UN sanctions that fellow Australians were enforcing under difficult and at times even dangerous conditions.

... Never again must any Australian government risk the well-being, safety and loyalty of the men and women of the defence force in such a manner.

I ask the Prime Minister: why has the government failed its legal and moral responsibility to ensure that the dangerous work of our armed forces in enforcing UN sanctions against Iraq was not undermined?

John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, may I say through you, in response to the member for Barton, that I have read those remarks made by Mr James. Mr James is a person I respect a lot. He is a person whose public comments, I think it can be fairly said, do not reflect a bias one way or the other as far as Australian politics are concerned. I think his proposition of lack of moral fibre in relation to people who deliberately set out to breach the sanctions imposed by the United Nations, or connived in that, is perfectly correct, and I support it. I do not agree for a moment that the government has been guilty of that conduct—absolutely not.