Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I turn to the more narrow focus of the issue of Afghanistan I would like to talk about one of the things that parliamentarians have to understand about this deployment. Again I notice the long list of opposition speakers in this debate on the Afghanistan deployment and note that on this very serious issue we have an absence of government speakers. I find that very disappointing. This is the most dangerous deployment Australia is undertaking. You would know, Mr Deputy Speaker Lindsay, from our recent deployment to RIMPAC, the naval exercises of allied fleets in the Pacific, that we need to understand about the lives of our service people.

Last night, Mr Deputy Speaker, you had the pleasure, as did I, of joining a group of shipmates from HMAS Manoora, who did not gather to sing sea shanties but to reminisce about a wonderful time on HMAS Manoora, with the captain of that ship. We were well treated by the sailors. And again on HMAS Stuart we were treated very kindly by the sailors and the captain. It was a most valuable insight into the lives and difficulties of our service personnel.

We celebrated last night with our good shipmate Lieutenant Jillian Brownlie, who ran an extremely competent program for the Australian Navy, with six federal MPs on this very exhausting but important Australian Defence Force Parliamentary Program. I would encourage all my parliamentary colleagues to participate in this program, because it leads participants to comprehend military events that perhaps they would never have understood. With so few people currently in the Australian parliament having direct military experience, when this country is spending billions of dollars on the defence forces and sending people into real danger such as in Afghanistan, this program allows us to experience in a serious way what we are doing.

Certainly, like you, Mr Deputy Speaker, I have a much greater experience of the Australian Navy and the way it operates now, after seeing the difficulties that people have working on HMAS Manoora. They do a wonderful job. We worked with people from all levels of the ship, from observing helicopter operations through to the hot work in engineering and some of the more humble work in the galleys as well as duties on the bridge. But they all made it possible for Australia to send transport and armoured vehicles to our Army when the people of East Timor asked for order to be restored there. We could not have attempted to save Dili without our people in the Australian Army and Navy. It is all very well for us to pontificate here in the parliament. Without the pointy end, without people in the Navy taking 80 vehicles up and without the troops being in East Timor, order would not have been restored in Dili. Perhaps only now do I appreciate the great work that people do up there.

While I was on the naval RIMPAC exercises and on HMAS Stuart, I saw a test firing of the Nulka antimissile. This hovering missile has been produced by the Defence Science and Technology Organisation, DSTO. Friends of Australia in the US Navy said it was not possible to develop such a system. Of course it was developed between 1995 and 1997 and it is now deployed, we were told, on 50 per cent of the American fleet. The Nulka is designed particularly to handle the situations such as the apocalyptic scene that we all remember of the Exocet missiles going into the side of HMS Sheffield during the war in the Falklands. To see a $750,000 Australian designed system being successfully fired from an Australian ship, and hopefully successfully diverting inbound missiles from the Stuart, was proof of the success of Australian ingenuity, the hard work of the Australian Navy and the brilliant people—the scientists and technicians—who work at the Defence Science and Technology Organisation. All of that brings me back to the fact that Australian parliamentarians need to have a greater knowledge of our defence forces—our Navy, our Army and our Air Force—to understand, when we are deploying to difficult places like Afghanistan, the kinds of circumstances our people are in.

I will conclude on the RIMPAC exercises to say that I was very pleased with what I observed of the integration of females as sailors on all the ships we visited—not just on the USS Abraham Lincoln, which we were helicoptered onto, but particularly on the Australian ships. I noted that both captains advised me that having women sailors on board and active in all areas of the ship has, to some extent, raised the tone of behaviour on all of our Australian naval ships, and I think that is true throughout the armed forces. So that integration is working very well now after some initial difficulties.

I turn specifically back to my earlier remarks on Afghanistan and the deployment. I support the deployment to Afghanistan, as announced by the Prime Minister and supported by the Leader of the Opposition, but I agree with those who say that more thought needs to be given to the question of what our skilled and dedicated forces are there to achieve. Are they there just to pursue al-Qaeda and the Taliban or to help the government and the people of Afghanistan build a stable and democratic country? Afghanistan is frequently and correctly described as ‘terrorism central’ by the Leader of the Opposition. It was in Afghanistan that the September 11 attacks were planned, and the removal of the power of the Taliban regime was the first necessary step in the democratic world’s response to those attacks—the war on terrorism was our response to a war initiated by them.

Sadly—and this is commonly the case—the successful use of military force proved easier than the equally necessary political and economic follow-through. The US, having led the campaign to remove the Taliban, moved on Iraq with the enthusiastic support of the Howard government. Afghanistan dropped out of our public attention and off our radar screens and, as I mentioned, unfortunately all the promises made to the people of Afghanistan and to the government of Afghanistan in that new democratic transition by the very famous Berlin conference of donors have not been delivered on. If I were an Afghan or a member of the Afghanistan government—particularly the new democratic government—I would be feeling very aggrieved that there had been little follow-through by the countries that had promised so grandiosely to help with the reconstruction of Afghanistan, which was nearly destroyed by the protracted attention of communist and then Islamist totalitarianism.

The result has been the deterioration we have seen in the political, economic and security situation over the past year. There is a resurgence of warlordism fuelled by the narcotics industry. The Taliban has reasserted itself in the southern provinces. So now we find that the nation-building work that should have been done in 2002 and 2003 will have to be redone in 2006 and 2007 in more difficult circumstances. This gives Australia a great opportunity. There are few defence forces in the world with greater experience in nation building and a greater record of success than the ADF.

In East Timor, we arrived in a country which was totally devastated, depopulated and bankrupt. The ADF, aided of course by others but in the leadership role, helped the people of East Timor rebuild their country physically, economically and politically. But when difficulties arose this year, through the policies of the former Prime Minister of East Timor, we went back and helped to restore stability. In the Solomons, again, the ADF and other Australian organisations are taking a leading role in rescuing a failed state. We should now be deploying this expertise to Afghanistan.

One of the lessons of many conflicts over the last 20 years is that the role of the defence forces when deployed to a foreign conflict is no longer merely one of defeating an enemy militarily. Equally important is the stabilisation of the country in question once military success has been achieved. It is relatively easy to defeat a non-state army like the Taliban in the sense of driving them away from populated areas, but it is almost impossible to destroy them totally. Prevention of their resurgence is a politically more important task than a military one. We see in Sri Lanka a situation where that has not been achieved.

So what should the ADF be doing now in Afghanistan? Of course, the Taliban and other insurgent forces need to be contained, but equally important is the task of capacity building of the Afghan state to control its own territory, to meet the needs of its people and to defend itself against terrorists and insurgents. As outsiders, we Australians or Americans or NATO cannot police Afghanistan by ourselves; we can only help the Afghans develop the capacity to do so. This is a task in which others have tried and failed, admittedly under very difficult circumstances, but I have great faith in the men and women of the ADF. I believe that, if properly equipped and supported, they can achieve the same success in Afghanistan as they have achieved in East Timor and the Solomons.

Simon Crean (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak in relation to the Prime Minister’s statement, to reaffirm Labor’s support for the new detachment of troops to be sent to Afghanistan and to take issue with some of the statements made by the Prime Minister—in particular, his attempt to argue as hypocritical Labor’s calls since 2004 for more effort to be put in to Afghanistan.

The fact is it has been a bad week for the Prime Minister. He has been forced to admit the government was wrong on a number of occasions. His answer to the West Papuan asylum seekers was to excise Australia, to pretend Australia does not exist—a fiction, a pretence—not for good policy reasons, but to appease Indonesia. He was forced into a humiliating backdown—humiliating for him yes, but great for this country. It demonstrated what Labor has been arguing for a considerable time: we need to show greater commitment, compassion, decency and fairness to those escaping repressive circumstances. It is also a commitment of compassion and principle that has been demonstrated not only by the Labor Party but also by some very courageous members within the government ranks. The Prime Minister was wrong, he was made to admit it and the parliament prevailed.

It is also interesting to see that this week he has changed his mind in relation to allowing a conscience vote over the issue of therapeutic stem cells, something he should have allowed four years ago. As leader of the Labor Party at that time, I allowed such a conscience vote, and urged him to do likewise. Stubbornly, he refused. He has now been forced to relent, and I welcome that.

The statement we are debating today is in relation to more troops into Afghanistan. Interestingly, it is also effectively a concession by the Prime Minister that he got something else wrong in 2002—his strategy in the war on terror. By this statement, we are now committing an additional 150 troops of the ADF to reinforce the reconstruction task force and to provide enhanced force protection. There are now 200 special forces in Afghanistan that will be complemented by this recent announcement. But prior to 2005, and after our November 2002 withdrawal, we were down to just one soldier—a solitary lieutenant colonel. A token gesture while we were diverted, with the United States, into Iraq—the wrong war and the wrong decision for the wrong reasons.

This latest commitment is supported by Labor. In March 2004, following a visit to Afghanistan by the member for Griffith and the member for Bruce, Labor argued that we needed to increase our effort in Afghanistan. Those two members visited Afghanistan in 2004. They had seen the situation for themselves, and they reported back to the parliament. As the member for Bruce said on Monday, when he and the member for Griffith were there, it was obvious that there were continuing problems in Afghanistan and that we should not have withdrawn in 2002. So it is wrong and it is deeply disappointing that the Prime Minister should say, in presenting this statement last week, that Labor is being opportunistic now in saying we should not have withdrawn. We are used to the Prime Minister using weasel words and skirting around the truth and making cheap political points about a matter of the utmost seriousness—global terrorism and the lives of Australian soldiers.

The Prime Minister did rightly point out in his statement that the stability of Afghanistan has wider implications for global security. He said that is why the Australian government is committed to ensuring that Afghanistan achieves long-term peace. We recognise the gravity of this decision and the danger that will be faced by our troops. They go with our complete support. The Australian Defence Force is seriously stretched, and this additional commitment will necessarily add to their load. We admire and recognise their dedication and their professionalism in Iraq, in East Timor, in the Solomons and in Afghanistan, but we need to ensure that the special forces, such as these engineers, are adequately protected by infantry forces on the ground. This is particularly the case in this instance, where Afghanistan is a very dangerous place. It is a serious war zone. I have every confidence that our troops will acquit themselves well, but we must never underestimate the danger to which they will be exposed.

The Prime Minister says that Labor’s call since March 2004 to increase the commitment in Afghanistan is opportunistic. He says that we supported him in 2002 when he brought the troops home. It is true that Labor supported the decision to bring the troops home in November 2002. But, as usual, the Prime Minister did not tell the whole truth when he made this observation. Let us look at the context of the support for that withdrawal by Labor back then. ‘Context’ is one of the Prime Minister’s favourite words. He is always saying that we quote him out of context. He is the one that is guilty of that same sin. Let us look at the context of the statement of our support for withdrawal in November 2002. First, we were assured by the government that the situation in Afghanistan was under control and that there was no need to stay. We were never told of a letter from the government of Afghanistan asking us to stay. We said at the time that the Afghanistan terrorism was the key base for al-Qaeda and the Taliban. We offered full support in the fight against terrorism—globally, after September 11, and locally in our region after the Bali bombings.

So, at the time, in 2002, I welcomed the decision to bring the troops home. I accepted the government’s assurances and the government’s briefings that the situation in Afghanistan was under control. In the spirit of bipartisanship and relying on that advice—the Prime Minister’s word—we accepted the government’s decision. We believed the government. We now know that the situation was not under control and that in fact the government of Afghanistan had asked, that same month, for our troops to stay. In November 2002, the Afghanistan government wrote, asking for the continuing military assistance, saying that terrorism was alive and well. So the Prime Minister was telling me, the Labor Party and the Australian people that the job was done and the Afghanistan government was pleading for the troops to stay.

I was not told about that letter in 2002, at the very time the Prime Minister was announcing the withdrawal of the troops. Certainly the Australian public was not told. That letter only came to light in 2005, not in 2002. It did not come to light until three years after we were told the job was done. It is another example of this government not being honest with us or with the Australian people. The government says it wants bipartisan support for our troops. It says it wants bipartisan support for the war on terror. We are prepared to give it. But, in giving bipartisan support, we are entitled to be treated honestly and honourably, and we have not been.

In fact, the Prime Minister’s statement that we are debating perpetuates the myth that the job is done. In that same presentation the other day he said that, ‘With the completion of the task’—he was talking back then in 2002—‘we withdrew the troops.’ He is perpetuating the deceit. Clearly, the task was not completed and the decision to send more troops there last year and now, complemented by the announcement the other day, is an admission that they got it wrong. How can we have a bipartisan position on this issue of great national importance, involving national security and exposing the lives of our troops, if we are not told the full facts? A decent democracy demands it. What, of course, the Prime Minister does is stand condemned for withholding that information to cover his wrong decision to follow George Bush to war in Iraq.

The second reason we supported the troops coming home then, apart from being told the job was done, was the intervention of that terrible bombing in Bali. I said at the time, post October 2002, that the threat of terrorism on our doorstep meant that we had to reinforce the fight against terror closer to home. The Prime Minister says that we should not cut and run from Iraq, but that is what he did in Afghanistan, and this announcement the other day is an admission of that fault.

The Prime Minister likens the war in Iraq to the war in Afghanistan. They are not alike. They are two different circumstances. Labor supported the intervention in Afghanistan. We did not support the intervention in Iraq. Afghanistan is different from Iraq. The reason is that the US alliance, the ANZUS alliance, required us to support the Americans when they were attacked on their home soil. For the first time ever, that clause of the ANZUS alliance was invoked and we had no choice. We accepted that. But in addition to the ANZUS alliance requiring us to come to the assistance of the Americans, the intervention in Afghanistan was sanctioned by the United Nations. It was a genuine global response to the war on terrorism. So we supported it. Iraq, on the other hand, was not linked to the war on terror. We were told that we had to go into Iraq to find the weapons of mass destruction—weapons which we now know did not exist. It was not UN sanctioned; it was a unilateral US action with the coalition of the willing.

We say that the troops go with our very best of blessings. We support this commitment. It is much needed on the information that is available to us today and that Labor drew attention to more than two years ago. The troops go with our best wishes. We wish them God speed. We know that they will acquit themselves honourably, as do all of our troops in the international theatres of war, and we hope for them to return quickly and safely. This is a very dangerous mission. This has been highlighted by other speakers—the member for Brisbane and the member for Cowan. But Labor will always support our troops in the theatres of battle, even where we have disagreed with the government sending them. It is not their decision to go. In a democracy they follow the orders of the day, the government of the day. Our argument is with the government, not with the troops.

On this occasion we agree with the government, but we condemn them for failing to act earlier. We condemn them for allowing al-Qaeda and the Taliban to regroup and strengthen in Afghanistan. We condemn them for ignoring the warnings, we condemn them for dismissing the pleas of the Afghanistan government in 2002 to keep the presence and we condemn them for the deceit surrounding their assertion that the task was done. Our troops will act with honour, I am convinced of that. It is our Prime Minister who does not.

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thought the contribution from the member for Hotham was very apt, given his role as Leader of the Opposition at the time that Australia took a decision to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan in November 2002. Before I go on to discuss that decision, I will briefly remind the chamber what we are talking about here in terms of an extra deployment.

We know that we already have a reconstruction task force in Afghanistan and that it will be working there for a period of two years. The government pointed out in the Prime Minister’s statement that it is aware of the risks faced by the ADF in Afghanistan and that it is committed to ensuring that the reconstruction task force is properly equipped to conduct its role. As a result, and after consideration, the government now tells us, through the Prime Minister, that it is proposing to increase the size of the reconstruction task force from 240 personnel to 270 personnel.

The Prime Minister argued in his statement that this would enhance the security, robustness and flexibility of the task force. The government has also decided—and this was again announced by the Prime Minister in his statement—that the deployment will include an infantry company group of about 120 personnel to provide enhanced force protection. We know that in the province in which the Australian troops are being deployed there is an extremely tenuous security situation and a very dangerous environment within which they are working. The government has undertaken to review the task force structure and to reconsider it in six months.

The additional deployment will bring the total reconstruction task force strength to around 400. It will be made up of a number of elements—command, security and protection, engineering, administrative support and tactical intelligence services. The force will be equipped with a number of Bushmaster infantry mobility vehicles and a number of Australian light armoured vehicles, or ASLAVs. The reconstruction task force will be drawn primarily from 1st Brigade in Darwin and will be under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Mick Ryan. It will have its own headquarters and will operate under the national command of Australia’s joint task force in the Middle East area of operations. ADF units and personnel deployed in Afghanistan remain under Australian national command. The reconstruction task force, as we know, will work closely with the Netherlands and other NATO partners. The Australian government, as the Prime Minister has pointed out, is pleased with the Dutch planning and preparations and is impressed with the process.

I now want to go to what I think is a very important question—that is, why we are in the position that we are in in Afghanistan, given the decision taken by the government in November 2002 for us to withdraw our troops, despite representations from the government in Afghanistan for additional support. It raises very serious questions about the integrity of the decisions which have been taken by the government and the reasons which were then given to the Australian public about that withdrawal.

I know that, as a member of the government, Mr Deputy Speaker Lindsay, you and your colleagues were very supportive of Australia’s decision to involve itself in Iraq. I am certain that the reason that we withdrew our troops from Afghanistan was because of the need for a deployment in Iraq at around that time. It is worth noting, as the member for Hotham and the Leader of the Opposition have pointed out, that when the US went into Afghanistan in 2001, it acted at the head of ‘one of the great global military coalitions of history’, as described by the Leader of the Opposition. The US acted with the support of all European allies and all its Cold War enemies—notably, as the Leader of the Opposition said, the Chinese and the Russians. It had the support of the overwhelming number of countries in the Middle East and, of course, it had bipartisan support here in Australia.

We should never forget, as the member for Hotham pointed out, that Australia entered the war on terror in Afghanistan as a result of 9-11 through the ANZUS treaty and our obligations to our great friend and ally the United States. That is not the case with our involvement in Iraq. I certainly remain committed to that fight and I know the Labor Party is. This party took a serious step in calling for an increase in the number of troops in our deployment to Afghanistan last year. Of course, we now know that the Prime Minister argues that we are being opportunistic by taking that decision. I think it recognises that this party, the Labor Party, is aware of the very important role that the Australian defence forces are playing in Afghanistan and is very concerned about the need to impose controls and eliminate the threat from al-Qaeda and, indeed, the remnant Taliban groups and others who are fighting in Afghanistan against the wishes of the international community.

We know that the focus of the world effort against terrorism after 9-11 was Afghanistan. We know that the campaign waged by the coalition forces under the leadership of the United States was in fact not successful in routing out al-Qaeda and either eliminating or taking its leader as a prisoner. It seems to me that we have now suffered the consequences of failed strategy, and tactics as well, in Afghanistan.

We know that around that time there were motions being put in the United States, and arguments going on within the Pentagon, the state department and indeed the Office of the President, as to whether or not the United States should engage in a war in Iraq. We know it was a very contentious decision which was ultimately taken by the Bush administration to invade Iraq, but it was with the full support of John Howard and the government in Australia. I am not sure, although I can hazard a guess, that either Prime Minister Howard or any of his ministers were engaged in the internal discussions within the United States between Wolfowitz and the other players—Vice President Cheney, the Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs—about their decision ultimately to invade Iraq. We were not engaged in that discussion. If we had been engaged in that discussion, we should have, as the Leader of the Opposition has now said on a number of occasions, advised the government of the United States of the folly of that enterprise and warned them that what they were going to get themselves into would be a quagmire which would be very difficult to get out of.

I take some pride in the fact that I was one of those people who opposed our involvement in Iraq and voted against it here in this parliament. I put out a newsletter to my constituents but principally to ADF members in the Northern Territory. The purpose of that was to explain my concerns about the war in Iraq. Those concerns have now been amplified a hundredfold because of the decisions which have ultimately been taken by the United States, followed by Australia.

A couple of years ago I had the privilege of visiting Australian troops at Al-Matana in Iraq, going to the Green Zone and visiting the headquarters of the United States. I have to say that, despite my concerns about the policy decisions taken by the United States government to enter Iraq in the first instance, I have nothing but praise for the work which is being done by Australian troops there at this time and previously. But the fact is that they should not be there.

We are now in the ridiculous situation where we have known for some time—as I am sure you have, Deputy Speaker Lindsay, because of where you live—of the demands which are being placed on the defence forces and what that has meant in manning levels. We are now in a situation where we have to announce that we are going to increase the size of the army up to 30,000 by some 1,500 troops because of the demands being placed on the Army by government decisions such as the one to involve ourselves in Iraq.

Many of us said at the time that what we were talking about, and what the Leader of the Opposition spoke about in his address last week, is the need to address the central concerns of fighting terrorism. What we have done is engage ourselves in a war in Iraq which is leading to increased threats of terrorism, not because of what is happening directly in Iraq but because of what it is doing in promoting the engagement of others outside of Iraq, in other places including Afghanistan and, I might say, South-East Asia, that ultimately, one could argue, resulted in the bombings in Bali.

It seems to me that we have an obligation in this country to make sure, front and centre, that we accept the obligations of the international community. But that does not mean we should tug our forelock every time Uncle Sam jumps, and that is what we did in the case of Iraq. Instead of doing what we did with the support of the international community in Afghanistan, and instead of continuing our focus on that obligation, we took our eyes off the prize, took our eyes off the ball and withdrew our troops after a decision made in November 2002. Things may well be different in Afghanistan now had the commitment the Australian government had shown to putting troops in in the first place been retained and if we had pressured the United States government not to enter the folly of Iraq but to maintain the focus on Afghanistan, rooting out those terrorist elements working with al-Qaeda and others involved in the region.

Notwithstanding that, though, I do want to make sure that people fully comprehend the Labor Party position here, that not only are we concerned about the decisions which have been taken by the government but we are concerned that they have put our troops in harm’s way and, at least in the case of Iraq, in an injudicious way by taking a decision which was in error. But in the case of Afghanistan we know the importance of the fight. The reason we need to be in Afghanistan, as the Leader of the Opposition pointed out, is that Afghanistan is al-Qaeda central, it is Taliban central and it is terrorist central. That is why we need to be involved in Afghanistan.

What we need to do is understand that the obligation which our troops are undertaking on our behalf is a very serious one and a very dangerous one. We have an obligation in this place, as we have had previously, to support our troops regardless of the government’s decisions. But in this particular instance not only do we support the troops but we support the decision taken by the government—although we say, as the member for Hotham has pointed out, that it was a decision taken only after the Labor Party had called for an increase in our troop deployments to the region.

In the case of our troops in Afghanistan, they too have our support. Of course, as I have continued to say and I will continue to say, I do not agree with the decision to deploy them there, but I do agree that we have to support them whilst they are there. That is what we need to do. We must ensure that they are provided every capacity to return home to this country safely, and they should be withdrawn from there sooner rather than later. In the context of Afghanistan, we have to keep our eyes firmly on the task and we have to understand that the responsibility we are placing upon Australian Defence Force personnel is that they have been given a very, very dangerous task and we should be very concerned that their security is at great risk. Nevertheless, the task needs to be achieved, the task must be done and we should commit ourselves to ensuring that they have our total support in that task.

We should also be concerned to ensure, as we have done for the troops in Iraq and other places where they are deployed, that their families at home understand that we support them as well, that we will not leave them in a position of want or need and that if, God forbid, something untoward happens to any of their family members whilst they are deployed, the family members will be properly looked after and their needs properly addressed. We have not always seen that from this government. We need to ensure that that happens. We need to ensure that those troops, when they leave this country serving our interests overseas, understand that their families, regardless of their positions and regardless of what happens to them, will be properly catered for, properly looked after and shown appropriate respect.

Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the Chief Opposition Whip for facilitating a short contribution from me. As the member representing Australia’s largest army base, Lavarack Barracks in Townsville, North Queensland, I want to support the Prime Minister’s statement to the parliament and I want to support the operations of the ADF overseas. They do a mighty professional job. In Afghanistan, 5 Aviation Regiment from Townsville are operating the CH47 Boeing Chinook helicopters. Our people from 5 Aviation Regiment are putting their lives on the line in assisting the humanitarian efforts in Afghanistan.

I also want to observe of the four soldiers who were injured in Baghdad in the last two days—three of whom were from Townsville; one from Brisbane—that I understand that all four will recover satisfactorily. One soldier was suffering more substantial injuries, but the operation on that particular person was successful. We are very pleased that those soldiers will be able to return to their duties in due course.

Finally, I would like to take a point made by the member for Lingiari when he referred to the government’s intention to look at increasing the size of the Army by another 5,000 people. I certainly have been lobbying very hard to ensure that Townsville is considered as a location for any additional battalion. It would be a huge boost to the city and a logical decision of Army to do that. We can take three battalions in Townsville, and I will continue to lobby the government to get that extra battalion for the garrison city.

Roger Price (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thought it was good that in this chamber we had both the member for Lingiari and the member for Herbert, from whose electorates predominantly all these troops who are deployed in Afghanistan come. I would say to both of them, and in particular the member for Herbert, that it is really important to the families of those serving men and women in Afghanistan—and, for that matter, in Iraq—that they should know that both sides of politics support what they are doing and that we value it very much.

People often overlook the fact that troops, Navy personnel and Air Force personnel do not get to vote about whether they should be deployed, how they should be deployed or in what number. That is the role of executive government and this parliament. Even when we may disagree on the opposition side about a particular deployment, as we have in relation to the war in Iraq, we still support those soldiers, we still feel for their families and we are still 100 per cent behind them in every way and anyway we can be.

This debate in the Main Committee arises because the Prime Minister made a statement about the additional deployment of troops to Iraq—I think in the order of about 120. Again, I place on record my appreciation for the good work of the troops who are already there or who have served there, and I wish those who are going there every success. Both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, who supported the ministerial statement, indicated that this is in fact a deployment with heightened danger to the wellbeing and safety of those troops. We sincerely hope on both sides of the parliament that they return home well and safe at the conclusion of their deployment.

But I do want to enter a note of complaint. Here we are, with the Prime Minister making a ministerial statement to send more troops into harm’s way, yet the Minister for Defence has not participated in the ministerial statement. The Minister for Foreign Affairs has not participated. I very much regret that. I do not think that it is lowering their dignity to come into the Main Committee and place on public record in Hansard their support for the decision, which obviously they have been involved in. Their lack of participation—and, I might say, of the junior minister—in this debate to take note of the ministerial statement, I find galling. I think if I went to the Blacktown RSL sub-branch or the Rooty Hill RSL sub-branch, where the state conference was held, or the St Mary’s RSL sub-branch and said, ‘Yes, we’re sending more troops over to Afghanistan but the Minister for Defence, the junior minister and the Minister for Foreign Affairs didn’t participate,’ they would be rather shocked that they did not. I think it is offensive to those troops that there is nothing placed in this Hansard record from those three ministers.

Everyone remembers what they were doing on September 11. I can tell you that I was watching TV and surfing channels. My son told me to switch to Foxtel and, regrettably, I saw the second plane hit the tower. We can all remember what we were doing and it changed the world forever. The United States invoked the ANZUS treaty, and that is why Australian troops initially were in Afghanistan. For the first time ever ANZUS was invoked by the United States and Australia responded, as we are required to do, and we sent troops to tackle terror central—to tackle the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Of course, it is true that when Australian troops were withdrawn the opposition supported that withdrawal. We did so on the basis that we could trust what the Prime Minister had said—that it was now appropriate for us to withdraw, that the task had been achieved. We now know that we were misled and that in 2002 the Prime Minister of Afghanistan had pleaded with the Australian government—had pleaded with the Prime Minister—not to withdraw our troops. That was completely unknown to the opposition. So in question time, when the Minister for Foreign Affairs wants to make the point that we supported the withdrawal, it is absolutely true. But, like the Australian people whose trust was breached, we were in ignorance of the real situation there and the fact that the Prime Minister of Afghanistan had pleaded with us to stay.

Why are we back there? We went from our initial deployment down to one soldier, a lieutenant colonel. I have, with my tongue in cheek, described it as a one-man war. Up until April 2004 no-one had rung the bell or belled the cat until the shadow foreign affairs minister, who I note is in the chamber now, went over to Afghanistan and appraised the situation for himself. On his return, he reported to the opposition, and it was on that basis that we started calling for more troops to be sent to Afghanistan. We in the opposition have always seen the Iraq war as a sidetrack to the main game, which was terror central—finishing off al-Qaeda once and for all. What a terrible price we have paid for neglecting Afghanistan. As I mentioned before, I think the whole world—certainly the Western world and indeed the Arab world—supported the United States in the aftermath of September 11 when they initially went into Iraq to tackle the Taliban and to tackle al-Qaeda. Unfortunately that goodwill and that sense of shared dismay, alarm and outrage at the attacks in New York by al-Qaeda have, I suppose, subsequently dissipated quite grievously. Of course, America has never since enjoyed the same level of goodwill as they did on that occasion.

I want to raise a couple of other matters about this deployment. Both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition have highlighted the danger in which we are placing our troops. I do not think it is right to suggest that they are merely performing peacekeeping operations. When the time comes to consider what appropriate recognition we should provide for our troops who have served in Afghanistan, I hope we do not get into the kind of unseemly debate that has occasionally occurred in relation to other deployments. I hope when those decisions are made that our troops are appropriately recognised for their service. As I say, they do not get to vote on whether they should go; they do not get to vote on what number should go. It is we who direct young men and women to go on these deployments. They have no say at all in it.

I would like to finish my remarks where I started and say that these troops enjoy our support, above and beyond politics. They are fine young men and women and wherever we have deployed troops overseas they have always done us proud. The member for Herbert would understand my frustration at no longer being a member of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade and at no longer having the opportunity, as I once did, to see serving men and women in the field and reassure them of our support. I have always felt that, if it is good enough for a country to send troops overseas, no matter what the role, it is good enough for members of parliament to go over there and see them in action. I have not been to Afghanistan and I have not been to Iraq, but I have seen our troops in most other situations where they have been placed—in Rwanda, in Somalia, several times in East Timor, and several times in Bougainville. I wish I could have the opportunity to see them where they are currently deployed, both in Iraq and in Afghanistan. I regret that that opportunity has not presented itself to me; nevertheless, I am always in awe of the fantastic job they do.

I support our serving men and women. In particular, we support them in this dangerous mission, which is to try to make up for the fact that Australia took its eye off the ball when it came to Afghanistan and we are now desperately trying to make amends by way of this additional deployment. We have no idea how long it will take or what the exit strategy is.

The honourable member for Herbert talked about the expansion of the Army. I could talk about that for a little while, but I do want to make a couple of points. One is that, at the last election, the opposition was committed to an additional battalion. The other thing is that I still believe we are not treating our Army Reserve properly. I think there is a real case for reform and better utilisation. The reserve is costing us over $1 billion. Whilst I do not quibble about the quality of the people who are reservists—that is far from the point I am trying to make—I do say that we have not really tackled the issues of training and equipment that would allow them to be more properly utilised.

We ought to make no mistake: the Army and Defence Force are stretched beyond anything we have seen since the Vietnam War. In newspapers I see that columnists are now starting to point out the nature of how stretched we are. I hope the member for Lindsay would agree with me that we are inevitably going to get into trouble when we have departed from the three routine, which has always been mantra in the Army—that is, you deploy one unit, you rest one unit up and you have one unit training up. This government has changed it. We are down to two. The more you stretch the Army the way we are, the greater the probability that we will unintentionally cause a mishap because we are so stretched.

I pray that that will not be the case, but we ought to put into perspective this proposition about expansion of the Army. There is no cabinet submission, notwithstanding the story in the Australian newspaper. There is no indication of when a submission will be made. But I support the government in looking at how stretched the Army is because I think it is critical—and they have never since the Vietnam War been operating at a higher tempo than they are today, and that is not necessarily a good thing for them, because I think there are measures that we need to take.

Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade and International Security) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In November 2002 the Howard government withdrew Australia’s troops from Afghanistan. Labor supported the move at the time because we had accepted in good faith the government’s public statements to the effect that the security situation in Afghanistan was under control. The government in November 2002 said that its decision to withdraw Australian troops was made because the job had been done. Clearly the job had not been done. This was a grave error of Australian national security policy. The government privately knows that; the government does not have the integrity to publicly recognise and acknowledge that. Today Afghanistan remains terrorism central, the home of al-Qaeda, the home of Osama bin Laden and the home of the Taliban, and these agents of insecurity are now increasing and consolidating their position. These organisations, most particularly al-Qaeda, also feed Jemaah Islamiah, the principal terrorist organisation operating in South-East Asia.

Two things have become clear about the government’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan in 2002. The first is that the government kept very private, very secret, the diplomatic pleas from the government of Afghanistan for Australian troops to remain in the country due to the security situation at the time. The second is that the government’s decision to draw down Australian troops in Afghanistan was little more than a prepositioning exercise for the subsequent deployment of Australian troops to Iraq.

This decision-making process at the end of 2002 and early in 2003 was part and parcel of a pattern of mismanagement of this country’s national security priorities. Firstly with Afghanistan, the government abandoned ship before the job was done. They had been privately warned in diplomatic correspondence from the government of Afghanistan that the job had definitely not been done and they turned a deaf ear to it. Secondly, from about this time also, in 2003 the government began its active diplomatic efforts with the United Nations in New York to draw down our troop presence in East Timor. The result was that we again abandoned ship too early, before the job was done—and we all know the downstream consequences of that in terms of the fresh, expensive and large deployment to East Timor which has subsequently become necessary.

But why were these two flawed decisions taken? The decision to cut and run from Afghanistan at the end of 2002, combined with the decision to cut and run from East Timor from 2003-04 on, was made because the government was preparing for and subsequently active in deployments in Iraq—the third element of the mismanagement of this government’s national security priorities. So there was a wrong decision about Afghanistan, where terrorism was still alive and well—and the government had been formally warned of this by the government of Afghanistan at the time—and the political instability was continuing in East Timor. But, nonetheless, the government decided to cut and run from that, all in order to feed the future or continuing military requirements in Iraq. Iraq itself will probably be recorded in history as one of the single greatest failures of Australian foreign policy and national security policy since the war.

On top of this pattern of mismanagement of our key national security decisions, the Solomons also looms large. In 2002 the government of the Solomon Islands made a formal diplomatic request, through the medium of a visiting parliamentary delegation to the Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs, seeking modest levels of police assistance to restore law and order in that country. The foreign minister directly rejected that request for assistance and subsequently we had to engage in a large-scale military deployment to the Solomon Islands. We had failed to recognise the early warnings of an emerging security policy challenge and instead had left it very late, resulting in a very large deployment indeed to the Solomon Islands at huge cost to the Australian taxpayer. That is further evidence of this pattern of national security policy mismanagement.

I visited Kabul in 2004 with the member for Bruce to see for myself how far the country had gone in re-establishing itself in the post-Taliban period. What was interesting about that visit was that I was offered no assistance whatsoever by the foreign minister in facilitating that visit—none whatsoever. At the time, of course, we did not have an embassy in Kabul, although we did have an embassy in Islamabad, but not a skerrick of assistance was offered. In undertaking that visit to Afghanistan, I had to rely entirely upon the good offices of the Afghan foreign ministry. This was an emerging country, an emerging democracy, an emerging foreign policy and foreign ministry establishment and they had to provide all the resources for my visit. The Afghan foreign ministry had to meet me, they had to provide my ground transport, they had to provide my ground security, together with that for the member for Bruce, and everything we did in the several days we spent in that country was provided exclusively per medium of the assistance of the government of Afghanistan.

I have often reflected on why the Australian government was so reluctant at the time to provide any such form of assistance. I know our diplomats in the field perform a first-class function and they are often—in fact, almost always—ready to provide assistance to visiting members of parliament, particularly for the official opposition and the official opposition foreign policy spokesman; but it became clear to me after a period of time that the government was not keen at all for me to see what I was about to discover, which was how degraded the security situation in Afghanistan was becoming, most particularly in the southern parts of the country.

I had extensive meetings with a range of Afghan government officials. I met with the Afghan foreign minister. I had dinner at the foreign ministry with the foreign minister. I met and had discussions with the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, and a range of other Afghan government ministers responsible for domestic security and the opium eradication programs in that country. Bit by bit, piece by piece, together with discussions with the embassy of the United States in Kabul at the time, a picture began to emerge very clearly in my mind of the gross security challenges which were then presenting themselves to the government and people of Afghanistan, particularly with evidence of the re-emergence of the Taliban and the remergence of al-Qaeda related activity in the southern and south-eastern parts of the country.

I found a desperately poor country devastated by decades of civil war. In addition to the challenge of a swift move to democracy, the new government in Kabul confronted an out of control opium industry and, on that score alone, the United Nations estimate was that, as of 2004, the opium and heroin crop of Afghanistan lay at a market value of some $US2.3 billion per year. It was also estimated that Afghanistan’s opium crop was providing 85 per cent of Europe’s total opium supply. The Afghan government demonstrably was having difficulties dealing with opium production and controlling the overall domestic security situation.

When I came back to Australia it became plain to me that the decision we had taken to cut and run from Afghanistan at the end of 2002, as of March-April 2004, when I visited the country, made absolutely no national security policy sense at all. In fact, a number of Western military officials with whom I spoke—and I shall not name anyone individually for fear of compromising their position and the political relationships between those governments and this country—were privately critical of the Australian government’s decision to abandon ship. It was in many respects a poorly kept secret that Australia had, for reasons relating to Iraq, decided to exit the country and leave Afghanistan at a time of dire and acute need.

When I returned to Australia, the member for Bruce and I moved a motion on 29 March 2004, under private members’ business in the House, which, firstly, recognised the continued central importance of Afghanistan as critical to the war against terrorism; secondly, recognised that al-Qaeda, the Taliban and associated terrorist organisations continued to pose a security threat to the government of Afghanistan; thirdly, recognised that removing the threat required both the political transformation and economic reconstruction of Afghanistan with the full support of the international community; and, fourthly, recognised that Australia must play a significant and substantive role, both bilaterally and multilaterally, in underpinning a long-term, secure future for the people of Afghanistan.

That motion, moved by me and the member for Bruce, was put before the House nearly 2½ years ago. The response we got from the government at the time was one of absolutely deafening silence, because the government at that stage was beginning to work out that it was inextricably bogged down in the emerging quagmire which was Iraq.

Of course, other countries had acted in a different way. New Zealand, for example, maintained a military presence in Afghanistan, with around 100 officers in a provincial reconstruction team, and they were at that stage also planning to deploy some 50 special forces officers to assist the US military in combat operations. The defence minister now admits that, while Australia had its priorities trained on Iraq, Afghanistan over the past several years had remained a hot bed of terrorist activity. It is very interesting to read what the defence minister has now had to say. Last week he stated:

Australians, and too many Australian families, have been touched, if not scarred, in this decade by two Bali bombings and by the bombing of our embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia. And we have seen other evidence of terrorist activity in our region.

There are a number of links between those who planned and committed these heinous crimes and Afghanistan.

The minister went on to say:

Samudra, who was sentenced to death for plotting the Bali bombing, testified during his trial that he had fought in Afghanistan in the 1990s, alongside Osama bin Laden. He also testified that it was his duty as a true Muslim to wage jihad against the West. The International Crisis Group in our region is headed by Sidney Jones ...

They have also prepared a document on this. The minister continued:

A 2003 document to the International Crisis Group on Jemaah Islamiah in South-East Asia documented the relationship between those who trained in Afghanistan and terrorist activity in our own region. Zulkarnaen, for example, who trained in Afghanistan in 1985, was a senior military commander of JI. Muklas, who was sentenced to death for the Bali bombings, trained there in 1986. Hambali, who is JI’s chief strategist and primary link between JI and al-Qaeda, was trained there in 1987.

Further, the minister said:

It is extremely important for us as Australians to appreciate, particularly when five per cent of the Australian population is overseas at any one time, that the defence and security of our country, our people, our interests and our values is not just about our borders, nor indeed our region. It is about ensuring that we make a contribution, along with others, to demonstrate what the Australian newspaper describes as ‘moral musculature’ in taking up the struggle against global terrorism. There is no greater source of it than Afghanistan.

My question is: where was the moral musculature in 2003; where was the moral musculature in 2004; where was the moral musculature in 2005? The bottom line is this: the security situation throughout that time was deteriorating. As at my visit there in 2004, Afghan government officials were absolutely clear-cut about the re-emerging terrorist threat right across the southern and southern-eastern parts of that country. The government chose to turn a blind eye to it; they chose to turn a deaf ear to it because it was a politically uncomfortable message and because they had buried themselves in this other theatre called Iraq. That is a regrettable manifestation of the mismanagement of national security policy in this country.

The nation needs to pause right at this moment, when we are about to dispatch fresh troops to Afghanistan, and reflect on how this came about. This was a wrong decision in terms of national security priorities to withdraw our troops when we did. Everyone knows that and acknowledges that privately, but this government still to this day—three years or more since the withdrawal—does not have the moral fortitude to publicly recognise the simple, logical fact that this decision was wrong.

Of course, the reason for the distraction was Iraq, and we know what has happened there. We were to go to Iraq to eliminate weapons of mass destruction which did not exist. We were to go to Iraq in order to reduce the terrorist threat. In fact, we have increased the terrorist threat as a result. As a consequence of the invasion of Iraq, in the several years which have elapsed since the March 2003 invasion the UN now documents there have been some 50,000 deaths in Iraq, running at the rate of about 1,000 per month. We have Iraq now on the verge of, if not in the middle of, a civil war between Sunni and Shiah and we have the rolling Iraq war contributing to the global energy crisis, or oil price crisis, and therefore the global price of oil. And this was supposed to be the reason we exited from Afghanistan. Iraq will go down as one of the greatest foreign policy disasters perpetrated by any Australian government.

Turning to the current deployment, I would simply say this in conclusion: the troops going on this deployment have our full bipartisan support. They are brave, professional men and women in uniform doing their bit for their country. We support them wholeheartedly. But they have been redeployed to Afghanistan after three years of policy failure on the part of the Howard government. They are going to a highly dangerous, insecure environment. I am gravely concerned about their security, gravely concerned about casualties emerging, and the government, because of the mismanagement of the decision-making process on Afghanistan, has a double responsibility to ensure their physical security. (Time expired)

Debate (on motion by Ms Owens) adjourned.