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

My question is to the Prime Minister. Is the Prime Minister aware of further comments by decorated former SAS Iraq veteran Peter Tinley that we have been dragged into a civil war in Iraq and ‘we can never really see an end to it and we could never see a point in time where it would be okay to remove the Australian troops under the current government’s ideas’? Hasn’t the government’s failed strategy put it in a hole in Iraq? Why won’t the Prime Minister listen to decorated Iraq veterans like the former SAS officer and simply stop digging?

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

The view expressed by the former SAS officer Mr Tinley is a view that quite a lot of people in the community hold. I have never pretended otherwise. I have acknowledged from the very beginning that the decision to involve ourselves in Iraq was not a popular one, and I respect the fact that there are people in the military who are against it, just as there are many people in the military who are strongly in favour of it. I think what it represents is a range of views in the community. I respect his view. I do not denigrate it. I disagree with it.