Joanna Gash (Gilmore, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Minister for Defence. Would the minister update the House on Australia’s contribution to training the Iraqi security forces? Is the minister aware of any alternative policies?

Brendan Nelson (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Gilmore for her question and for her very strong support for the Nowra defence community, and the Navy in particular. Shortly after its arrival in Iraq in 2003 and the demise of Saddam Hussein, the Australian Army was involved in providing security along with coalition forces to the Iraqis themselves and has been heavily involved in the training of the Iraqi security forces. Almost four years later, some 136,000 Iraqis have been trained for their own army and about 12,500 of those have been trained by Australian soldiers. For that, amongst many other things, we should be very proud of what our Australian diggers are doing in Iraq.

When I was in Baghdad in August last year, the democratically elected Iraqi Prime Minister spent a considerable amount of time thanking me on behalf of Australia for all that our military has done for the Iraqi people. I asked him if there was anything more that we could possibly do. He said, ‘Of all the things that we admire about you, it is the training that your soldiers provide to ours, and any further assistance in training will be greatly supported.’

Australia’s Defence Force has been training in a variety of things. Training an individual soldier is relatively easy, but training an army and building it up is a much more difficult and complex task. We have been involved in training and logistics, the nuts and bolts of actually building and running an army; in ethics and detainee management; in robust battle tactics; in medical skills; and in the acquisition and management of equipment.

We have also had Australian soldiers north of Baghdad at a place called Taji training the Iraqis in counterinsurgency. In fact, I noticed in the Army News edition last week, which goes to all our soldiers, a report under the heading ‘Iraqi skills cultivated’. As an example of this, our battle group, which is in Tallil, in southern central Iraq in the Dhi Qar province, sent 100 of its soldiers up to train 750 Iraqi soldiers in an intensive week-long training program. Those 750 Iraqi soldiers have since been deployed to Baghdad to support the Baghdad security plan. They were training them in the conduct of contact drills, vehicle patrols, vehicle checkpoints, house-clearing tactics and first aid.

I am asked about alternative policies. The training that our soldiers provide is about three things. It is about partnership, it is about the building of trust and it is also about practical training in the field. The Leader of the Opposition has said, consistent with wanting to be all things to all people, that he opposes sending any more soldiers to Iraq. The Prime Minister and I announced last week that the Australian government will send another 70 Australian Army trainers to Iraq. Fifty of them will train in logistics and 20 will train Iraqi soldiers and Iraqi officers. Consistent with the way the Leader of the Opposition operates, he then said something for others who might support more training for Iraqis. He said that he would support them being sent to another country, namely Jordan, which is obviously another country that is not Iraq.

I point out the logistics, for example, of taking 750 Iraqi soldiers and training them about clearing checkpoints and a whole variety of on-the-ground military tactics: taking them all to Jordan, booking them into hotels, running them into a lecture theatre and giving them a lecture for a week about how to run security in Iraq. Whilst training some people in countries other than Iraq may be appropriate, training soldiers needs to be conducted in Iraq. The mission in Iraq is essentially to ensure that we train the Iraqi security forces up to the point where they are able to provide essentially for the security of their own people. Our mission and the mission undertaken by the battle group in Iraq, which the Leader of the Opposition thinks he might take out sometime next year, is as much about training as it is about providing support to the Iraqi people to avoid a humanitarian crisis and stopping Iraq from becoming a haven for terrorism which would be driven through the region and, indeed, throughout the world.