Kerry Rea (Bonner, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Foreign Affairs. Would the minister update the House on Australia’s response to developments in Pakistan?

Stephen Smith (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for her question. Pakistan faces a grave threat from terrorism and extremism. In recent weeks and in the last two months we have seen very serious attacks on the Pakistan people and very serious attacks on and intimidation of their democratic and political institutions. Australia strongly condemns this recent string of terrible attacks. We have seen those attacks in Lahore, in the North-West Frontier Province, in Peshawar and also in Rawalpindi. They have caused serious loss of life, and we extend our condolences to the Pakistan government and the Pakistan people.

These series of terrible attacks show the gravity of the threat that Pakistan faces. But these series of attacks have also enabled the international community to underline the strength of the international community’s resolve to stand shoulder to shoulder with Pakistan at a time when it faces very serious economic, social and security challenges.

Australia was one of the first countries of the international community to appreciate that Pakistan was facing these very serious problems. We were a foundation member of the Friends of Democratic Pakistan, and I attended that ministerial level meeting—the first meeting—in the margins of the United Nations General Assembly in September last year. I visited Pakistan in February this year and announced a doubling of our development assistance and also a substantial increase in the number of Pakistan military and defence officers who come to Canberra for short- and long-term courses for the purposes of training, particularly in counterterrorism.

This year, in the margins of the General Assembly, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, President Zadari and President Obama jointly chaired a leaders summit of the Friends of Democratic Pakistan. The Prime Minister attended; I attended with him. In the course of that summit the Prime Minister announced that Australia would increase the number of Pakistan defence and military officers that are trained to 140, making Australia the second largest trainer and provider of expertise in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency to the Pakistan defence forces. Secondly, we announced the establishment of the Australia-Pakistan Development Partnership to bring a significant focus to our development assistance activity, substantially underlining our support in the international assistance for the Malakand project. We also agreed to breathe life back into the Australia-Pakistan Joint Trade Committee, underlining that we need to assist Pakistan on a security, an economic and a social front.

Pakistan is of great strategic importance. It is crucially located in South Asia. Population projections see that before the middle of this century it will overtake Indonesia as the largest Muslim populated country in the world. And, of course, it has nuclear weapons. Pakistan is essential to the stabilisation of Afghanistan and vital to international community efforts to combat terrorism and extremism.

We have seen in recent days the Pakistan government and the Pakistan military launch an operation against the extremists in South Waziristan. We are under no illusions as to the difficulty of this exercise. We are under no illusions that this will see the Pakistan people and the Pakistan military suffer further sacrifices and further loss of life. But we welcome very much the Pakistan government’s appreciation that the threats we have seen on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border are a threat to their very existence, and we stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the rest of the international community in Pakistan’s hour of need.