Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I stand to lend my support today to our engagement in the Afghanistan conflict. I make the point that war is a terrible thing, and that any loss of life due to the hand of war is bad and should be avoided at every possible stage. But we do not always have that luxury, and to date we have lost too many brave Australians already at this war. But as a nation we cannot stand by and watch and tolerate innocent bystanders getting caught up in the conflict which we cannot fathom: the injustices done to women, a law and order system that would bedazzle the average punter in Australia. So while I open with my comments that war is a terrible thing, it is a means to an end. Australia has always been prepared to stand with its allies in the case of a just war. This war is a just war. It is a dirty and dangerous war with many casualties, but it is just nonetheless.

It is easy to stand and criticise how long or how hard or how expensive a war may be, but that may pale into insignificance when it comes to fighting that war. I would not want that job, and I doubt whether I would even get through the training. So that is why I have nothing but admiration for our serving personnel in Afghanistan. They put their bodies on the line to serve Australia’s interest. They spend months away from their families and loved ones, they miss out on weekends off, their children’s sporting events, birthdays of their loved ones and other celebrations which we, at home, all take for granted.

The new seat of Wright, which I represent, has the Canungra Land Warfare Training Centre which, since my election, I have had the opportunity to visit on several occasions. There I have met the brave men and women who train to defend our nation from any threat posed to our nation. And I have had the privilege to meet the brave soldiers and their families who have served our nation in a number of conflicts around the world: the Middle East, Kuwait and Iraq just to mention a few. It is their efforts that have allowed us the freedoms which we enjoy today as an open society, and I take this opportunity to thank them personally for their contribution to the Commonwealth of Australia. And just as importantly I thank their families, for it is they who make the hidden sacrifices that I mentioned earlier—to miss out on the birth of a child or the first day of school or to miss out on a funeral of a relative, a grandparent or an old mate. It is a sacrifice I would not like to make, but our troops and families make these sacrifices every day.

It was while on site at the Canungra warfare training centre that I experienced first-hand the commitment that goes into preparing our young men and women. They transfer skills and knowledge to recruits and experienced soldiers alike. When I inquired of a senior personnel manager up there about their role in preparing our troops, I felt an overwhelming sense of understanding when I was told by a high-ranking officer that it was his job to look each parent in the eye and give them a guarantee that their son or daughter had been given the best possible training to prepare them for any situation that they may encounter in different environments around the world.

It was also while I was on site that I asked about the spirit of our soldiers and whether or not there was any reluctance on the part of our troops to go to war or deployment. His response was convincing: our soldiers train with the knowledge that they know they want to protect their mates. He said to me: ‘You look like you’ve played football all your life. Well this is like football. There’s many grades: there’s your junior grades, there’s your Commonwealth cup, there’s the under 19 reserve grade and then there’s A-grade, Every one of my boys here wants to play A-grade.’ I add that the art of conflict and war is no football match. Bravery is sometimes matched by the ultimate sacrifice, and standing behind all of them are the families of the troops waiting at home: praying desperately, hoping for the day that they will welcome their sons, daughters, fathers or mates back home safe and well.

These are part of the war efforts which we could all overlook, but it is going to be something that I will be constantly reminded of. As I said before, I have many service families in my electorate as well as the Canungra Land Warfare Centre and, just to the north of my boundary, RAAF Base Amberley. A number of my constituents are former or current serving Air Force personnel. I handle a steady stream of inquiries about pensions and entitlements, and we need to recognise the lessons of past conflicts.

The Australian people and the Australian government send our personnel overseas to perform dangerous tasks, to risk the lives of many and in some cases to risk the chance of a long and peaceful retirement with their families. The scars of combat and conflict are sometimes more than skin-deep. The trauma of battle can scar the mind and invade the homes of our returned troops. We train our troops to survive the mayhem of battle and the challenge of long periods of boredom and estrangement from families. So I remind this parliament that we need to accept our duty to ensure that our returned troops are given all the support that they need to survive peace as well. That peace should also extend to the needs of the families. It is they who provide the cradle of care and who nourish and protect our returned warriors. They nurse their hidden wounds and give them hope for tomorrow.

Winning the peace within the families of returned service personnel is not an easy job. When I talk to my constituents who carry this burden I hear their stories and realise that this work is every bit as difficult as the military duties which others were trained and paid for. Many family members find themselves in the position of counsellor, mentor, conciliator and adviser, and most of them have had no training to perform these delicate tasks. The hidden damage is difficult to assess because these proud warriors are loath to ever admit their weakness.

I will declare my intention to this House. While I am in this place and while my job is to represent returned and serving constituents, I will be uncompromising in my representation. I will pursue every issue that these men and women bring to me. Some of this is everyday stuff of pensioners’ entitlements and battles fought and often lost with Centrelink, Veterans’Affairs and some other government agencies. There are many instances where, on the face of it, issues appear to be relatively minor. But, when I see the paperwork and the approach taken, I see all the training and discipline which the old digger, sailor or Air Force man has now put to good use in prosecuting his case and representing himself.

These are not easy tasks, because the needs of these people are not exorbitant when compared to the sacrifices they make. I will feel that I have not honoured their commitment to the nation. I cannot give them the answers to their inquiries or solutions to their problems. I want them to return to their families, their homes and their communities in my electorate to contribute where they can, as a civilian, as they served in their military life.

I would like to tell a personal story about my engagement with the US Marines. Before my time in this place I had a transport business and one of our divisions had a security detail associated with it. We were commissioned by the United States government to take a shipment of semi-automatic weapons from Shoalwater Bay to Gladstone and we were asked to pick up a platoon of US Marines. Our instructions were very brief. We were asked to wait at an isolated beach and the marines would appear. On time, at dusk, 30 marines came out of the ocean fully armoured in full camouflage gear. We had the opportunity of speaking with them while transporting them for up to two hours to their next location, and we asked them about their activities in the engagement that they were in and about the integrity of our Australian forces. They were very forthcoming in saying that, in any engagement that the US Marines engaged in anywhere in the world, they always felt an element of safety, support and professionalism when they were serving with the Australian forces. They said, ‘If we’re going to go into a contact situation, we’d prefer to have the Australian special forces with us.’

The war can only be won by the Afghan people themselves. Our duty is to assist them to assist themselves. We train our troops for and entrust them with this cause because it is a just cause. But we should never be prepared to write a blank cheque for their efforts; the cost is, above all else, the risk faced by our troops. If we cannot give them our full support then we should not send them there. If we are not prepared to support their families at home then we should not ask their families to send them in the first place.

I fully support our engagement. I have extracted a comment about our engagement in the war that I would like to include in my speech. It goes to the heart of the International Security Assistance Force, of which we are part. It reads:

At its heart, the International Security Assistance Force’s intent is to defeat Islamic terrorism at its source, deny Islamic terrorist organisations a training ground, support a democratically elected government to ensure that Afghanistan can never again become a haven for Islamic terrorism, and train and mentor the Afghan military, police and forces so that they can take command of their own security.

In summary, I would like to thank our Australian soldiers for their commitment and dedication, and their families—who go without and make sacrifices—for giving them the background support they need and nourishing them when they return to our shores. I would remind the nation to embrace our soldiers when they return and to learn from our mistakes in the past: when soldiers have returned from other conflicts, they may not have been received as warmly as they could have been. I would also add that our work in Afghanistan is sanctioned by the United Nations, and that we are proud to play our part and work with the allied forces. I do not have any stories of uncles or grandfathers who have been in conflicts or brothers who are now in conflicts. The story I have is of being a first-generation person living under the blanket of the freedom that previous troops have provided for this country. I am proud of that and proud of the work our troops do for us.

Anthony Byrne (Holt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is an honour to be here today to support the Prime Minister and speak on this most important issue, and to explain to the Australian people, including those in my electorate of Holt, why the Australian government must remain committed to our mission in Afghanistan. I just want to take us back to pre-September 11 times in discussing this matter now in the House.

On 26 November 1993, the first terror attack on the World Trade Centre took place. A truck bomb parked in a car park ripped through four levels of the South Tower building, killing six people and injuring hundreds more. New York’s serving governor, Mario Cuomo, said to journalists at the time: ‘We all have the feeling of having been violated. No foreign people or force has ever done this to us. Until now, we thought we were invulnerable.’ Ramzi Yousef, one of the main planners of the attack, spent time at Bin Laden funded training camps in Afghanistan before travelling to the United States. Yousef’s plan was for the bomb to cause such significant damage to the South Tower that it would fall and subsequently bring down the North Tower. Whilst there has been some conjecture as to whether this attack was under the direct auspices of Bin Laden, it did signify the increasing threat from Islamic extremists, and their developing organisational capacity and willingness to strike at targets on Western soil.

There is no ambiguity, however, about subsequent attacks and the involvement of bin Laden and al-Qaeda in the coordinated bombings on 7 August 1998 at the US embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, that killed 291 people and the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole at the port of Aden in Yemen that killed 17 American soldiers. Operatives in the attacks on the US embassies in Africa and the USS Cole attended terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. Then we come to September 11. The attacks on September 11 in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania killed over 3,000 people, including 10 Australians. On that day the world changed. On 11 September 2001, within the space of 20 minutes, two American airliners struck the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in Manhattan. The towers subsequently collapsed with the loss of almost 3,000 lives. At the same time, another hijacked jet crashed into the Pentagon, whilst a fourth—probably aimed at the White House—failed to reach its target due to the heroic actions of the jet’s passengers and smashed into a field in Pennsylvania.

Never before had mainland United States been the target of such a massive attack—though there was the surprise bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japan, the only precedent in living memory. The carnage on September 11 was deliberately aimed at civilians and struck at the principal symbols of American commercial and military power and, missing its target in the third case, its political power. These horrific attacks were planned and resourced in Afghanistan. All 19 of the 9-11 hijackers attended terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. In order for the Australian government to justify our mission in Afghanistan, it is our duty to always provide an ongoing rationale and clear-cut explanation to the Australian people as to why we are there. We are in Afghanistan for clear reasons. Our mission in Afghanistan is in our national security interest. The threat posed by an unstable Afghanistan, which could once again become a safe haven for terrorism, could have ramifications that reach far beyond its borders and directly affect Australian national security interests.

A return of Taliban control to major urban centres, or an even further spread of Taliban control in regional areas, will provide a safe haven again for terrorists to plan, train and operate. Moreover, the instability that would ensue from the return of the Taliban in Afghanistan is also directly related to their fight and their desire to destabilise and control Pakistan, and has a direct impact on the strategic stability of that entire region. It is important to remind ourselves of the situation in Afghanistan prior to 2001. Let us reflect on this: the infamous ministry for the promotion of virtue and the suppression of vice; girls forbidden from going to school; significant discrimination against religious and ethnic minority groups such as the predominantly Shiite Hazaras; women unable to leave their homes, access medical care or even ride in a taxi unless escorted by a male relative; crowds of up to 30,000 people, including many children, watching near-weekly public executions, amputations and whippings at the Kabul sports stadium; and bans on television, films and music. These people basically wanted to export that model concept of society to the rest of the world.

When people say that this is a fight happening on the other side of the world, it is a fight that always directly affects us. Those who make the argument that it is not our fight because it is in a far-flung place forget that this is the place where some of the Bali bombers were trained. The Bali bombers killed 202 innocent civilians, including 88 Australians, and were trained in Afghanistan. Incidentally, according to a DFAT report on transnational terrorism, up to 1,000 South-East Asian Muslims are believed to have received military training in Afghanistan during the 1980s. Key Jamaat-i-Islami and Abu Sayyaf operatives, threats in our immediate region, fought with the Afghan mujaheddin, bringing back with them the training and the ideology to establish these organisations in South-East Asia. A number of the 2002 Bali bombers trained and fought in Afghanistan. Mukhlas fought in the Afghan-Soviet war in the 1980s and admitted to meeting Osama bin Laden. His brother, Ali Imron, received explosive training and Imam Samudra is reported to have received military training in the early 1990s. Eight-eight Australians died at the hands of these and other men in the attacks in Bali in September 2002 and another 66 Australians were critically injured.

Azhari Husein, who planned the bombing of the Australian Embassy in Jakarta and was suspected of involvement in the 2005 Bali bombings in which four Australians died, also received explosives training in Afghanistan. We remember that in October 2003 some 530 survivors of the Bali bombings and the families of those who were killed filed into the Great Hall of Parliament House to light a candle and honour those who had died. It is vital that we do all we can to ensure that Australians travelling abroad—be it to London, Bali or the United States—can do so without an overarching fear of the threat posed by terrorists. We are in Afghanistan to reduce this fear and deal with this conflict so that Australians can travel freely and without fear.

In the days when the Taliban regime was completely in control, Afghanistan was a state-sponsored terrorism haven; a place that generated the horror of September 11 and the base for the attack on the US that day. This is why the war in Afghanistan falls within Australia’s ANZUS obligations. Afghanistan and the Pakistan border region is where the Taliban and al-Qaeda are based and where Osama bin Laden may still be hiding. It is in Afghanistan and the Pakistan border region that al-Qaeda continues to operate. It is in Afghanistan and that border region that the Taliban continues to represent a real security threat to the Pakistan government and people, to the people and the nascent government of Afghanistan and, frankly, to stability in the entire region. It is in Afghanistan that rampant opium and heroin production provides a continued source of funding for al-Qaeda’s global terrorism operations and it is in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border regions that the al-Qaeda command structure, albeit degraded, including Osama bin Laden, remains operational.

To meet these regional and global security challenges requires a global security effort which Australia is rightly and proudly part of. Under the mandate of the United Nations, 46 other countries are contributing, including two of our closest allies the United States and Great Britain. We know that the Department of Defence is doing an amazing job with our brave service men and women in this region. We know that we have, through Operation Slipper, up to 1,550 Australian Defence Force personnel currently deployed within Afghanistan. We know that 1,241 of them are deployed in the Oruzgan province and about 340 in Kabul, Kandahar and elsewhere in Afghanistan.

Australia’s substantial military, civilian and development assistance focuses on training and mentoring the Afghan National Army 4th Brigade in Oruzgan province to assume responsibility for the province’s security;  building the capacity of the Afghan National Police to assist with civil policing functions in Oruzgan; helping improve the Afghan government’s capacity to deliver core services and generate income-earning opportunities for its people; and, importantly, operations to disrupt insurgent operations and supply routes using the Special Operations Task Group. That is some of the great work they have been doing. In particular, the Special Operations Task Group is working with our NATO allies and the growing Afghan National Army to prevent and deter a return of Taliban control and tyranny across the country. The role of this group is to disrupt Taliban command and control of supply routes. Our soldiers are on the front line fighting Taliban extremists on our behalf. It is a tough fight and, sadly, at times a deadly fight for our troops, some of whom have made the ultimate sacrifice on our behalf to keep us free of further terrorism incidents like the Bali bombings. Make no mistake, this is and continues to be a war against a determined and vicious enemy, but it is a necessary fight.

Let me talk about the overall progress in Afghanistan since 2001, when the overseas forces were put in there. There has been a dramatic increase in school enrolments in Afghanistan from around one million in 2001 to over six million today, of which one-third, or over two million, are girls. There has been a significant increase in the availability of basic health services, which were available to less than 10 per cent of the population under the former Taliban regime but are now extended to about 85 per cent of people. There has been the identification and management of over 39,000 community infrastructure projects such as wells, clinics and roads in over 22,000 communities throughout Afghanistan through the Afghan led National Solidarity Program. There has been the rehabilitation of almost 10,000 kilometres of rural roads, supporting the employment of hundreds of thousands of local workers through the National Rural Access Program. The telecommunications industry has created about 100,000 jobs since 2001. Today 10 million Afghans have access to telecommunications compared to only 20,000 in 2001. So I think there is pretty strong evidence that there has been constructive change.

The Taliban suppressed free speech. Afghan people also have access to over 400 print media publications, 150 FM radio stations and 26 television channels. These give Afghans an outlet to discuss public issues that were previously off limits such as human rights abuses and women’s rights.

In concluding, I wish to pass on our deepest condolences and our prayers to the families of the soldiers killed in Afghanistan in the service of our nation. All Australians will be thinking of the thousands of Australian men and women who are serving their nation abroad in order to keep it free from the sort of terrorism that we saw almost visit our shores in Bali in 2002.

Australians know that our troops understand the dangers involved in deployments to hostile regions. They know that they face deadly and extremist enemies on a daily basis and they do it with pride and conviction. And our troops do a magnificent job. They are highly skilled, brave and dedicated. All Australians are proud of them and appreciate what they do in defence of our nation and its interests.

I want to read an extract from a letter published in the Sydney Morning Herald in October this year. It was written by Vicki Hopkins, the wife of Corporal Mathew Hopkins, who was shot and killed on patrol in Oruzgan in March 2009. It says more eloquently anything I have said here today:

I knew that, with Mat, he was over there with a job to do and that was to make the world a safer place by getting rid of these evil people. And for that I am very, very proud of Mat. The army is not over there only to shoot and kill bad people; they are over there rebuilding the lives of the Afghan people.

People say this isn’t our war, but a lot of Australians have died as a result of the attacks on Bali and September 11. Afghanistan is the heart of where these people trained to do these horrible acts against the Western world. To pull the troops out now when the job isn’t done, then, really, all those guys did die in vain.

They are powerful and moving words and why we have to be there to see out the mission to its full course.

George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

‘War is an ugly thing.’ So said the great British philosopher John Stuart Mill. ‘War is an ugly thing,’ he said, ‘but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing is worth war is much worse.’ I could not agree more.

The problem that I have had with this debate is not so much that it has allowed a few political fringe dwellers to express those decayed and degraded feelings but that in expressing those feelings they may have achieved nothing but to demoralise our troops in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, those with this minority view in the Committee and in the House seem to attract some larger following in the general community—but certainly not the majority of people. They attract that larger following because they can rally the uninformed with one word: peace. It is true that peace is an ideal that should be strived for, but the opposite of peace is not war; it is injustice. Injustice is the enemy of peace. Free men and women cannot live in peace while injustice prevails.

Let us remember the basis for this conflict in Afghanistan. Indeed, let us never forget that fateful day, September 11, 2001. Extremist Islamic terrorists, al-Qaeda operatives, hijacked four planes, flying two into the World Trade Centre and one into the Pentagon, while another was lost in a field in Pennsylvania. Thousands of lives were lost from that one act of terror, and the reality is that Afghanistan was the home base for the training and leadership of al-Qaeda and the terrorists who launched this attack. They were invited to operate from Afghanistan by the extremist Islamic Taliban regime that was in place at the time; it was basically state-sponsored terrorism. With that injustice, there was a grave duty to act.

I want to digress for a moment. There are those who would actually deny that that injustice occurred. I can quote the labour movement’s Kevin Bracken, the Victorian branch secretary of the Maritime Union of Australia and the President of the Victorian Trades Hall Council. Mr Bracken believes that the official story of 9/11 is a conspiracy theory that does not stand up to scientific scrutiny. He believes that 9/11 did not happen, or at least not as we saw it happen. He thinks that the United States government was behind it. While this was reported in the media only recently, it is a matter of record that Mr Bracken has been peddling his conspiracy theories throughout the Victorian union movement since 2006. What a disgrace.

His is not a lone voice from the Left on this. In fact, a Greens candidate, Bob Brown—he shares his party leader’s name—said earlier this year:

The 9/11 commission was not conclusive that al-Qa’ida was responsible … There are huge questions that need to be asked—one building came down without being hit, architects say the building looked like they were brought down by controlled explosions …

I am also aware that New South Wales Greens promoted a series of 9/11 conspiracy forums and fundraisers in their e-newsletter in late 2008. The Greens also have party members like John Bursill, who operates the 911oz website, which also peddles these 9/11 conspiracy theories. The Greens are linked to the United States party of the Greens through the Global Greens Coordination organisation, which connects to all these Green parties around the world. The US Greens are led by Cynthia McKinney, who is also a 9/11 conspiracy theorist. I raise all of this because, sadly, this is the result of a view that pervades the Left. It is a view of anti-Americanism, and quite frankly it clouds the Left’s judgment. I think anti-Americanism is at the heart of the opposition to our operations in Afghanistan. That is a great shame because, as I said earlier, the opposite of peace is injustice and one would think that those in the Left would rail against injustice.

I do not just speak of the injustice that was wrought upon the United States of America on 11 September 2001 or of the terrorist attacks in the rest of the Western world, the Middle East, the developing world and even on our doorstep, in Bali. I speak as well of the injustice that was taking place in Afghanistan itself, under the oppressive, extremist Islamic regime of the Taliban. Under the Taliban there was a complete ban on women’s work outside the home, and that ban included female teachers, engineers and most professionals. Only a few female doctors and nurses were allowed to work in some hospitals in Kabul. There was a ban on women studying at schools, universities or any other educational institutions. The Taliban had converted most girls schools into Islamic religious seminaries. Women were required to wear a long veil, or burkah, covering them from head to toe. Those not clothed in accordance with Taliban rules were subject to whipping, beating and verbal abuse. Women were whipped in public for even having their ankles uncovered. Women accused of having sex outside of marriage were publicly stoned.

The Taliban banned listening to music and watching movies and television, and they banned use of the internet. They forced Afghan youth to have haircuts and ordered Afghan men to wear Islamic clothes and a cap. They ordered that men not shave or trim their beards, which should grow long enough to protrude from a fist clasped at the point of the chin. They made non-Muslim minorities wear distinct badges or stitch a yellow cloth onto their dresses to differentiate them from the majority Muslim population—echoes of Nazi Germany. I know these are sideline issues to our national security. The reason we wanted the Taliban gone was that they sponsored terrorism and harboured terrorists. But we should acknowledge that as a result of our actions this oppressive regime was removed along with most of those unjust rules which were offensive to the liberty of the individual.

I compare that regime to the situation in Afghanistan now, due in part to the work of our troops. According to the Department of Defence, in the past nine years there has been a dramatic increase in school enrolments: from one million in 2001—and no girls in schools—to more than six million today, two million of whom are girls. Today 85 per cent of the Afghani population has access to basic health services which were available to less than 10 per cent of the population under the Taliban. Some 10,000 kilometres of rural roads have been rehabilitated, employing hundreds of thousands of locals and more than 39,000 community based infrastructure projects, such as wells, clinics and roads, in more than 22,000 communities across Afghanistan have progressed. The injustices of the past are being undone.

The Dawson electorate stretches from Mackay to Townsville, so I want to particularly acknowledge the part Townsville’s 1RAR has played in this progress in Afghanistan. I also want to acknowledge Mackay base troops whom I are aware have served or are serving in Afghanistan, including returned veteran Kerin Connolly and, from the member for Capricornia’s electorate, Sarina brothers Jeremy and Brett Kipping.

With every combat effort there is a risk of combat and operational injuries and deaths, and it is certainly sobering to think that 160 have been injured and 21 of our men have sacrificed their lives for their country in Afghanistan. Any death is tragic, but the death of a service man or woman undertaking a duty for their nation is perhaps even more tragic. But those deaths are not in vain.

There is an old saying that I have heard from many a digger, particularly about World War II. It goes something like this: ‘We were fighting them over there so we didn’t have to fight them here.’ And let us not think for one moment that the threat of terrorism cannot reach our shores. It may not be in my home town of Mackay but it could be in Sydney, Brisbane, Lavarack Barracks in Townsville or a strategic economic asset, such as Dalrymple Bay coal terminal or the Abbot Point coal terminal. A terrorist attack on our home soil could have occurred if we had neglected to pursue radical Islamic terrorism where it was fostered. These murderers reached Bali, where they killed 92 Australians in two separate bombings. So they can reach us and our shores unless we fight them on their shores and on the shores where they are harboured.

The 21 brave men who have sacrificed their lives have done so over there in Afghanistan so that Australians—be they Christians, Jews, Muslims or atheists—are not sacrificed here at the hands of the terrorists. It is for this reason that we cannot walk away from Afghanistan. We cannot allow it to return to a hotbed of radicalism. We cannot walk away from the war on terror and the war on extreme and radical Islam. We cannot walk away from a concerted attack on the West because of its values of freedom, liberty and democracy. We cannot walk away because we want some sort of false peace. I go back to John Stuart Mill and continue the quote which I began with:

The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

I salute the better men and women who serve this nation through our defence forces and dedicate this speech to their efforts.

Kirsten Livermore (Capricornia, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to have this opportunity to join with my colleagues in this debate on Australia’s engagement in the war in Afghanistan. I know we all share the same sense of responsibility for explaining to the Australian people our role in Afghanistan, the reasons for being there and the future of our commitment in that country.

It is true that there have been regular reports given to the parliament during the last term of government by the Minister for Defence and others to inform members and senators as well as the public of the progress our troops and other personnel are making and the strategy we are pursuing. It is equally true to say, however, that nothing has engaged individual members and senators and pledged us each to undertake closer scrutiny and inquiry into the specifics of the war in quite the same way as this debate has. I think that the Australian community feels the same way. They will continue to seek answers about Afghanistan and hold us to the parameters and time lines we have set out for the Australian mission in the course of this debate. As parliamentarians and particularly as government MPs we will need to meet those expectations—and that is a good thing.

On that logic, I support the calls made by earlier speakers in this debate for the parliament to play a greater role in the decision to commit troops to go to war in the name of this country and with the support of this country. If the executive cannot convince the members of this parliament of the justification for military action, how can we expect the community to be convinced?

Openness and transparency about the reasons for going to war and putting our troops in harm’s way is what we are engaging in here and it is being universally welcomed as constructive and necessary. A requirement for a similar resolution by the parliament, authorising the commitment of our defence forces prior to their deployment, is a proper acknowledgement of the gravity of the decision and underscores the fact that it is a decision for which members of parliament ultimately have to take responsibility.

In the case of Afghanistan, perhaps somewhat paradoxically, a debate about Australia’s commitment to the war in 2001 would have been quite straightforward for most members and senators, while there is much less certainty now about the correct course of action in what has become a far more deadly and complicated conflict. One of the valuable things about this debate has been the opportunity it has presented to remind us of the history of the Afghanistan war and how Australia came to join the war in 2001.

In 2001 the obligation on Australia as an alliance partner of the United States and an active participant in the United Nations was unambiguous, at least it was for me. Following the terrorist attacks on America on September 11 Australia committed to military action against the Taliban-led regime in Afghanistan on the basis of the United Nations Security Council resolution 1386, which authorised an international security force in that country. The ANZUS Treaty was also invoked at that time. Nine years on, Australia’s defence forces remain in Afghanistan as part of a multinational force. There are 47 countries still engaged in Afghanistan as part of the International Security Assistance Force, representing a coalition of over 120,000 troops. As the Minister for Foreign Affairs pointed out in his speech, the United Nations’ resolution authorising the coalition’s continued presence in Afghanistan has been renewed 10 times since 2001. That international consensus—also confirmed this year by the broad participation at the London and Kabul conferences—is built on the resolve of all nations to ensure that Afghanistan can never again become a safe haven for terrorists and a base for attacks like the ones in the United States or Bali.

On the question of Australia’s military presence in Afghanistan, I have always found reassurance in the fact that it is sanctioned by the international community through that UN resolution and also that Australia is at the table when it comes to determining the ongoing legitimacy of the engagement, the goals being pursued and the strategy to achieve those goals. The next opportunity will be in Lisbon later this week. Our support for that UN resolution has to be consistent with Australia’s national interests and does not absolve our government from constantly reviewing our mission in Afghanistan to ensure that those interests are being advanced and protected. The question for all of us is whether that initial justification that seemed so clear-cut in 2001 still holds now that, as we all well know, the Taliban was removed from office in Afghanistan shortly after the coalition entered the country and al-Qaeda has shifted its activities to other, friendly countries.

I am not an enthusiast for this or any other war but I am a rationalist. I have to be able to construct an argument one way or the other to come to a conclusion and as much as I want to stand here and say we should pull our troops out now, I cannot follow the argument through in my mind to make that case—not yet. The member for Parramatta explained it in her speech as a battle between her heart and her head and I know exactly how she feels. Although I am coming down on the side of continued support for Australia’s commitment, this debate has given me a much clearer understanding of the conditions that I now have on my continued support and of the questions that will need to be answered if I am to go the whole four years foreshadowed by the Prime Minister.

In coming to my conclusion in this debate I am influenced by some fundamental principles and some judgments made on a more practical level. I support Australia’s role as a positive partner in the international community and accept the responsibilities that come with that. In saying that, I am acutely aware that the true burden of those responsibilities is borne by the members of our defence forces who we send to defend our territory, our values and our desire to live in peace and security. It is really too much to ask of any Australian and yet they do it for all of us. They make us proud, and we are forever in their debt.

I also think that fighting in the country on and off for the past nine years does give us some responsibility for the Afghan people—not a responsibility that should hold us in Afghanistan indefinitely but a responsibility that should give us some pause before concluding that we should abandon our part in the whole exercise. On a practical level I am persuaded by the evidence that indicates that the Australian contingent in Afghanistan is making progress towards its objective of training and mentoring the Afghan National Army 4th Brigade in Oruzgan province.

I can understand that there is a perception out in the community that we have been in Afghanistan for nearly 10 years and if we have not managed to do the job by now we should give it away, but the fact is that our commitment to Afghanistan has taken a number of different forms over that period and included a time when Australian troops were withdrawn from Afghanistan altogether. It was only in October 2008 that the Mentoring and Reconstruction Task Force was deployed to undertake the training of Afghan forces. That is now taking place within the context of Barack Obama’s revised strategy for Afghanistan, announced in December 2009, which includes the surge of 30,000 additional US troops. That strategy acknowledges that the purpose of the International Security Assistance Force is to create the conditions that will allow for the transition of security responsibility to the Afghan government and the subsequent withdrawal of international forces from the country. A clearly defined strategy with measurable outcomes along the way, such as the numbers of Afghan soldiers trained and their capacity to assume security responsibility, is not the same as writing a blank cheque to the Americans and our other allies in Afghanistan.

It is up to us, however, as members of parliament to keep scrutinising our commitment and its progress against the task set for our forces in Oruzgan and the wider strategy. That wider strategy has to acknowledge that the goal of a secure and functional Afghanistan is not going to be achieved in the long term through military means. Achieving security and stability through force is not an end in itself; it can only provide the basis from which the Afghan people can build a viable future. Our job over the next few years of providing the Afghan government with a competent and independent security force has to be matched by efforts to find a political and diplomatic solution to the governance and economic and development issues that will otherwise perpetrate Afghanistan’s unrest and conflict beyond anything Australia’s 1,550 soldiers can ever hope to overcome.

I can be convinced that our soldiers should remain in Afghanistan assisting the international forces to prepare the Afghan government and its army to assume full responsibility for the security of that country, but only if the international community around the NATO-ISAF table shows that it is serious about ensuring that continued corruption, poor governance and lack of development in Afghanistan is not allowed to render that a pointless exercise. I can accept that we need to give the current strategy time to prove itself, but the parliament has to be assured in an ongoing way that what we are asking our troops to do is possible and can be shown to be bringing us closer in a tangible way to the time when handover to the Afghan government can take place.

I welcome the commitment by the Prime Minister given in her speech that opened this debate that she will make a statement on Australia’s commitment in Afghanistan each year that our forces remain on the ground there. This is in addition to the ongoing reports that the defence minister and others have already been making to the House in each session of parliament. Just as we have in this debate, members and senators have to take those opportunities to rigorously evaluate the status of our commitment to Afghanistan and judge the merits of our continued role.

In the meantime, like all members and senators, I fervently hope that the conflict in Afghanistan does not have to be brought before the parliament again in the way it already has on 21 sad occasions since 2001. Those have been the times when we have paused to pay our respects to the Australian soldiers who have lost their lives in Afghanistan while in the service of our nation. I think particularly of Lance Corporal Jason Marks, a young commando who grew up in Yeppoon in Central Queensland and who was killed fighting Taliban insurgents in 2008. This debate is carried out in honour of those men and their loved ones because we owe it to them, and to their mates who continue to serve in Afghanistan, to recognise the job they are doing in our names and, tragically, the sacrifice some have been called upon to make.

I offer my condolences to the families and friends of our fallen soldiers, who have to live with their loss every day. It is our job to ensure that they live also with the knowledge that their sons and fathers and husbands and brothers were and are, on behalf of our country, doing a job that the Australian parliament regards as worthy and necessary and that the Australian people can support.

Debate adjourned.