Alan Griffin (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in the House today to speak briefly about the recent release of the Global Peace Index for 2015. Members may or may not be aware of the Global Peace Index. It is an attempt to measure the relative position of nations' and regions' with respect to peacefulness. That, in itself, is something which is obviously incredibly complex and fraught with analytical and intellectual questions. The index itself, though, I think, is a very useful tool for looking at what is happening across the world in an attempt to try and understand, statistically, what is occurring.

More than 20 indicators are utilised, running across three broad themes: the level of safety and security in society, the extent of domestic and international conflict, and the degree of militarisation. As I said, it has more than 20 indicators. It goes to a qualitative scale between one and five around a range of issues—such as terrorist activity and political instability—and then on to actual raw numbers with respect to the number of external and internal conflicts fought, the number of deaths from organised conflict et cetera.

Obviously, there are criticisms to be made of the index. For example, one of the areas focused on is the issue of military expenditure, and one of the criticisms is the fact that those who do not spend militarily in order to ensure that they have a level of security for the future, in fact, look better than those who do. So the argument is that some countries are having a free ride when it comes to security. I have some sympathy for the fact that that is the case. There are also indicators around violence, particularly towards women and children, which are also not necessarily taken into account.

Having said that, I still think it does provide some interesting points for the future. Let me turn to some of the points that come through. Peace is correlated to indicators such as income, schooling and the level of regional integration. Peaceful countries often shared high levels of transparency of government and low corruption. Small stable countries which are part of regional blocs are most likely to get a higher ranking. Certainly, income, schooling, the level of regional integration, transparency of government and low corruption are all factors that you would expect would indicate the existence of a peaceful society, but I think it is worth mentioning yet again that these are, in fact, indicators and goals that societies should work to achieve in order to have the benefit of a peaceful society.

As I said, the rankings the index produces are interesting. For example, this year four of nine geographical regions experienced an improvement in peace—Europe, North America, sub-Saharan Africa, Central America and the Caribbean—but the other five regions, I am afraid, became less peaceful. It is no surprise, given recent world events, that the region with the greatest problems was the Middle East and North Africa. The upsurge of violence there is well known to all.

There were other highlights. Since last year 81 countries have become more peaceful, whilst 78 have deteriorated. Many countries in Europe—the world's most peaceful region—have reached historically high levels of peace. Fifteen of the 20 most peaceful countries are in Europe. Due to an increase in civil unrest and terrorist activity, as I mentioned, the Middle East and Northern Africa is now the world's least peaceful region for the first time since the index began. Globally the intensity of internal armed conflict has increased dramatically, with the number of people killed in conflicts rising over 3.5 times, from 49,000 in 2010 to 180,000 in 2014. The economic impact of violence reached a total of US$14.3 trillion, or 13.4 per cent of global GDP last year. Terrorism, obviously, is an issue on people's minds, given the events of recent times. Last year alone, it was estimated that 20,000 people were killed in terrorist attacks—up from an average of 2,000 a year only 10 years ago. Only two indicators have markedly improved since 2008—UN peacekeeping funding and external conflicts fought. The number of deaths from external conflicts has fallen from 1,982 to 410 over the last eight years.

The fact is that we live in a changing world and a difficult world. We also live in a great country. I think it is worthwhile remembering how good this country is, but there are still external threats that need to be faced. Focusing on the Global Peace Index gives us an opportunity to think about the world, where it is up to and where it needs to go.