Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, it has Senator Ludwig. I thank the clerk for reading out the business item. This is a motion to disallow the move by the Attorney-General to ban, in December last year, the Kurdistan Workers Party as a purported terrorist organisation. It is a difficult question and I should say at the outset that we need a mechanism for banning organisations that would create terror in our community. There was always going to come a point when there would be considerable debate about what is, or who is, or who is not, a terrorist organisation.

The Kurdistan Workers Party is globally known as representing the Kurdish people in Iraq, Turkey and Iran, and I should state at the outset that it is my belief that the Kurdish people deserve their day and their opportunity to become an independent nation, Kurdistan, if they wish to. But that is not the point here. The point is that there has been a proscription of an organisation and that has caused a great deal of concern amongst the many Australians who have Kurdish origins, and other community organisations.

A review of the move by the parliament’s joint intelligence committee subsequently supported the listing but called on the government to keep it under active consideration. The committee said that the government should take into account, firstly, the number of Australians of Kurdish origin who may support the broad aims of the PKK without endorsing or supporting its engagement in terrorist acts; secondly, whether it would be sufficient to proscribe the PKK’s military wing, the Kurdistan Freedom Brigade—Hazen Rizgariya or HRK—which was referred to in the Attorney-General’s statement of reasons; and, finally, the fluid state of moves towards possible ceasefires. That refers to moves towards a peaceful outcome of what has sometimes been violent confrontation between the Turkish authorities and the PKK in Turkey.

I will be looking and listening to find out whether the government has in particular looked at whether it would be sufficient to proscribe the military wing, because that would be a much easier matter for us to be dealing with today. The PKK is much more than its military wing. It is a political organisation and it has an enormous reputation for also supplying a lot of social wherewithal for the Kurdish people as well as being a political alternative for their aspirations.

The Greens do not think that the government should have the power to ban organisations by listing them as terrorist organisations per se. That should be in the hands of the parliament, or at least a court, and should be appellable. The definition of terrorism and the criteria used at the moment could encompass Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress or the East Timor freedom movement. Listings are based on secret advice from ASIO which cannot be tested in open court or viewed by the Australian public. Listings are more often about what the Bush administration wants rather than what is in the separate and different national interests of this nation. The government’s own Sheller review of the terrorism laws recommended that a fairer and more transparent process should be devised for proscribing an organisation as a terrorist organisation, yet we have not had a response to that from the government.

Many Australians will remember the great controversy over the referendum banning the Communist Party half a century ago. The Australian people opted not to ban the party but instead to endorse basic liberty, freedom of speech and democratic rights of association in this country. The Kurdistan Workers Party should not be banned in toto. It is an encompassing organisation, as I have said. What is very poignant and very important to understanding the concern about the proscription by the government is that it was done after the visit here of the Turkish Prime Minister to discuss a trade deal and was very clearly in response to political pressure from the Turkish government, against the aspirations of the Kurdish people within Turkey. Many refugees who have fled Turkey because of their support for self-determination and for the PKK and who now live in Australia could be criminalised by this ban. Will evidence they have provided to the government to get themselves refugee status now potentially be used to put them under watch or to prosecute them?

Mr Howard says that the Kurds in Iraq are an important part of the new government, but here we are proscribing, at his behest, the Kurds across the border in Turkey and calling them terrorists. It is a double standard and it is something that should be dealt with much more clear-headedly than simply leaving it to the Attorney-General to proscribe an organisation after the visit of the Turkish Prime Minister. Recently, there have been prospects for peace in Turkish Kurdistan, and Australia should be a broker for that peace and should not be taking sides. We should be pursuing human rights and not putting trade in the way of resolution of conflict and the re-emergence of the human rights of all citizens in that region.

A large range of Kurdish and Australian community and legal organisations have asked the Greens and other parties to move this disallowance motion. This is an opportunity for the Senate to share their concerns. No evidence has been brought forward—and I would be interested to see that if the government has it—that the PKK poses any threat to Australia’s domestic national security. Groups who opposed this proscription include the National Association of Community Legal Centres, Liberty Victoria, the Australian Muslim Civil Rights Advocacy Network, the Federation of Community Legal Centres (Victoria), SAVE Australia Inc., the New South Wales Combined Community Legal Centres Group, the Brotherhood of St Laurence, the Refugee Advice and Casework Service, and the Civil Rights Network. Also opposing this proscription are the Australian Kurdish Association, the Anatolian cultural centre, the Kurdistan Women’s League of Australia, the Kurdish Resource Centre, the Australian Kurdish Youth Association, the Kurdish Association of Victoria and the Western Australian Kurdish cultural centre. So there is a great deal of concern and disquiet in the ranks of people who are studying this matter, not least those of Kurdish origin who are part of the Australian community. We believe that the proscription should be disallowed and, as I have said, we think the government should come back with a much more confined proscription, if it must, and argue that before the Senate.