Robert Ray (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

At the outset, may I say that I strongly support having a proscription regime in place in Australia. I noted from Senator Bob Brown’s speech last night that he, in principle, does not oppose the proscription regime but would rather it have a different construction—I do not think I am misleading the chamber in that. I point out that the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security will be reviewing the proscription regime in 2007. Already, parts of that regime have been looked at by the Sheller report, so we will be looking at the Sheller recommendations—especially those to do with association—and all other aspects of the proscription regime in 2007.

When the regime was set up, the main defensive mechanism against an unfair proscription occurring was to make it a disallowable instrument in the two houses of parliament. One would have less confidence now that, if the government made a mistake, it would in fact be disallowed, given the government’s majority. However, I want to assure this chamber that the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security takes it duties seriously when assessing the Attorney-General’s proscription activities. It is absolutely essential that these be rigorously examined. We have never got ourselves into a situation where we have become just a bunch of Uncle Toms agreeing with everything that security agencies want to do. The examination of each one of these proscriptions is quite vigorous and quite detailed.

So far, 19 organisations have been listed in Australia. I note for the record that that is far fewer than in the United Kingdom, the United States, the European Union, Canada and even the United Nations. As a government, a parliament and a country, we have made fewer proscriptions than most like-minded countries.

Unfortunately, this debate is often misinformed. ASIO and the Attorney-General use six broad criteria, for which they give reasons, for proscription of an organisation. But I must say that they are not mandatory. The definition of the organisation as a terrorist organisation is the crucial element here. Nevertheless, ASIO and the Attorney-General report back here on six criteria to keep the parliament and the committee informed as to why decisions have been made.

Overall, there are two essential elements of terrorism that we have to address. The first is finance. Most terrorist organisations rely on finance from people who, on many occasions, do not understand that the money is going towards terrorist activity. Terrorism and terrorist organisations cannot exist without finance. The second element is that in most cases they cannot exist without the sponsorship of other nations. Terrorists have to train somewhere. There are still several regimes on this globe that allow terrorist training within their ranks. Those are the countries that have to be isolated and punished if we want to get rid of the scourge of terrorism. Very stringent measures have been taken to cut off the flow of funds to terrorist organisations. We have carried separate legislation in this parliament. We have the ability to freeze the accounts of terrorist organisations, and that has been done fairly vigorously.

I have no doubt at all that the PKK is a terrorist organisation. I refer senators to page 17 of our report, where we list some of the most recent efforts of the PKK—and I am talking about in the last two years. I was in Kusadasi last year just two days before they set off a bomb on a minibus. That bomb killed five people. These people were not the soldiers or the oppressors; they were five innocent people, two tourists and three others, going about their way of life, and they were blown up for the cause.

It is sometimes argued that proscribing the PKK is using too broad a brush and that just its military wing should be banned. But so far it has been impossible to disentangle the various elements of the PKK to allow such a course of action. This is an organisation that has many front organisations and many interwoven organisations and subgroups right throughout it. It has been impossible to this date for the Australian government to disentangle them as we did with Hamas and its military wing—we did not ban the general Hamas movement. We have, however, asked the government to continue to try to examine that particular area, and I am hopeful that they will.

A further consideration in not proscribing an organisation is whether they are engaged in a genuine peace-building process. In other words, a pre-emptive proscription may well be seen as isolating a particular group and disrupting their participation in the peace process. It is one of the reasons over the last few years, I suspect, that the Tamil Tigers have not been proscribed. They were involved with the Norwegians and the Sri Lankan government in a dialogue trying to bring about a peaceful settlement of the dispute in Sri Lanka. There is no doubt that the PKK, up until around 2003, had entered a peace-building process with the Turkish government. But that period clearly ended in 2003, and terrorist activities resumed.

I think that in his speech Senator Brown implied that the proscription of the PKK was in some way a response to lobbying by the Turkish government. In evidence before the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, it came out for the first time—and there is no denying this—that the Turkish government on two occasions approached the Australian government to proscribe the PKK. The most notable occasion was when Prime Minister John Howard visited Gallipoli. He was certainly requested by the Turkish authorities to proscribe PKK. So the committee went back and examined when the first moves got underway to proscribe the PKK and found that they predated either of the two approaches, which I think were in December 2004 and April 2005. We found that it went back another 12 months before that.

So we have no evidence available to us that any lobbying efforts on behalf of the Turkish government influenced the actions of the Australian government and, in turn, the Attorney-General, Mr Philip Ruddock. It is also true that in the last few weeks the Turkish ambassador has been active, writing to MPs and urging us to maintain the ban on the PKK. But I can honestly say that none of those views had arrived when the committee put down its report, nor did they have any influence whatsoever on the committee. There is no denying, of course, that human rights in Turkey are often violated. But, to most of us, the solution to these problems will never be aided or assisted by terrorist acts of violence against innocent individuals.

Many of the organisations that oppose the PKK being proscribed make the point that there are many Kurds in Australia who are refugees who want to continue their links to an organisation they perceive as trying to right the wrongs in their homeland. I have to say that I very strongly support paragraph 2.67 of the Parliamentary Joint Intelligence and Security Committee’s report, entitled Review of the listing of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which states:

Australia has obligations under international law to protect refugees. However, those granted refugee status in Australia have obligations to comply with Australian law. Past associations cannot be used to justify funding and support of terrorist organisations.

I mentioned earlier that there have been 19 proscriptions. In every case, the Parliamentary Joint Intelligence and Security Committee has supported those listings and has not recommended disallowance in this chamber or in the other place. Yet on this occasion, it should be said for the record, our report was more qualified than the other 18 were. I will read to the chamber the recommendations that appear on page 33 of the committee’s report, because they are more qualified than any of the other recommendations. I hope that in the spirit of bipartisanship in which the committee unanimously made them—that is, four Labor, four Liberal and one National Party member all agreed to these recommendations—the government will at least absorb and consider them. They read as follows:

The Committee supports the listing.

However it also recommends that the matter be kept under active consideration and requests, in that process, that the Government take into account:

~        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;

~        whether it would be sufficient to proscribe the PKK’s military wing, the Kurdistan Freedom Brigade (Hazen Rizgariya Kurdistan HRK) referred to in the Attorney’s Statement of Reasons; and

~        the fluid state of moves towards possible ceasefires.

Those three points were the unanimous view of the committee. The committee did, however, divide seven to two, with two of the committee asking the government to reassess the listing and the other seven asking the government to maintain the listing. Nevertheless, the entire committee agreed with those three points.

The opposition has addressed these matters in its party room and has decided to support the government’s listing of this particular organisation. There are members of the Labor Party who have qualifications about that. Whilst they may not oppose the listing, they worry about the ramifications. It is good that this occurs. It is excellent that this sort of consideration is given. This chamber was never intended as a rubber stamp and neither is the party room. We have to give consideration to all points of view wherever possible. But, whilst it is not as clear-cut and decisive as some of the other proscriptions, what this ultimately comes down to is that, deep down, the PKK continues to be a terrorist organisation that murders innocent individuals—and, whatever the faults and whatever the provocation of the Turkish regime, that cannot be justified.