Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I think we all agree with Senator Lightfoot that we are sorry for the people of Iraq but, unfortunately, he does not address any of the key issues about resolving the situation. Labor does not support this urgency motion. As it stands, the motion does not reflect the entirety of Labor’s policy position, but it is an important debate and I am happy to join it.

There are elements in the motion that reflect Labor’s position, and I am going to concentrate on some of those. Let me say from the outset: Labor has always been opposed to this war. We voted against Australian participation. We spoke out against the government’s refusal to abide by the United Nations charter and its defiance of the United Nations Security Council resolution, and we strongly opposed the Howard government’s haste to involve our military forces in the war. Our position on the war has never changed. Our position is on the public record.

Labor’s position, and that of the millions of Australians who opposed this war, has been vindicated by the horrific events that have occurred every day since the invasion. The motion before us today is important because it asks the question: what is John Howard’s strategy for the future of Iraq? This question is vital as Iraq descends into a quagmire. It is a civil war. Iraqis are dying at a rate of 100 a day; the Pentagon has estimated that over 50,000 have died as a result of the war. According to the Lancet, perhaps 600,000 Iraqis are dead from the war and its effects.

Iraq has a population of some 26 million people. We know that over 1.6 million Iraqis have been internally displaced and an additional 1.8 million have fled their homeland. The security of the civilian population has clearly diminished—and it is not enough to say that Saddam Hussein was a butcher; we have to deal with the reality now. Overnight, the new US defence secretary, Robert Gates, testified that he believed the war was being lost. His statement before congress was not a surprise; but it is welcome for its acknowledgement of the reality of the situation facing the Iraqi people and the coalition.

Of the 18 provinces in Iraq, the handover of security responsibilities has only occurred in two provinces despite a police force of some 130,000 trained police, other police units of 176,000 and an army of 130,000. The multinational force in Iraq of some 140,000 troops and the trained Iraqi security forces have failed to curb an insurgency by Sunni Muslims, and it has failed to curb the violence by Shiite Muslim militias linked to religious parties in the majority Shiite dominated government.

The United States is moving to reassess its Iraq strategy. Secretary Gates’s testimony came a day before the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, headed by former Secretary of State James A Baker, releases its recommendations. Mr Baker briefed President Bush on the findings on Tuesday, and we can anticipate what the Iraq Study Group will recommend. Secretary Gates, of course, was a panel member of the Iraq Study Group but quit after President Bush nominated him to become the new defence secretary.

We know that two days before resigning as defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld informed President Bush that the US strategy was not working and adjustments needed to be made. This is the man that helped plan and engineer the war. He referred to possible troop withdrawals and an accelerated draw-down in the number of security bases in Iraq: from 55 bases to 10 to 15 bases by April 2007 and to five bases by July 2007.

Unlike the United States, John Howard is refusing to face up to the reality of our Iraq engagement. Many Australians now acknowledge that this government is guilty of changing its story on Iraq to suit its political interests, not the Australian national interest. Many Australians now reject the government’s glib use of slogans such as ‘cut and run’ or ‘stay till the job is done’, which are still used to justify our participation in the quagmire in Iraq.

The core issue in the urgency motion is correct. It refers to the strategic plans that the government has for Iraq’s future. It is about what has been discussed with other allied governments and it is about working out the priority of our efforts, our objectives and the manner of achieving them. It is about the clarity of the message, not the ambiguity of concealment.

As Kevin Rudd said some weeks ago, the question is how this government proposes to stabilise Iraq’s security and how this government will bring about political arrangements in Iraq that give the Iraqi people hope for the future. It is about John Howard’s plan for overcoming the problems that were generated from the effects of the war and the abject failure of postwar planning.

Many Australians now accept that this government was guilty of taking Australians to war for the wrong reasons. There were no weapons of mass destruction. The prewar intelligence was flawed. There was no reconstruction plan for the postwar period. Many Australians now criticise John Howard’s decision to commit our troops to the war because it has made Australia a bigger target for terrorists. The evidence is clear that even more jihadists are being trained in Iraq—trained to unleash terror on any part of the world in the years to come. The Iraq war has generated a more militant Islamism, which may never have eventuated in different circumstances. But the Prime Minister refuses to admit that this is the outcome of the Iraq war and to accept any responsibility for this.

So where is the government’s strategy for Iraq’s future? It has definitely not been made clear by John Howard. The Prime Minister recently admitted that ‘democracy has a reasonable chance if that is the wish of the Iraqi people’. That is a long way and a huge backdown from the euphoric speeches on how the democratisation of Iraq in the postwar period would lead to the eventual democratisation of the Middle East. Remember those heady days? No-one talks that talk anymore.

On 19 October this year, Mr Howard indicated that Iraq may turn out to be a split state. This was probably the first public utterance from our Prime Minister that acknowledged the reasons for the civil war and the chaos that has engulfed Iraq. He recently stressed on ABC radio that ‘a signpost for determining Australia’s troop withdrawal will be the handover of security responsibility to the Iraqi forces’. What does that mean? Does this mean after the Iraqi security forces have taken responsibility for eight, 10, 12 or 18 provinces? Why doesn’t he inform the nation? It is time that he laid out for the Australian people what is to happen and when, and what the conditions of play are.

As the urgency motion indicates, during the next week the US administration may be forced to review and initiate a new Iraq strategy. This will come about because of the convergence of the Iraq Study Group report with the Pentagon’s ongoing internal revision of the operational and tactical use of US forces in Iraq. This convergence comes after the UK government confirmed that the security of Basra will be handed over to the Iraqis next year.

Where is our government in all this? Where is the Australian plan? Have discussions occurred with our allies? I do not know. Iraq has certainly entered a new phase. So how has the Howard government responded? On Monday and Tuesday this week Labor senators, including me, asked Senator Minchin these very questions. On Monday he responded by saying that Australia is:

... committed to remaining in Iraq while we believe that (a) we are welcome there at the invitation of the government of Iraq and while they profess the need for our modest forces to remain and (b) we are making a contribution. We continue to believe that we are making a contribution ... What we will not do ... is simply exit.

On Tuesday, Senator Minchin reverted to the familiar ‘staying the course’ assertion, with a number of ‘cut and runs’ thrown in for good measure and the declaration that the ultimate withdrawal of Australian troops ‘will not be based on some arbitrary calendar’.

Well, we know what it will not be, but what will it be? What is the plan? Or is it in fact the case that we are just waiting for the Americans to tell us? The aim, Senator Minchin added, is to bring ‘peace, order and good government to the people of Iraq’. Very laudable, but there was no mention that the Iraqi nation should be either unified or split before the withdrawal of our forces. There was no clarification of what the security of the people means in military terms, let alone political terms, and there was no indication of how good governance could be achieved for the Iraqi people. Indeed, the lack of specifics shows that the Howard government is playing the waiting game: waiting to see what others do, waiting to see how the political and military landscape will change before deciding on a course of action, waiting to assess the political fallout domestically. So much for the national interest.

It is time for the Howard government to face up to the reality in Iraq. It is time for the government to make some tough decisions. What is John Howard’s and the Liberal government’s plan for our troops in Iraq? It seems to me that there isn’t one.