Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I continue my address to the Senate, which I started just before question time and in which I made two points. The first point was that it had to be noted that in this parliament—that is, the House of Representatives and the Senate—a majority of greater than 90 per cent support Australia’s involvement in Afghanistan, regardless of the long and protracted and difficult engagement it has been. The second point was that this is very much an Australian fight. We are not just tagging along as an ally under ANZUS, although that is a factor, as I said. This is an Australian fight as much as any other country involved in Afghanistan. I wish to give evidence to support that claim about just how involved Australia is in this international fight against terror and our involvement in Afghanistan, and so obviously why greater than 90 per cent of the parliament support our involvement—all bar the Greens who, united as they are, are against such involvement.

Australia has suffered from the direct hits by Islamic terrorists. Over the past decade, close on 100 Australians have been killed by terrorist attacks that were planned and executed from terrorist safe havens in the mountains of Afghanistan. On September 11, when the twin towers were brought down due to a terrorist attack by Islamic extremists and fundamentalists, this escalated what was already a low-lying, but certainly not a high-profile, war against terror. When those towers fell, some 15 Australians were killed. One of my most vivid memories of when those towers were under attack was of those that had to jump out of the towers in desperation, knowing they were jumping to their deaths. Some of them could well have been Australians.

Since then more lives have been lost in terrorist attacks. As we all know only too well, on 12 October 2002 in the Bali bombing, some 88 Australians were killed. I recall the ever-so-sad memorial here in the Great Hall of Parliament House, attended by the families of those killed by the bombing. No-one in public life could forget that day; it was such a moving ceremony. We have the responsibility to protect our citizens with all the force this country can provide, onshore and offshore. In 2004, we know the Australian embassy in Jakarta was bombed. While no Australian citizen lives were lost per se, although the attempt was real, nine Indonesians, who were working at the Austrian embassy, lost their lives. Eleven Australians were injured and one died in the London bus bombings.

Throughout the world we have seen Australians threatened by terrorist attacks. Of course, there was a second bombing in Bali which killed four Australians and injured 19. At the Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in Jakarta in 2009, three Australians were killed. All these terrorist attacks were coordinated or had links to the al-Qaeda terrorist organisation.

This is an Australian fight. I quote Vicki Hopkins, a widow, to give weight to my point. Vicki Hopkins’s husband, Matthew Hopkins, who was only 21, was a corporal in the 7th Battalion RAR. He was shot and killed on patrol with Australian troop-mentoring members of the Afghan National Army near a village in Oruzgan province. He was the ninth Australian killed in Afghanistan. Vicki said:

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.

Vicki Hopkins mentioned the evil of the enemy and we should not forget just how evil this enemy is. They are more than just indiscriminate; they target citizens, men, women and children, in the markets, in the mosques and in the schools. In particular, in the case of Afghanistan, women and girls are cruelly mutilated and murdered, all in the name of some extreme Islamic belief—evil belief.

There have been many bloodcurdling examples of their cruelty against women and girls. Further, terrorist attacks continue to this very day on women and girls. That is why it was really so galling to hear the contribution of Greens senator, Senator Hanson-Young, attacking the efforts of the coalition forces over there to protect and educate women in Afghanistan. How could she justify such criticism? What a limp and contorted rationale she came to for pulling out our troops. I refer to her speech just to point out to the Senate the senselessness of the Greens’ position. This is why she believes we should pull the troops out:

When we have statistics that only 30 per cent of Afghan girls can access education, when the maternal mortality rate in Afghanistan is the highest in the world and when 80 per cent of Afghan women are forced into marriages, what are we really achieving? Are things going so well?

So her answer is to pull out the troops. She fails to mention there was zero per cent education for women under the Taliban. This harebrained idea of hers, her solution to this problem, is to pull out the troops, the military presence, and to channel all this funding and goodwill to empowering community development through civil aid. That is the solution of Senator Hanson-Young, the Greens representative and aspiring deputy leader. What a dangerous solution. What a harebrained solution. What a comfort to our enemy. I would suggest that Senator Hanson-Young go to any one of the speeches on either side of the House, but I am going to single out Senator Kroger’s speech because she particularly researched the effect, the benefits, we are having on women’s lives in Afghanistan. Senator Hanson-Young seemed to think that 30 per cent of women being educated in Afghanistan was a failure and we ought to get out because we have not succeeded better. Senator Kroger tells us that, of the six million students who are attending school, a third of them are girls. I quote from Senator Kroger’s speech:

Dr Sakena Yacoobi is the Executive Director of the Afghan Institute of Learning, AIL, which is an Afghan women-led NGO she founded in 1995. She asserts that the women of Afghanistan completely depend on the ISAF troops. She said:

As soon as allied soldiers walk out and leave Afghanistan, the first blood shed will be women and children.

Dr Yacoobi is one of those brave women who stood up to the Taliban and risked their lives in the pursuit of helping others.

                        …                   …                   …

Dr Yacoobi is not the only woman swaying the ISAF allies to stay and finish what they began. There is also renowned Afghan human rights activist Suraya Pakzad, who founded the acclaimed Voice of Women Organisation.

Senator Kroger goes on in her contribution to quote many of the good works that many of the women of Afghanistan are not only carrying out but are being allowed to carry out; this is their contribution. Senator Kroger cites the success and, more so, the hopeful future. That is a very good reason why Senator Hanson-Young ought to reverse her ridiculous rationale for why we ought to get out. She ought to have a better argument than that; it is so shallow as to be dangerous. What the allies have done ought to be lauded, not criticised. If the Greens cannot see the very evil in the Taliban and al-Qaeda and the threat that we are up against, not only in Afghanistan but across the globe, then they are blind, crazed and dangerous. Frankly, they are all three.

Senator Nash, another representative from the coalition, put it very well when she imagined what she would tell her boys about September 11 and the growth of terrorism if we had done nothing to stop the evil. I thought that was a very succinct way of putting it—and that is what the Greens would have us do. They are mealy mouthed. They give ever-so-glib, if not slightly patronising, recognition to our soldiers—who, by the way, do not want that from the Greens, who want to pull them out. Each one of the Greens started their speech with: ‘This is not about the soldiers; this is about why they ought not to be there.’ That rationale is dangerous and it is not in the interests of Australia. It is particularly shallow coming from someone like Senator Hanson-Young.

To pull out the troops now would weaken the international fight against terror, particularly given the supreme and invaluable effort by our troops to date and the 21 lives that we have lost. It would be an abandonment of the Afghan people and our commitment to building a better society. Moreover, it would be a signal to our enemies that we are beaten. It would embolden our enemies, setting up an even worse scenario where a nuclear armed Pakistan would come under even greater threat and attacks by Islamic extremists. To withdraw our troops is the nut of the debate here; that is why the Greens brought this debate on. It was an attempt to shift the debate out into the public. That is the nut of why they brought it on; there was no higher ideal than that. They have attempted to shift the debate to have Australia pull out of Afghanistan. But, if we did withdraw, how could Australia ask for future support from our allies in intelligence—we receive valuable intelligence from our allies—or even military backup if we were under threat of terrorism. If we left the field it would be pretty hard to ask for help from our allies. You might get some but you would not get enough. You have to be there supporting your allies as well as your own self-interest. We must be part of a worldwide fight, not only for our own interest but also the interests of Western liberal democracies. We are all interlinked.

Over the years I have seen the Greens undermine these greater objectives. Frankly, they have an aversion to Western liberal democracies founded on Judeo-Christian values. They are strangers in their own country and to the basics of Australian culture and beliefs. The Greens stood against the tougher security laws that the coalition brought in in government and, for that matter, the laws brought in under Labor too. They were laws designed to fight terrorism—to give no quarter to terrorists domestically. The Greens have always had a bad word for our relationship with the United States and their fight against terrorism, let alone the international community’s efforts to fight Islamic extremism. They tell us they have not had a bad word, but they have. They have certainly given no genuine support in the fight against terrorism.

I shudder to think of the consequences now that the Greens, who have been making all these attacks on our efforts in the war against terrorism, are closer to government. They are a new coalition with the government and they are a step closer to matters of national security. They are ‘in the tent’ with regard to what shapes national security matters. I shudder to think of the influence they will have on the government in such matters in the years ahead. The Greens cannot be trusted with such information or power. They cannot be trusted with matters of national security. They will weaken Australia’s effort against terrorism and security more than they will ever strengthen it. The Greens seem to have no concept of the hate these extremists have for our way of life. That is because the Greens are strangers in their own country. If these extremists are unchallenged, this hate will multiply and become even greater and more destructive. There will be worse attacks upon Australia citizens and the citizens of the world. (Time expired).