David Feeney (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome this opportunity to speak about our commitment to Afghanistan. This debate is taking place at a time when all Australians are feeling the shock and distress at the news yesterday that we had sustained three more fatalities. I begin my remarks by adding my condolences for the families and comrades of these three fine Australians, Captain Bryce Duffy, Corporal Ashley Birt and Lance Corporal Luke Gavin. I feel their loss deeply, as I know all other senators do.

Nevertheless, I cannot accept the proposition that we should immediately withdraw our forces from Afghanistan. The fact that our mission has cost the lives of 32 Australians does not lead me to the view that we should get out. Instead, it strengthens my resolve that we should stay until we have completed our mission. Losing the lives of Australian soldiers is a terrible thing. To lose them while failing to achieve the objectives for which they fought would be an even worse thing. It would be a betrayal of their commitment, their idealism and their enthusiasm for the mission. Australian volunteers join our defence forces out of high ideals, not because they want a safe or an easy life. When they are willing to put their lives at risk we must support them in achieving their mission and not undermine them.

Let me remind the Senate what our mission in Afghanistan is. It is twofold. Firstly, it is to protect our own national security by ensuring that Afghanistan is never again used as a base for the training and the controlling of terrorists, as it was previously under the Taliban regime. When we remember the deaths of Australia's soldiers in Afghanistan, let us also remember the Australians who were killed in 9-11 by terrorists under the command of Osama bin Laden, based in Afghanistan and operating with the protection of the Taliban regime. Let us also remember the Bali bombing—again a dreadful event for Australia and again an event perpetrated by terrorists trained and organised, at least in part, in Afghanistan. Secondly, it is to ensure that Afghanistan is never again used in this way, and that means we must permanently free the Afghanistan people from the grip of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. That not only requires militarily defeating the insurgency; it requires helping the Afghan people build a state, an army and a civil society capable of defending itself against such forces in the future. No-one ever promised that these would be easy things to do. We have known from the start that this would be a long, difficult and dangerous mission. Both the previous government and this government have always been clear and steely-eyed about that. We knew that there would be casualties, defeats and setbacks such as the terrible incident we learned of yesterday. Because this mission is difficult and because it is long are not reasons to abandon it. We have a duty to the Australian people, we have a duty to the 29 million Afghan people and we have a duty to the 32 Australians who have given their lives to see this mission through.

Let me remind the Senate that our presence in Afghanistan has a firm base in international law. The International Security Assistance Force, of which our forces are a part, was established by a resolution of the UN Security Council. We are in Afghanistan because the international community has authorised us to be there and because the Afghan people want us to be there. I completely reject the assertion that we are making no progress in Afghanistan or that our mission cannot be brought to a successful conclusion. The security situation in Afghanistan is still precarious, but it is vastly better than it was just a few short years ago. Not many people realise that the insurgency is now largely confined to about a dozen southern provinces and that most of northern and eastern Afghanistan is at peace. That is why five million Afghan refugees have been able to return to their homes. Even in its southern heartland, the insurgency is now on the defensive and that is why we have seen in recent times the insurgents resorting to terrorist tactics such as bombings and high-profile assassinations. But we should be clear: these are the tactics of weakness and desperation rather than the tactics of strength and self-confidence.

Politically, a constitutional government has been established in Afghanistan and an elected President and parliament brought into being. Like all senators, I have been disappointed by the evidence of corruption and election rigging that has surrounded the government and the parliament in recent years. But I have no doubt that even this very imperfect form of democracy is vastly preferable to the barbaric regimes which preceded it. Afghanistan was never going to become another Switzerland nor an example of fine Jeffersonian democracy in the short term. But at least now it is a country in which people are not arbitrarily executed or denied the most basic of political, social and religious freedoms.

On the social and economic fronts, Afghanistan has made enormous gains over the past decade—a fact, sadly, seldom reported on in our media. Economic growth has been dramatic. In 2009-10, according to the World Bank, it was an astonishing 22 per cent. Six million Afghan children, including two million girls, are now enrolled in schools, colleges and universities—the highest rate in the country's history. For the first time Afghan women hold public office. For the first time Afghanistan has a free press. Access to health care, particularly for women and children, has been dramatically improved. In short, this has been the longest period of sustained social and economic progress in all of Afghanistan's long and sorry modern history. Australia has made a significant contribution to that achievement and that is something every Australian should be very proud of.

The men and women of the ADF know why they are in Afghanistan. They believe in their mission and they know they have achieved a great deal. Now they are keen to complete the task that the government has given them. Despite the pain we all feel at moments like this, we should support them in that aspiration. We all want to get our service men and women out of harm's way as soon as possible. Of course it would be impossible for us to feel anything else. But to abandon our mission now would dishonour the sacrifices they have made and thus dishonour us all.