Richard Di Natale (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I seek leave for a five-minute extension on proceedings.

Leave granted.

There is no more important act for a government than committing troops to war, something I referenced in my first speech. To send young men and women to spill their blood on foreign shores is the most solemn of any duty that a government must embark upon. I do, however, resent the implication that, if you do not support this action, somehow you support the savagery that is going on in Iraq and are complicit in the barbaric acts that we are witnessing. We are better than that. Let us agree that what is going on in Iraq right now is barbaric, cruel and heinous, that our responsibility is to protect the innocents and that what we are witnessing is an affront to our common humanity.

I also understand the urge of many people who want us to act, just to do something. I have been feeling that way for more than a year while watching the butchery in Syria. I felt that way most recently while watching bombs land on young children in Gaza, while their buildings collapsed around them, while that conflict does nothing but to perpetuate the cycle of violence. I am not a pacifist. I do think that sometimes there is a case for military action; in fact, it was the Greens who were most vocal in calling for an intervention into the conflict in East Timor, and it was the government of the day that was reluctant to intervene.

My concern is largely pragmatic. There are very eerie echoes here of the conflict, in Iraq, in 2003. Have we learned nothing? What if our actions make the situation worse? What if we provide an even greater focus for more radicalisation and extremism? What if this is a rallying point for the enemies of justice? If the lessons from the war in Iraq were not that, then we have learned nothing. Let us not forget that a commitment of Australian troops also exposes Australians to dangers. The tragic beheading of an American journalist should give us pause for thought, but it is this rush to war that blinds us to other options.

We know that Turkey has been involved in an armed struggle against the Kurdish people who have been fighting for an independent state for many years. We know that many of the Islamic State fighters are entering Iraq through Turkey. They are not flying into Syria or Iraq. Many of them are landing in Turkey and making their way into Iraq. We know that Turkey has been retreating on the issue of human rights for years. If we are serious about this conflict then we must confront these issues. We cannot ignore these questions.

We cannot ignore the fact that the PKK, which was proscribed as a terrorist organisation—largely because of our relationship with Turkey—is now potentially going to be the beneficiary of Australian weapons. I have worked very closely with members of the Kurdish community, and it is their wish that we do not get involved in a military sense but that we support greater humanitarian intervention, that we recognise their fight for self-determination—something they have been fighting for many decades—the full expression of their cultural and political rights and that we do not turn a blind eye while their people are being detained, arrested and imprisoned in places like Turkey and Iraq. If we are professing to speak on their behalf, let us talk to them.

Finally, we need more honesty in this debate. There would be a lot more respect if we came into this chamber and heard from both sides of politics, who said: 'We've been asked by an ally to intervene and we are honouring that request.' That is the basis of this intervention. I believe Australia needs to take its own place in the world and emerge from this adolescent dependence we have on our good neighbour. Decisions that were once made for us in London should not now be made for us in Washington. We need a full and frank debate. We need to make sure that it is this parliament, the democratically elected members of this chamber, that makes this decision.

Question agreed to.