Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Pursuant to contingent notice, I move:

That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent me moving a motion to provide for the consideration of a matter—namely, a motion relating to parliamentary approval for the deployment of Australian troops in Iraq.

There is no greater responsibility that a parliament has, that a Prime Minister has, than to send our armed service men and women into a war zone, into a war. I believe it is time that the Australian parliament was brought into this debate and given the ability to approve such an action, if that is what is being put to the parliament by the Prime Minister of the day. Already we are into mission creep. We had the Prime Minister tell us that it was humanitarian aid we were involved in, and we wholeheartedly support that. But then, after that, we discovered that now Australian aircraft are being used or have been agreed to be used to send arms into northern Iraq. We also hear from the Minister for Defence that the Super Hornets are on standby to be deployed. Even though the Prime Minister was telling us last week that there had been no agreement to send troops, we hear that the SAS troops are already there. Is that the case? How long are they going to be there?

What is the extent of our engagement and, more particularly, what is the legality behind Australia's engagement? International law has to apply to everyone, including Australia. The point here is there has been no United Nations resolution in relation to this matter. The question that I asked the minister and the Prime Minister is: has the Iraqi government actually asked Australia to send these armaments, to send SAS forces? Has the Iraqi government done that or not?

Have we learnt nothing from the engagement in Iraq in 2003? We then had Prime Minister Howard run straight along behind the United States President, Bush, and the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair—and what a mess that left. The vacuum in Iraq was such that the ethnic tensions that have been there for hundreds of years came to the surface. We have had a Prime Minister in Iraq, al-Maliki, who did not run an inclusive government, who preferred the Shiahs against the Sunnis, which has given a large amount of the tension that is there now. What is to say that engagement of troops in Iraq will not simply drive an even more united, committed and disastrous move for an Islamic state than is already occurring?

The point here is: very few people believe that the Prime Minister of Australia has a strategic plan for Australian engagement in Iraq. Everybody believes that we are simply running behind President Obama, who himself last week said he does not have a strategy. We want to know what the objective is. I would like to hear from the government why they think there is any likelihood of success when there has not been success before from following the United States into these conflicts.

Of course it is true that barbaric acts are being carried out by the Islamic State—we know that. There are equally barbaric acts being carried out in Nigeria, in the Congo. We know that there has been Russian engagement in the Crimea and in east Ukraine. But the point is we have an international law regime which we must uphold, because if you do not uphold international law on all occasions then there is no international law, as Professor at ANU Don Rothwell has said today.

It is critical that we come back to this idea. Isn't it time that the Australian people, through the Australian people's parliament, were fully informed? It is wrong that we hear from the Prime Minister one week that nothing has been decided, that no troops have been deployed, and then we read in the papers that the SAS troops are actually to be deployed to go with these armaments, if they are not already there. I think it is time the government gave us a much clearer explanation. But the point remains: the Australian parliament now needs to be consulted and approval needs to be sought from the representatives of the people before we put in harm's way our Australian armed service men and women. It is a fundamental principle that I think the Australian community supports and I urge the parliament to suspend standing orders to allow us to have the debate.