David Johnston (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

No government takes the putting of young Australians in harm's way other than with the utmost seriousness. This is probably the most important decision a Prime Minister or his cabinet can ever make. What we have seen recently in Iraq has, I think, no comparison in recent history. We have seen the town of Mosul and the towns of Ramadi, Fallujah and Tikrit fall to ISIL. We have seen mass executions. We have seen what is tantamount to ethnic cleansing and we have seen almost genocide unfolding in the Levant, across Syria and across Iraq. I want to mention in the chamber today a couple of villages. Amerli, of course, is one village and the other is Kojo village, 12½ kilometres south of Sinjar. I think there will be much more said about these two villages because they are on the precipice of a humanitarian disaster.

The fact is that this organisation, ISIL, the Islamic State, has moved through Iraq with lightning speed. It is a force to be reckoned with. It is a manoeuvring force, and I am using military terminology there. It has the capacity to scope out the towns that it has taken and seize control of them. It has a number of tanks, a number of aircraft and a number of enablers which give it a completely different complexion to anything we have hitherto seen in the Levant. The only force that has provided any reasonable resistance, any protection to the civilian population, has been the Kurdish forces in the north-east of Iraq.

What we have done so far is we have delivered very successfully, from the back of a C130 Hercules, humanitarian relief in the nature of food and water to the people who were isolated in the Sinjar mountains, and we participated with our friends and allies in delivering those goods to preserve those lives. There is also Amerli village. We will continue to assist in providing those people with some respite.

But, most importantly at the moment, having said that the Kurds are the only force that have provided any resistance, we would not want to see that resistance fail for want of ammunition or other supplies—and, of course, we will participate with our friends and allies. This matter in Iraq has engaged and has the support on our side of the Saudis, the Iranians, the Jordanians, the Turks, the UK, the French, the Germans, the Italians and the European Union.

These decisions are, as I said, not made lightly; they are made in very, very grave circumstances of extreme consideration. The fact is that, were we to delay making decisions as the events confront us, people's lives would be seriously at risk, as we have seen so far. There have been mass executions across Iraq, and we need to protect these people. Debating what operational activities the Australian Defence Force will undertake would be completely counterproductive to protecting those lives. That has never been done before in our history. The Prime Minister and the cabinet, taking their responsibilities seriously, recommend to the Governor-General that Australian forces be deployed. This is the way we have always done our business.

The fact is that the Greens have always argued the case that they do and they can continue, of course, to argue that; but from an operational perspective, from the perspective of providing urgent relief to these people, the Greens' quest is not the way to go.