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

I rise to sum up this debate on behalf of the Australia Greens. In so doing, I thank all senators for the serious and sincere way in which they have engaged in the debate. I am very disappointed to hear that Senator Lambie, who up until yesterday was so committed to making sure that the parliament had a say, has changed her mind. I am glad to hear that the Palmer United Party is prepared to discuss it because, dare I say, if this bill is not supported today it will be reintroduced and we will keep on debating it. It has been going on for 30 years, so I hardly think that it is rushed. It has been through many Senate inquiries.

I just want to go to the heart of the matter. This bill has taken over 30 years. It did not get brought into the parliament specifically in relation to the current circumstances in which Australia looks like being committed to a multi-year military campaign in the Middle East without a strategy. This bill has been something that we feel strongly about in principle, and I will just address the principle first.

It is critical that the parliament determines when we deploy our troops to military action overseas. As my colleagues have summed up quite strongly, those other countries that have exactly the same principles and practices ranging from Denmark, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Slovakia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey right through to the United States also have the provision. Let us not hear that this would be a dangerous thing to do. It is a recognised democratic principle in those countries.

The other points that I want to make in relation to the rebuttal are as follows. It has been suggested by some senators that this would require secret or military intelligence to be brought to the parliament. Of course that is nonsense. No one is suggesting that secret military intelligence be brought to the parliament or that the deployment and the organisation of operational matters be brought to the parliament. Nobody is suggesting that. That is a furphy in the extreme. To start with, this is about the principle of engaging in a military campaign. Thereafter, those matters become the decision of the military to give effect.

In terms of flexibility, again, that is another furphy because the bill quite clearly gives appropriate exemptions which provide for the practicality of the situation—that is, where the parliament cannot meet immediately, it provides for the Governor-General to be able to make a proclamation regarding the declaration of war, provided that the parliament is then recalled within a period of two days. So that is a furphy as well. They are all furphies. It is a way of trying to make that fundamental decision: should it be left to a Prime Minister and the executive or should it come to the parliament to make a decision to put our serving men and women in our armed services in harm's way. That is the principle on which we are voting here today. In a democracy, who should decide? The Greens believe that it is the parliament. We will keep arguing that it is the parliament and keep bringing back the bill as a critical way of dealing with this matter.

Finally, since it is pretty clear that we do not have the support of the parliament in this, we need to ask some very serious questions here. One of those is that it is a nonsense to say that there will not be boots on the ground. It is a nonsense to say that this conflict is going to be solved without a strategy for Syria. So I put to the Australian parliament: you need to think very clearly about this because the United States will clearly be making a strategy that will have to include Syria, and Australian decision makers will need to think beyond northern Iraq into Syria. How long is this going to take? What is the extent of our involvement? The same thing goes for the Ukraine. I am fearful that we have a government that is racing into engagement behind the United States, without a serious discussion of how this is in Australia's national interest.

I ask people in the Senate today to consider this: in a democracy, should the parliament decide? When the parliament decides, the question should be: is this in Australia's national interest? And the objectives and risks need to be taken into account. I would urge senators to support this bill.