Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support Senator Milne's motion and this Greens' motion to have the deployment of Australian personnel debated urgently. I indicate to Senator Wong that the motion was distributed to senators in the chamber; I have a copy of it here. Our preference is to have this motion debated and voted on before we throw the ADF in harm's way, because doing it afterwards is kind of beside the point.

This deployment has still not been put to a vote. I want to point out to those outside the building who may be listening that this debate seeks to establish chamber time for a vote on the matter, rather than simply pretending that the Prime Minister's office will take care of the matter and they have it all under control. I want to highlight the fact that the arguments that were raised when we brought this matter to the chamber a week or two ago—that it is impossible, indeed insane, for the parliament to conduct such a debate because we would be intruding on tactical decisions, we would be giving our intentions away to the enemy, we would not be able to move swiftly enough; all of these arguments that, for some reason, assume that Australian parliamentarians are incapable of holding an intelligent, reasoned debate on such a serious issue—have been blown out of the water by actions in kindred parliaments around the world.

The fact is that Prime Minister Cameron recalled Westminster last week for precisely this debate. The motion was carried, as it probably would be in Australia because Labor is at one with the Abbott government on this matter; but at least senators and members would be forced to put their names on the record on one side or another and to take responsibility for the decision that is being made in our name. If it is good enough for Westminster, why not for us? What British parliamentarians and thereby the media and the public have been able to establish is that the deployment is constrained to air strikes and air operations, it does not contemplate ground troops and it does not contemplate incursions into Syria. So the British people at least have some idea of the scope and nature of the deployment, and parliament has conferred. The deployment may not have strategic legitimacy but at least it has a veneer of democratic legitimacy in that parliament has been brought into the loop and MPs have been forced to stand up and be counted one way or another. I should point out that a substantial minority of those in the British parliament—in the house, at least—voted against the deployment for many of the same reasons that Senator Milne has identified this morning.

So how is it that they can manage to do this in Westminster? Is it their bruising experience of the Iraq war, where British soldiers were coming home wrapped in flags with horrific regularity? What is it that they learned about that Iraq deployment that we here in Australia failed to learn?

How extensive will this deployment be? The 'no boots on the ground' commitment has been jettisoned. The 'strictly humanitarian mission' concept has already been jettisoned. Now the Australian government is being deliberately ambiguous about our engagement, or not, inside Syria, which is where the Islamic State's support base has the largest footprint. What is the risk that Australia is inadvertently playing directly into the hands of this horrific entity and simply playing our part in their recruitment strategy? Has that been considered by the National Security Committee of cabinet? How long will they be deployed for? What would success look like?

These are matters that can be brought to the Australian parliament so that those on the front bench and the back benches, in the opposition parties and on the crossbench can put their names on one side or other of the ledger. We know what happens when such a decision is left to the Prime Minister alone, because that is how this whole horrific mess started. Simply calling it a 'tradition', as Senator Fifield did earlier, is not good enough. There are all kinds of things that used to be a tradition—