Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The need for the government to apologise immediately to the families of the victims and create a compensation scheme, hold the military chain of command to account for their role, bring the individual perpetrators to justice and, in future, ensure there is political accountability for sending our troops to war in response to the Brereton report which alleges there were 39 murders and two instances of 'cruel treatment' carried out by Australian Special Forces soldiers and that some of the victims were children.

War is never the answer. Given the multitudes of conflicts in which we have engaged as a nation—those that have been lost, those that have been marked by their involvement in conflict, the communities that have been destroyed by pointless acts of violence—it would be understandable for many in our community to believe that the simple statement that 'War is not the answer', that it is never the answer, would be a reasonably uncontroversial thing to say. But, in this place, it is still a statement that is considered radical. Even in the aftermath of the illegal invasion of Iraq and the terribly misguided humanitarian intervention in Afghanistan—conflicts into which Australia entered at the behest of the United States and collectively constituted wars that took up most of the first 20 years of this new century—even after the lies of the Bush administration and the complicity of the Howard government, even after the terrible crimes that are now on the record as having been committed in Afghanistan by our special forces, the statement that 'War must never be the answer' is still one which the major parties refute.

I'm sure in the course of this debate there will be many spurious propositions made by those representing the major parties. I have brought on this debate directly as a result of the refusal of the major parties yesterday to take the simple common-decency step of acknowledging the victims of Australian war crimes in Afghanistan and committing ourselves—having apologised—to a compensation scheme. In the aftermath of that disgraceful decision today, it is obviously so needed for this place to fully understand how we came to be here today and what needs to be done to ensure that these crimes are never committed again and to ensure that we never again deploy our forces overseas into a conflict zone. We ask people to put their lives on the line while nobody in this parliament is willing to take political responsibility for that decision. Not one MP is willing to create a process in which we vote to make that happen.

First of all, it is so important, as I said, to understand how we came to be here today, at this moment, when these horrific war crimes have been revealed to our community. It began, in my opinion, with the illegal invasion of Iraq and the misguided invasion of Afghanistan, two conflicts which we entered into at the behest of the United States—in the case of Iraq, on a false premise, on an illegal premise, on a lie about WMDs, and, in the case of Afghanistan, following along behind the Americans, once again, into a war of regime change. Once there, there was no clear strategic direction established, and yet administration after administration, Labor and Liberal, approved the continuation of our presence in that country. Administration after administration ignored the warnings from many returning veterans that the length of deployment and what was being asked of serving personnel was too much and that the job they had been given to do was something that they were neither trained to do nor capable of doing. And yet governments, Labor and Liberal alike, were happy to sign up once again and again and again to maintain our presence there to keep the Americans happy.

That is why as we talk about the war crimes that have been committed in Afghanistan we must talk first of political accountability. We must hold the Howard administration, the Rudd administration, the Gillard administration, the Turnbull administration and the Abbott administration responsible for continuing this deployment, this engagement, long after it was clear that there was no strategic objective, that there was no victory that was possible and that our presence in Afghanistan was doing great harm to the people of Afghanistan and to those being asked to serve in that conflict.

Firstly, we must, from this moment, take it upon ourselves to answer the community's call to put the responsibility for declaring war and entering into armed conflict into the hands of the parliament. It is clear that the executive cannot be trusted to make these decisions because they have so often led our armed forces into harm's way for no good reason. This process would, as I have outlined to the Senate in the bill that I have introduced, enable a process in which the Governor-General and the Prime Minister would make a case to the parliament as to the legality, the duration and the number of personnel needed, as part of a debate on whether we should deploy into territory overseas. And it would require the defence minister to come before the parliament every two months and update the parliament on the nature of the deployment. It would facilitate the community's ability to examine the case for conflict, for war, should there ever be one, and ensure that we are never again lied to in relation to the reasons why we are entering into a conflict zone.

Secondly, it is vital to understand that, when we talk of these crimes that have been committed, the chain of command must be held to account. The contention within the Brereton report that there exists a magical line above which no-one in the armed forces chain of command knew about what was happening on the ground in Afghanistan is nonsense. It is offensive. It is absolutely untenable. Officers knew. The chain of command knew. For the ADF's chain of command to come before the Australian public and contend that there existed a magical line above which nobody knew what was going on is ridiculous; and that the disciplinary measures will be determined between Chief of Army and Chief of the Defence Force, absolutely unacceptable. We cannot have a situation in which ops personnel on the ground are held to a different standard than those up the chain.

And, while we are on the subject of the unacceptable, it is absolutely not okay that those such as David McBride—who attempted again and again to flag his concerns through the proper channels, only to be rebuked—is now facing 50 years of imprisonment at the hands of this government for attempting to tell the public that which we now know to be true. There must be accountability for the chain of command, and the implementation of the reforms suggested for the ADF must be overseen by those without a conflict of interest. Let me say it very clearly: General Campbell and General Burr have a real conflict of interest. They served in senior command positions during our time in Afghanistan. They are both former members of the SAS. We owe it to the public and to the victims to ensure that these recommendations, this cultural brokenness that has been created within our Special Air Services, are dealt with by those without an interest in the matter. That cannot be said of Generals Burr and Campbell, and that is why I repeat here tonight that, for the good of this investigation and for the maintenance of public faith, they must resign. If they do not resign, the Prime Minister must sack them.

Lastly, in this debate, I want to bring it back to the reality that 39 families have lost loved ones, that there are 39 families in Afghanistan right now that have lost loved ones to these crimes, and that two other families that we know of now have members that are irreparably maimed by these crimes. No-one—not the Prime Minister; not the Chief of the ADF—questions the content of the Brereton report as to the crimes uncovered. And so it should be possible for this parliament—with a spirit of humility and of genuine sorrow and from the desire that exists in this community of ours to make good for wrong done—to say sorry to those that have been lost to these crimes and to make that apology material by offering compensation to the families.

Let us look clearly in the eye of what has happened here. Let us seize this opportunity to reckon with the reality that war is hell and when we enter into it without a clear reason for it, when we enable it to become distanced from political scrutiny, when we enable culture to develop among those who we ask to fight that dehumanises, these crimes, these actions, are inevitable. Let us pledge here to take those steps necessary to ensure that these things never happen again, that there is accountability of the chain of command, that there is justice for the families and that we here in this place take the steps to secure peace—peace for our community here in Australia, for our region and for every human being on this blue planet.