Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Prima facie what we heard from the Brereton report clearly signalled war crimes, criminality and gross human rights violations. It is true that there have been no prosecutions and we don't know what charges will be laid and when that will happen, but prima facie what we've heard is very concerning and has deeply shocked the Australian people. I did say in here in question time the other day—and I meant it—that I don't think any cohort of Australians would have been more shocked than many serving members of the ADF and the veteran community. I spoke to my own father, who is a Vietnam vet, about this.

We need to be very clear here. When we're speaking about our defence services we need to be open and honest about the situation because if we don't clear it up then of course, by logic, everyone in the Defence Force is going to be tarred with this brush. If we brush it under the carpet, pretend it's going to go away and say, 'Look over there,' it's never going to go away and that taint will always remain. The best thing to do is to be open and transparent and to deal with this expeditiously and independently.

I would like to raise a point about whistleblowers. We only got the Brereton report released because of a whistleblower—David McBride, an ex-Army major who worked with special forces. He had significant concerns about the conduct of the war—and he has been very public about that—including senior officers and other non-commissioned officers acting with impunity. He raised his concerns internally for two years, and they weren't dealt with. He went to the Australian Federal Police, and they weren't dealt with. Out of desperation he went to the media. He's a whistleblower.

We know that the ABC offices were raided by the Australian Federal Police upon publication of information that was passed on by McBride. Thankfully, the Attorney-General has decided not to prosecute the media in this instance or the publishers; however, this government in the Senate last week refused to rule out the prosecution of a veteran who has had two tours of Afghanistan and blown the whistle and delivered us a report on prima facie Australian war crimes in Afghanistan. Whether we like it or not and whether it troubles us and keeps us awake at night or not, a whistleblower has delivered this. So why is that court case going ahead? Why is David McBride facing 50 years in jail?

Let me tell you this: the Brereton report said that not only should whistleblowers be protected, to encourage an expeditious process in getting to the bottom of this; they should be applauded and promoted. That has come directly from the Brereton report. So why is the person who disclosed this and got this into the public realm facing jail? I have to put that question, because it seems to be part of a political strategy by this government to go after whistleblowers who embarrass them. It's not just David McBride; it's also Bernard Collaery—the lawyer for Witness K—and Witness K, who also exposed criminality by our intelligence agencies and our government in relation to one of our neighbours, Timor-Leste, a much poorer country than us.

And there is the complicity and silence of this government on the extradition of Walkley Award-winning journalist Julian Assange to the country whose war crimes he exposed. We think about McBride and the Afghanistan report, and how that has shocked the Australian people. WikiLeaks exposed identical war crimes or worse by our allied forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. There was no doubting what Julian Assange exposed; it was 100 per cent factual, and it was published all around the world by key media outlets. Yet this Australian publisher, this whistleblower, is in jail, behind bars—as Chelsea Manning was in the US—and is facing 175 years in a process that's never been seen before, where a foreign citizen is being extradited to the US on espionage charges. This is also something we need to deal with when we think about Afghanistan. Free Julian Assange and bring him back to Australia.