Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] All Australians are watching very closely the events unfolding in Afghanistan. They are indeed very distressing. Our veteran community are watching closely, reflecting upon their own experiences, their own sacrifices and the sacrifices of others that they served with. Twenty-nine thousand Australians served in Afghanistan in military roles over our longest conflict. Many thousands more served in our diplomatic corps or worked for contractors, aid organisations or the media organisations that reported on the war. They will all be watching this intensely closely. Members of the Afghan Australian community watch anxiously too—those who are citizens now and those who desperately want to be.

Afghans have made a contribution to Australia for over 150 years. The graves of Afghan cameleers and their places of worship are spread all across the Australian outback. Tens of thousands of Afghan troops and civilians have died in this bitter conflict since 2001.

The focus today is on the chaotic, terrible scenes at Kabul airport, where tens of thousands of Afghans and some Australian citizens are desperate to escape. Like all Australians, I know my thoughts today are with them and with the Australian troops and those men and women of the Royal Australian Air Force who have been deployed to effect our rescue of Australians and the locals who have worked with and for us and for a modern Afghanistan—safe, democratic and decent. It's clear that Prime Minister Morrison has left this effort far, far too late.

For years, veterans have raised publicly, privately and increasingly loudly the absolute moral imperative to act to rescue and return to Australia Afghans who worked with us. For months, since the closure of the Australian embassy in Kabul, it has been clear that this task requires urgency and application—as much urgency and application from the government as was required for the original decision to commit Australian troops to this important venture. There is not just a moral imperative; there is a national interest imperative. There's not just a moral imperative but a national interest imperative to get this right and to do it in a timely, urgent and effective way. The Morrison government has had months. I can't think of many meetings that I've had with members of the veteran community or members of veterans' families where this issue hasn't been raised squarely, often setting aside their own direct interests.

It's crucial to how Australia and Australians are regarded in the world and whether we are trusted as partners and friends that we follow through and deliver for those Australians and the Afghan men and women for whom we owe that duty. Yet month after month, the Prime Minister, the defence minister, the foreign minister and the Minister for Home Affairs have all been frozen in inaction. These failures by the Prime Minister, sadly, reflect on all Australians. Every person removed safely in the months preceding the fall of Kabul would have been one less to extract in the last few days of this unfolding crisis. The situation at Kabul airport is becoming increasingly dangerous. Mr Sullivan, President Biden's national security adviser, said yesterday that there is an acute threat from ISIS detachments in the near vicinity of the airport. Here, in Australia, we can but watch and hope that Australian professionalism and grit, planning and good fortune are enough to see all of our troops, aviators, staff and contractors return safe to our shores.

Of course, these events mean that we must defer a post-mortem analysis of our longest war. It's certainly true that that coalition action, of which Australia was an important part, denied al-Qaeda a safe base to launch acts of terrorism and war across the globe. It is also true that Afghans themselves stepped up. Women went to work. Girls went to school for the first time. Men and women stepped forward to work for a better Afghanistan—democratic, free, well governed and more equal. Of course we wonder: what is going to happen to them? It's so distressing to see so much of that so brutally swept away. It's most distressing for those who fought and for the comrades, family and friends of those who were killed, those who were injured and those who have died in the years since their service concluded. But all of us must stand with them. All of us worry deeply about the girls who have gone to school and the women who've stood up for the country that Afghanistan may become.

Afghanistan is a place that has seen so much suffering, with hundreds of years of imperial invasion and conquest, brutality and subjugation. Most recently the brutal conflicts during the Cold War, fought between proxies of the major powers, followed by a period of brutal Taliban dictatorship has meant that the people of Afghanistan have had no real prospect of the peace and prosperity that all of us take for granted. The post mortem can come later. Today we watch the evacuation effort, pray for their safe return and honour the courage and service of all those Australians who served.