David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise on behalf of the Greens to support this urgency motion brought by Senator Lambie. If we're going to talk about accountability then that needs to start at the top, not at the bottom. That means accountability for the current and former ministers for defence, the Defence secretary and the Chief of the Defence Force. We need accountability at all levels and by all elements of Australia's defence forces. That includes the hierarchy of powerful people presiding over murky decisions to basically gift billions of dollars of public funds to private multinational arms makers to wage endless wars—often with weapons that don't work—because it's good for business. Regardless of the security of this country, it's good for business, raining down hell on communities who have done nothing to deserve it, and no-one's held to account.

We need accountability for war crimes, and this needs to go well beyond just the individuals who were on the ground. They must be held to account, but any organisation that permits such serious criminal conduct needs to be subject to systemic reform, not just hanging out the lowest ranks to dry—and Defence should not be any different. Defence must not be a protected secret club with a culture of impunity that allows the senior leadership in Defence, both civilian and military, to literally get away with murder. The failure to prosecute anyone senior in the chain of command for the murders of Afghan civilians and prisoners is a national disgrace. The Brereton inquiry found credible evidence to implicate 25 current or former Australian Defence Force personnel in the alleged unlawful killing of 39 individuals and the cruel treatment of two others. This, as it turns out, was notorious—this conduct—and it was known to our allies. It was also enough to trigger Leahy law considerations in the US.

But what accountability have we seen here in Australia? Charges have finally been laid against just one junior member in the ADF. Meanwhile, the current head of Defence, who is the head of the entire operation in Afghanistan, is out there marking his own homework, deciding for himself in a pretend review of his own medals—medals that he got for serving 2,000 or 3,000 kilometres away from Afghanistan. He is literally marking his own homework. You couldn't make this stuff up.

Meanwhile, what does Labor do? It gets out there but it's not prosecuting the senior leadership of the ADF who let these war crimes happen on their watch—and they're always telling us about how they're all responsible for the chain of command. It turns out that they're responsible until the shit hits the fan, and then they're not. That's the responsibility we get. They're out there and their response is to try to put David McBride in jail because he blew the whistle on it. What a disgrace.

Accountability must also mean compensation. That means compensation for the victims of alleged Afghan war crimes. That's not on the never-never in the future; that means starting now. Families who lost their brothers, their sons and their loved ones a decade ago still haven't seen a cent, despite the war crimes investigation. That is plain unjust and wrong.

There also needs to be accountability for the billions and billions of dollars that the defence sector here just burns. This is public money. Take for example the procurement of the Hunter class frigates. These frigates are still well over the horizon. Defence were told in their own risk assessment that this project had extreme risks. The former Defence secretary ushered it through and put the BAE tender forward and, mysteriously, the records of why disappeared. The current Defence secretary promotes it to government. His department fails to even do a value-for-money assessment of the tender and signs the Australian public up to a $45 billion project. He never tests value for money. Mysteriously, he lost his own meeting minutes, failed to comply with the law on tender requirements and signed us up to this disastrous project, and he's still there. When we cancel the Hunter frigate project, as we will because it's a disastrous waste of money, he must resign. It's no wonder that the troops on the ground are furious and it's no wonder the public are losing trust, because in this case those who are most responsible are the least accountable.