Sean Edwards (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tonight I rise to speak on a number of foreign and domestic matters, particularly on how they overlap. Before I get into those substantive issues, it has struck me as noteworthy—and you would be interested, Mr Acting Deputy President Bernardi—that yesterday, 26 August, the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption heard an intercepted conversation between Gerard Hayes of the Health Services Union and his former boss, Michael Williamson, previously of Sussex Street and now of Silverwater. This conversation took place on 4 April 2012. During this discussion Mr Hayes informed Mr Williamson that he was informed the previous day, 3 April, by Sam Dastyari that the government, through then Minister Bill Shorten, intended to apply to the Federal Court to appoint an administrator to the HSU East branch.

If true, this tip-off to the now Senator Dastyari occurred some 27 days before then Minister Shorten actually filed the application in the Federal Court on 30 April. Three days after the application, on 3 May 2012, the New South Wales minister responsible for industrial relations, Greg Pearce, wrote to Bill Shorten expressing his strong concern about the process. He wrote: 'Proposed actions relating to the New South Wales union significantly intrude into the New South Wales industrial relations jurisdiction.' He went on to say: 'Further, these proposed actions have only come to light after the application was filed. I am disappointed that you made no effort to communicate with me about these matters.'

So I ask: did the former government give Sam in Sussex Street a tip-off one month in advance so that he could forewarn his factional colleagues in the HSU? I call on Senator Dastyari to provide a personal explanation as to who it was in the former government that gave him any tip-off on 3 April 2012. I call on Mr Shorten to say if he gave Mr Dastyari the tip-off whilst engaging in no consultation with the relevant state minister on a matter that clearly concerned the state. I feel sure that you, Mr Acting Deputy President, like me, will be very interested to hear these responses.

A fortnight ago I found myself visiting a war zone. In military terms they call this 'in country'—and that country was the most inhospitable place I have ever seen. I was in Afghanistan. I was there with some of the finest and most courageous people I have ever met: the men and women of the Australian Defence Force. We were literally rocketed while I was there. Fortunately they missed. That is the danger that these people in the ADF face every moment of every day. But to see their well-drilled response to that rocketing was to see professionalism personified.

Two days before I arrived, US Major General Harold Greene became the highest ranking American officer to be killed in combat in 44 years when he was shot in a green-on-blue incident in Kabul in which 14 others were injured, some maimed for life. The assassin—an Afghan National Army soldier trained by General Greene's own troops—was killed, meaning we will never know with certainty what motivated this act. In any case it reinforced that there is no place that is completely safe in Afghanistan. His death at the hands of a coward lurking within also demonstrates the complexity of pursuing peace in that land.

Afghanistan is a scene of abject poverty. Its adobe homes and compounds are located in a plethora of deep valleys which, through some miracle, manage to support life along their narrow flood plains, which depend on waters generated from the snow melts on the many barren mountain-tops which dwarf all before them. In Afghanistan the agricultural season coincides with the fighting season. But there are really just two seasons in this place: ridiculously hot and freezing cold. There are three major industries: marble quarries, poppy growing—both controlled by brutish forces—and of course war. For many Afghans it is war that feeds them, and when you are not getting fed, war takes on a life-or-death appeal.

As an Australian, when you visit a place with this kind of poverty and with a prominent ideology of valuing the afterlife substantially more than life itself, what you have is two worlds colliding. This is a place where a seven-year-old boy is strapped with explosives laden with ball bearings and sent into a crowded market while his handlers remotely detonate this human smart-bomb, making a martyr of him and killing all others in range. This is a place where women are often marginalised, commoditised and sold like farm animals. The extent to which this contrasts with our values and our aspirations as Australians is quite beyond description. Yet most want to live in peaceful observance of their religion but are betrayed by those who seek to wreak terror in the name of their religion.

There are many things I could say about this region, but it is very complex. It is like Western Australia funding a war, via an army of Northern Territorians, on Queensland, taking control of the Wivenhoe Dam and marching nonbelievers up the highest mountain and terrorising them, only to have the Victorians come to their aid. But they cannot fly over New South Wales because that has an alliance with the people in Western Australia. Therefore South Australia comes to the rescue, providing airfields and air cover so that the Victorians can provide support for Queensland. That is the complexity, and about the same range of area of land, in which this war plays out and in which this clash of cultures and hatreds, built up for hundreds of years, preside.

Complicated? Absolutely. Is my metaphor absurd? Absolutely. But that is the nature of the conflict in the Middle East today—vast social complexity, profound religious animosity and great economic disparity, all confined to one geographic neighbourhood. Those three things are a formula that goes some way to explaining something the former head of counter-terrorism at Scotland Yard, Nick O'Brien, called 'the greatest security threat to Australia this century'. Mr O'Brien was referring to those who travel to partake in jihad and return to Australia trained and perhaps inclined to conduct terrorist actions in our home and upon our people. About 60 such terrorism tourists—a number amongst the highest per capita in the world—have left Australia for places like Iraq and Syria.

The scale of the threat can be assessed thus: between 1990 and 2010, 30 Australians travelled to Pakistan or Afghanistan to fight with extremist organisations. Of that number, 25 returned, 19 went on to undertake activities of concern while eight were ultimately convicted of terrorism-related offences. I reiterate that today double that number of Australians are fighting with jihadist groups, and I note this number increases to 150 when we account for those who actively support them from home. So if you believe that you are safe from those who would murder you and your children on ideological grounds, you are wrong.

It is difficult to comprehend that Australian forces have been present in this region now for 31 years. For that period of time we have stood side by side with our most important allies but it must be said that in the Middle East we have had a short-term plan. What is evident, however, is that the United States is not leaving the Middle East region anytime in the next 100 years. We now have to turn our minds to the part we play in that effort and to how we foster strong security and trade relations with the region—because, make no mistake, the two are intrinsically linked.

I put on the record my appreciation and admiration for Major General Craig Orme, his commanders and his soldiers for the work they do. They are all very effective ambassadors for Australia.

Senate adjourned at 19:24