Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

As shadow minister for defence, can I say that the opposition welcomes the ministerial statement with respect to Afghanistan. We welcome the new Rudd Labor government’s strong commitment to the ADF operations in Afghanistan. This is an extraordinarily important mission that was, of course, initiated by our government. We welcome the fact that when it was initiated the then Labor opposition provided strong support for that initiative. While our two parties had differed over the question of our involvement in Iraq, I think it is very pleasing, refreshing and important for national security and for the global fight against Islamic terrorism that there is bipartisanship in this country on the question of our active involvement in the mission in Afghanistan.

This is an extraordinarily risky and dangerous mission for our Australian personnel, who now number some 1,000 in total. I think the Senate should note and commend the fact that our troops are doing an extraordinarily important job in this very dangerous country. They need to know that they are doing a very important job and they need to know that we understand how well they are doing their job. They need to know how much the international community supports Australia being there, how valuable that contribution is and how well recognised that is.

The key point that was made in the ministerial statement was to inform the parliament of the creation of what is described as an operational mentoring and liaison team—in defence shorthand, an OMLT. The ministerial statement was remarkably thin on detail about this team and its impact on the overall numbers in Afghanistan. We are informed in the ministerial statement that it would not have any effect on our overall numbers, with no detail as to how that was to be achieved. The institution of the Senate estimates process enabled the opposition to have the CDF, Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, inform the Senate estimates committee that this new OMLT will effectively replace one of the engineering teams that we have had as part of the Reconstruction Task Force in Afghanistan. We support that adjustment and we support the very critical role that the mentoring and liaison team will provide as part of our commitment to training the Afghanistan military to secure their own country. That, obviously, must be the objective of this exercise: to ensure, as soon as we effectively can, that the Afghan people are able to maintain their own national security.

The coalition supports this ministerial statement, but I want to take this opportunity to voice my considerable concern about the rather clumsy attempts by the new defence minister, Mr Fitzgibbon, to play politics in a cheap fashion with this Afghanistan operation. He has been discussing what is a bipartisan position: that Australia should have greater access to and involvement in NATO’s wider strategic thinking with regard to Afghanistan. It is a good reminder that this is now a NATO exercise. I should inform the Senate that our government was working very hard to ensure that Australia had the highest level access to the wider strategic thinking on Afghanistan of NATO, of which of course we are not a member.

Where I think Mr Fitzgibbon erred very badly, and where he showed that he still has his training wheels on, is that he sought to use this effort to effectively criticise our government for endangering our troops in the first place by sending them to Afghanistan without the necessary intelligence and information. That was the obvious implication and import of his statements with respect to the level of information that we were receiving from NATO with regard to the Afghanistan mission. That was a quite unforgivable misrepresentation of the position and something he ought to retract. It was an outrageous and fallacious allegation: the suggestion that our government would have sent our personnel into a very risky war zone without the requisite and necessary intelligence and information to enable us to have confidence in their capacity to carry out their mission. It was a cheap and pretty pathetic attempt to politicise that operation. To make such an accusation should be beneath any decent defence minister in this country. It is totally untrue and it was shown to be so by no less a person than the CDF, Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, at Senate estimates. CDF Houston affirmed that the ADF had all the requisite information in supporting, planning and carrying out this mission. From an operational perspective, we had everything we required to ensure that our troops could go to Afghanistan with a degree of confidence about their mission’s objectives, with the capacity to achieve those objectives and with a proper risk assessment of the situation they faced.

There are two different concepts here. One is the wider strategic thinking as to the overall strategy in relation to Afghanistan: how we ensure that the Taliban do not regain control of this country and that Afghanistan has a chance to establish a peaceful, effective democracy. On the other hand, there is the operational information required to ensure that the troops can carry out their task on the ground. They are two different things. Mr Fitzgibbon deliberately sought to confuse the two in a quite reprehensible manner. It is a reflection on Mr Fitzgibbon’s unfortunate tendency to play cheap party politics with defence. He is attempting to do that with the very complex and difficult task of managing multibillion dollar defence acquisition projects. He has inadvertently insulted the thousands of men and women in the Defence Materiel Organisation by his wanton slurs upon the state of those projects. He has done so in relation to our former government with respect to our degree of awareness and knowledge of NATO’s wider strategic thinking. We support Mr Fitzgibbon’s attempts to ensure that NATO gives us access to that wider strategic thinking, but for him to go on and say that our lack of access in the past has had anything to do with endangering our troops is reprehensible. This is far too serious and far too important a matter for Mr Fitzgibbon’s childish games and political point scoring.

In conclusion, I affirm that we support the statement. We welcome the bipartisan views with respect to Afghanistan. In particular, I want to place on record the opposition’s profound thanks to the men and women who are serving their country by their involvement in the Afghanistan mission. They are doing a dangerous job but they are doing it extraordinarily well.