Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to 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.

Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Democrats also welcome this statement. It is pleasing to see ministerial statements being tabled in the parliament—there are four or five of them here—rather than simply being released at a press conference. I hope that signals a return to the parliament being a chamber of debate about issues, and significant statements put forward and released by ministers. I would also like to specifically put on the record the Democrats’ continuing acknowledgement of the contribution made by our ADF personnel in Afghanistan, and indeed everywhere around the globe. It needs to continually be said that, even though there are always differing public views about where troops should and should not be deployed, we should not let that debate spill over into antagonism towards the personnel, who should always be supported. The Democrats reaffirm our position there.

I did not oppose Australia contributing to an international effort to overthrow the Taliban back in 2001. I and the Democrats said at the time that getting involved in an unwise and illegal action in Iraq diverted not just troops and resources but political will and international attention away from finishing what needed to be done in Afghanistan. As we all know, that action in Iraq went ahead anyway and some of the concerns that people raised at the time have borne fruit, sadly. But that is not to say that the only reason why things are still difficult in Afghanistan—and indeed, according to some reports, in some areas things have deteriorated in various ways—is all to do with the fact that the Iraq war happened. People can have that debate separately, as they do.

But I believe that it is time for us to re-examine the wisdom of not just an ongoing Australian military presence but also an ongoing Western military presence in Afghanistan. In the context of this debate, we are looking at the Australian military presence in Afghanistan. In saying that, my personal view in regard to that is that there is no easy answer to this. It is not like withdrawing troops would allow peace and sunshine to descend immediately upon that area and the many suffering people who are living in Afghanistan. But there are still legitimate questions that should be raised about whether continuing down the path that we are on is the best choice. While no path will provide easy short-term solutions, there are other paths that are more likely to produce positive outcomes in the medium to long term than continuing down the path of the ongoing military presence of Australian and other forces.

In saying that, I am in part influenced by a lot of the debate by many experienced strategists, particularly in parts of Europe. I note that some very significant comments were made by Paddy Ashdown, among others. He was at one stage going to be playing a significant oversight role and ended up not doing so for what seemed to be mostly political reasons. People such as he, with very significant expertise and experience, are highlighting the problems with the path that we are continuing down at the moment. To paraphrase comments by him a couple of months ago, while you can fight modern high-tech wars and win them in one sense very quickly—and that occurred with regard to overthrowing the Taliban; that was done very quickly—building a new stable nation state takes decades. He suggests that Afghanistan is a 30-year project and that it requires more troops than used to win the initial fight. According to his estimations, they have one twenty-fifth the number of troops and one-fiftieth the amount of aid per head of population that they put into Kosovo. He spoke about political short-sightedness and ‘a combination of hubris, nemesis and amnesia’. He also highlighted the importance of establishing the rule of law, rather than just establishing elections for their own sake.

There is a need to look more widely at the situation in Afghanistan. Preventing the Taliban from regaining any sort of political control in that country is important, but any sort of simplistic view of the Taliban being the bad guys and anybody who is not the Taliban being the good guys is clearly far from the reality. I would draw attention to the comments of Malalai Joya, a young woman who is a member of the Afghanistan legislature. She has escaped a number of threats on her life. She has drawn attention to and made heavy criticisms of the significant number of, in her words, ‘war criminals’ who are in the Afghan parliament. These things need to be acknowledged rather than just ignored as inconvenient truths that do not fit the neat simplistic narrative. Her call, among the calls of others, has also been for a reduction in the Western military presence and for other forms of support to be provided.

As I said before, it needs to be acknowledged that no path is an easy one in the short term for ensuring stability and the rule of law in Afghanistan. It is a matter that will eventually need to be resolved among the Afghan people. But they deserve as much support as possible from the wider world. That support is not just military. There is an argument that it needs to include military. That is the context of this statement before us today. But, whatever people’s views are about the military support that is needed, it is very clear that there is nowhere near enough non-military support being provided. That is the part of it that needs much more examination and debate.

It needs to be put on the record in this chamber that it is clear that the situation in Afghanistan has in many respects become more rather than less dangerous. I do not in any way suggest that the former government was anything less than genuine in its views about the best approach to dealing with Afghanistan, even though I may differ to some extent, but it needs to be pointed out that, at the same time that the former government was continuing to highlight how unsafe Afghanistan was and how there was a need for a continuing Australian military presence, it sent back many of the refugees who fled the situation in that country with the Taliban to seek safety in Australia.

Having visited some of those people when they were locked up on Nauru for a number of years by the former government, I want to put on the record that they were pressured to return to Afghanistan. Some of them succumbed to that pressure. Those who have sought to follow what happened to those people after they were returned to Afghanistan have found plenty of evidence that many of them returned to extreme danger and, in some cases, people who were sent back have had to flee again and members of their families have been killed. That is a reality that was a direct result of the laws and policies of the previous government. Whenever we talk about the ongoing role Australia has in Afghanistan—whether it is military or anything else—I for one do not want it to be forgotten what role Australia and the former government played in sending back people who had fled that horrendous war-torn situation. Those people were in effect forced back in terribly unsafe circumstances by the former government. That is something that I will always criticise and will seek to ensure is never forgotten, because many of them paid very dearly in extra suffering as a direct result of the actions of the country whose help they sought to give them safety.

That brings me back to my key point, which is that, whatever differing views there may be about the ongoing military role we think Australia and the wider Western forces should have, I think we are clearly falling down on the non-military support, which, as the comments from Paddy Ashdown that I mentioned before indicated, is far, far short of what it needs to be to have any hope of building genuine long-term stability in that country. We cannot leave it all up to the military, brave and courageous as they may be, to do that on their own. Building a state is about a lot more than that. We need to put more attention on the way that Australia can constructively contribute in that regard.

Kerry Nettle (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to make a few brief comments about the statement on Afghanistan that was made in the House of Representatives three weeks ago. We had the opportunity in Senate estimates to ask for more details, which were not outlined in the statement, about the form of the new troop deployment to Afghanistan. In Senate estimates I asked a number of questions concerning the new troops’ engagement in combat and what weapons they will carry. It was quite clear that the new troops, who are described in the statement as trainers, will be carrying all of the same equipment as would any combat troops going into Afghanistan. I also asked some questions about what other reconfigurations would need to be made to the existing Australian troops in Afghanistan in order to not increase the total number of troops in the country, which is the new government’s stated intention. The Chief of the Defence Force outlined the changes that would need to be made so that there would no longer be an opportunity for two reconstruction forces to be operating, but that one reconstruction force would operate.

With this statement, what we are seeing in relation to troops in Afghanistan is a reduction in troops carrying out reconstruction activities and an increase in combat troops in the country. It is worth making clear that that is the consequence of the ministerial statement we are looking at here: a reduction in reconstruction activities and an increase in combat activities in Afghanistan.

Question agreed to.