Robert McClelland (Barton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support this motion, which was referred here at the request of my colleague the member for Cowan, and I recognise his contribution to this matter. Labor fully supports the deployment of troops to East Timor. Restoring law and order in that country is obviously vital to that country’s security, but it is also vital to our regional security. Experience has shown time and time again that a failed state—or indeed a failing state—can become a haven for all kinds of criminal activity; certainly the drug trade and potentially terrorist activity, which could affect Australians in our region and on our soil. So, unquestionably, the work of our troops is fundamentally in the interests of our own national security as well as that of the East Timorese.

Currently, some 2,600 members of the ADF are deployed in the operations in East Timor. Of course, our thoughts are with them. We obviously express our gratitude for their contribution, but we must also acknowledge—and, in fairness, the minister does acknowledge—the sacrifice made by their families during their absence and the families’ anxieties for the safety of our serving men and women.

The Labor Party goes so far as to say that the contribution that is being made by our troops in East Timor should be regarded at the highest level in terms of both our national security and the risk that they are facing. They may not be facing the prospect of a car bomb explosion, as with the technologies that exist in the terrorist organisations and the insurgencies in Iraq, but chasing what are basically hoodlums armed with machetes, clubs and knives down streets, wrestling them to the ground, disarming them and detaining them is, we believe, in no way, shape or form anything other than bravery at its highest.

The contribution of our troops should be recognised by classifying their service as warlike service. This will mean additional remuneration for them—some small recompense—for the risk they are taking and the fact that they are living away from their families in hardship, but, most significantly, it will also give them appropriate recognition by way of entitling them to receipt of the Australian Active Service Medal. We note that one of the categories for determining whether service is warlike service is the risk of casualty. In that context, we note that the Prime Minister, in the House of Representatives on 25 May, said:

... we must not walk away from the possibility that casualties could be suffered by the forces that will go to East Timor.

We know that the travel advice to Australians is that they should avoid East Timor, that the situation is dangerous and that it could change quickly without notice. Indeed, we note that the Prime Minister, in public commentary on the issue, has said that the very uncertainty of the violence in East Timor and the fact that there is no immediately identifiable adversary in many ways makes the present task more dangerous than that faced by our troops as part of the INTERFET operation between 1999 and 2002.

There is no question that the failure to classify the service as warlike service has affected the morale of our troops. That has been reported in the media and it has come through to my office first-hand, at least through the filters of immediate family members who express real concern for their son, daughter, husband or boyfriend serving in East Timor. There is no question that it has significantly affected the morale of our troops in the circumstances in East Timor, where we are requiring them to unquestionably engage in risky operations and experience hardship.

We believe that the wrong decision has been made from the point of view of recognising the value of the service, but it is also the wrong decision from the point of view of the recruitment and retention crisis that is facing our armed services. What example does it show to people who are contemplating whether or not to stay in the armed services if the risk that they are taking is not properly recognised? What message does it send to young Australians thinking of joining the ADF if they see a situation where our troops are placing themselves at risk and are not having that properly recognised?

Moving on to the operation itself, our troops, as always, do an outstanding job in peacekeeping. The ability of Australian troops to interact with the local community is a trait that is second to none, and we are prized around the world for that. The ADF themselves have acknowledged, however, that, in terms of restoring civil order and preventing riotous behaviour, perhaps their skill set and equipment are not the best available. In that context, we note that Australia has a military police battalion with trained personnel and equipment for ‘population protection and control’—in other words, riot and crowd control. This asset was not deployed to Timor, nor was it deployed to the Solomon Islands during recent unrest there.

Indeed, I note with respect to the Solomon Islands that the Australian Federal Police Commissioner, Mick Keelty—and I do not want to verbal him; he is an honest and sincere man and somewhat deserving to be regarded in the hero category in modern Australian times, so I would not dare verbal him—has suggested that our troops and indeed the police officers serving in the Solomons perhaps did not have enough equipment to adequately deal with the recent rioting that we saw there. Yet the facts of the matter are that Australia does have trained military police personnel available with riot equipment. Essentially, that equipment is sitting in stores in MP units around Australia.

I think we as a nation have to confront the reality that we will be engaged in the next decade more and more in restoring civil order in states that are struggling or failing, or perhaps trying to restore order in a failed state. I think we need to look carefully at developing this skill set. The skill set that our military police have may well be a base upon which to build that skill set. In that context, I understand that the military police battalion receives similar crowd and riot control training to that the Victorian police receive. Again, something that perhaps we need to look at as a nation is having a readily deployable force that is capable and equipped to handle the riotous behaviour that we have seen in East Timor.

The next and final issue that I want to focus on is in the context of a motion that I recognised as paying respect to and recognising the contribution made by our troops. It must be said, however, that it is regrettable that we are faced with this situation. Our troops are now in a situation of risk in East Timor, attempting to restore law and order. We need to ask ourselves objectively whether the course of action that has occurred there should have occurred there. In that context, it has been argued that Australia withdrew too quickly from the INTERFET operation. The withdrawal commenced in May 2002 and moved on more quickly after that. I note that, in an article in the Australian on 10 June, Dennis Shanahan commented:

In early 2004, months before the May 20 deadline to depart, East Timor’s Foreign Minister Jose Ramos Horta told The Weekend Australian’s national security editor Patrick Walters in Dili that he wanted a company-sized Australian combat team to remain beyond the deadline.

“That essentially would be a psychological element and work as a deterrent,” Ramos Horta said then. Ramos Horta’s main concern was the need to maintain national stability and the consolidation of the new Government in Dili. East Timor was fragile. The civil service administration and ruling institutions, notably the judiciary, were in their infancy.

It is all very well to be wise with hindsight, but there were clearly indications that East Timor did not have the security and capability in terms of its institutions to maintain the sort of civil order that is the fundamental basis upon which democracies function. Indeed, I note that, in December 2004, Ramos Horta said that assistance was required because the country’s defence and police forces were still very fragile. But those concerns were essentially dismissed, with Australia’s foreign minister, Alexander Downer, saying that the requests were essentially for a security blanket for East Timor.

The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, suggested in 2005 that Australia, in the circumstances, might like to—and it would be desirable for it to do so—continue the additional troop presence until May of this year, rather than withdraw, as did occur in 2005. In retrospect, again, that may well have prevented the dispute that led to the dismissal of the dissident members of the East Timor armed forces in February of this year and may well have prevented the civil strife that we are now seeing. In many respects, the decision for early withdrawal may well have been penny wise but certainly has been pound foolish.

The second issue that I wish to raise, and that I think is important, is whether the training we provided to the East Timorese defence and police forces was adequate. I note that the Bulletin, in an article of 6 June, raised that question, publishing allegedly secret documentation suggesting that as early as 2001 it was recognised that criminal elements could infiltrate the East Timorese defence forces and that there was a prospect that the former guerilla fighting base would fracture along ethnic and geographic lines. That was as early as 2001. Despite that, there was no real concerted endeavour to provide training to develop a unified defence force. Indeed, in 2002 the Australian Strategic Policy Institute reported on East Timor’s ‘pressing internal security and law and order problems’, stating that:

Australia’s current program of aid for East Timor is doing little to help ...

ASPI indicated that the East Timorese defence force had limited capabilities and no clear role in addressing those security problems. Australia’s Department of Defence was described as ‘not addressing East Timor’s most urgent security needs’.

With the benefit of hindsight we can all be wise, but these were expert bodies saying at the time that we were not doing enough to develop a unified, coherent defence force, a security force, that was capable of preventing civil disorder from emerging in East Timor. With the benefit of hindsight that clearly has been the case. We should examine, completely dispassionately and objectively, what went wrong. We must recognise it and we must address it. The reality is that within the next decade in our region we will inevitably face more East Timors. I note that Mr Deputy Speaker Kerr, who is in the chair, warned a number of years ago of emerging problems in the Solomon Islands. If they had been addressed effectively at an early date, arguably the resources that we have put into RAMSI would not have been required.

These are issues that we need to address. We need to find out what went wrong with our strategy in East Timor and how we address that not only for the sake of the East Timorese people but also from the point of view of attending to similar issues that may arise in our region. Having said that, I stress that obviously the contribution of our troops is exceptional, as it always is. The Australian Labor Party fully support the troops and the work that they are doing. We think it should be completely recognised at its highest level by categorising the service as being in the nature of warlike service.

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