House debates

Tuesday, 19 June 2007

Questions without Notice

Afghanistan

3:07 pm

Photo of Alexander DownerAlexander Downer (Mayo, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for his question and his interest. This government assisted with the liberation of the people of Afghanistan from the Taliban regime. After the events of 9/11 in 2001 we provided substantial aid to Afghanistan. We are building up to just short of, I think, 1,000 troops in Afghanistan at the moment. Australia has made a great contribution. The Afghans now have a freely elected parliament, seven million children—including two million girls—are back at school, 83 per cent of the population has access to basic health services and GDP growth has been about 12 to 14 per cent since 2002.

It is a country with a lot of problems—there is still a lot of violence there, and there is a need for troops in Afghanistan today—but Australia has made a strong contribution. That was recognised by the Afghan foreign minister, who wrote to me last week expressing his appreciation for our troops, who are doing their vital work there, including the additional 300 troops we announced quite recently. Australia and, in particular, the Australian Defence Force have made a great contribution there. I think the House realises that there is no greater decision that a government ever takes than to send our troops into a combative environment. It is a very difficult decision, and whenever we have made those decisions there has been substantial discussion within the government, understandably.

It is with that in mind that on this side of the House we are pretty surprised that the Leader of the Opposition, just on the basis of a ‘news crawl’, as they are called, on Sky television, decided to rush out and say he was delighted about and the opposition supported the deployment of an additional 300 troops to Afghanistan, which the government had not announced. In fact, the Leader of the Opposition had seen those troops off on 15 May. I do not think he forgot; I think he saw the news crawl and thought, ‘There’s another news opportunity; I’d better get out there.’

If the Leader of the Opposition were a serious leader, not just somebody acting on the advice of Hawker Britton and playing a bit of politics day by day, he would, firstly, have contacted members of his shadow cabinet and, secondly, made sure his office or he himself contacted the government to find out what the deployment was about, because there is no more serious decision that the government makes than to deploy our troops.

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