Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I second the motion. I commend the member for Fremantle for bringing the motion on Zimbabwe before the House and I endorse her remarks completely. This is not the first time this matter has been debated by this parliament and it will not be the last. Zimbabwe, under Mugabe, has been sinking into the abyss for almost three decades. The subject matter of this motion is also too common: Zimbabwe, the Congo, Darfur, Kosovo, Iraq, Burma—the list goes on. Sadly, what shocks me about these situations is no longer that these regimes exist but that in the 21st century we continue to tolerate them, elevating the rights of the state above those of individual human beings.

A few weeks ago I spoke of the need to give real meaning to the doctrine of a ‘responsibility to protect’ in relation to Darfur and Burma; tonight I renew that call for Zimbabwe. However, in our post-Iraq world, I wonder whether we have lost our resolve. Former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has recently concluded, in the wake of the Iraq war, that ‘the concept of humanitarian intervention has lost momentum’. Recently, the Prime Minister also said that we must learn the lessons of our involvement in Iraq. But does this mean that the world must once again turn inwards?

The Robert Mugabes of this world are counting on it, and they have been heartened by the season of post-Iraq revisionism that has been taking place. Now is not the time to lessen our resolve, nor to be verballed into a post-Iraq recant on actions that brought to an end the despotic and brutal regime of Saddam Hussein.

In 1999 the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair set out his new doctrine of international community to the Economic Club of Chicago. In making his case, he drew attention to the serious threat to our international community of ‘two dangerous and ruthless men—Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic’. He said:

Both have been prepared to wage vicious campaigns against sections of their own community … both have brought calamity on their own peoples.

He also said:

Twenty years ago we would not have been fighting in Kosovo. We would have turned our backs on it.

However, as he said:

We are all internationalists now … We cannot turn our backs on conflicts and the violation of human rights within other countries if we want still to be secure.

Tony Blair was right then and he is right now. In Kosovo, this doctrine succeeded, and has been seen to succeed, despite the fact that the legality of that intervention still remains unclear. By contrast, in Iraq, despite the fact that Saddam Hussein is dead and the people of Iraq are now fighting to create their own democratic future, the perception is very different. In urging Europe and the world to hold its course on Kosovo, Mr Blair said:

If NATO fails in Kosovo, the next dictator to be threatened with military force may well not believe our resolve to carry the threat through.

For those now engaging in post-Iraq revisionism, let them take care not to create similar doubt in the minds of the Robert Mugabes of this world about our international resolve.

Tyranny in Zimbabwe is not new. For too long the human rights of those who live in Zimbabwe have taken second place to the rights of sovereign states. The country that was once the breadbasket of Africa is now a basket case. The promise of independence and a new beginning for Zimbabwe in 1980 has become a nightmare. Mugabe, who had once been described by Desmond Tutu as ‘one of the bright stars of the African constellation’, is now described by Tutu as a ‘caricature of an African dictator’ who has ‘gone bonkers in a big way’.

The economic vandalism of Mugabe’s policies, particularly in relation to land tenure, has created 165,000 per cent annual inflation, 80 per cent unemployment and more than one-third collapse in GDP, and has led to around one-third of their population, including doctors and other professionals essential for Zimbabwe’s future, fleeing the country. Mugabe’s land tenure policies are at the core of Zimbabwe’s destruction. They are the product of a leader who sought to maintain power not by creating a new future for his country and his people but by engaging in the evil and brutal politics of hatred, prejudice and division.

Today, as we read of his actions to deny food aid—as the member for Fremantle was outlining—to his own people in order to cling to power, the historical record shows that this is nothing new for Mugabe. In 1984 he used the same tactic against the then supporters of his rival Joshua Nkomo. In an area where 400,000 people were heavily reliant on relief deliveries and food supplies from local stores, Mugabe closed the stores and halted food deliveries. An officer in the notorious 5 Brigade, established by Mugabe, explained the army’s food policy to locals by saying:

First you will eat your chickens, then your goats, then your cattle, then your donkeys. Then you will eat your children and finally you will eat the dissidents.

These same tactics were used almost 20 years later, when the impact of Mugabe’s land raids, combined with drought, left seven million people at risk of starvation. The state controlled Grain Marketing Board blocked distribution of maize supplies, again, to opposition areas. This time his opponents were the supporters of Morgan Tsvangirai and his Movement for Democratic Change. It is therefore no surprise that Mugabe is once again using food aid as a weapon against his own people to serve his own brutal ends. It is also no surprise that the opposition leader has been arrested five times now and that his party secretary is in jail. It is sadly no surprise that the US based Human Rights Watch, as the previous speaker mentioned, has documented 36—and now I understand 60—cases of politically motivated murders and 2,000 victims of a campaign of killings, abductions, beatings and torture. This is the reality the people of Zimbabwe have been living with under Mugabe for decades.

Australia has made the case on Zimbabwe over many years. The Howard government supported their expulsion from the Commonwealth, imposed economic sanctions and travel restrictions, increased humanitarian aid and took the cases of human rights abuses—in partnership with Canada and New Zealand—to the United Nations and the High Commissioner for Human Rights. All of these actions must continue, and I am very confident that they will continue under the new government. Of particular importance is the need to keep pressure on the African Union, and South Africa in particular, to bring about the obvious desired outcome in Zimbabwe.

On June 27 we hope for a different future for Zimbabwe, but we cannot delude ourselves that a simple change in government on its own will bring about a changed future for the people of Zimbabwe. We should remind ourselves that, following the official end of the war in the Congo in 2003, two million people have since died. Of particular relevance is that disputes relating to land tenure have been behind many of these conflicts that have led to deaths in the Congo. As an international community we must turn our minds to the post-Mugabe era and address this situation as we would for a country that is emerging from a sustained and bloody conflict. The Zimbabwean economy has collapsed by more than a third since 1999. This compares to an average decline in GDP in civil wars in African countries of just 15 per cent. We need a plan for a post-Mugabe Zimbabwe, and Australia should be taking a lead role through the Commonwealth and other international forums to make this happen, as has been highlighted by the member for Goldstein.

Key factors that need to be addressed include the following: re-establish as a priority the rule of law by removing the politicisation and corruption endemic in the police force, military, intelligence services and judiciary—where appropriate, this must include the support and deployment of UN and AU forces; bring together donor countries, the World Bank and other international agencies to prioritise Zimbabwe’s economic development needs and to provide support through a national reconstruction fund, not unlike that employed by the US in Iraq; task a team of legal experts to begin work on developing options for land title reform to assist the new government to address perhaps its greatest economic and political challenge; initiate a process for justice and reconciliation based on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission experience in South Africa and as also applied in Rwanda; bring together a major global relief fund with staged contributions that reflect the capacity of the country to absorb such aid; make available the expertise and personnel needed to rapidly increase the institutional capacity to absorb humanitarian aid through a conference of NGOs with donor countries and local officials to identify immediate priorities, such as food relief, as well as putting in place longer term programs on issues such as HIV-AIDS; and seek to engage the resources and support of the Zimbabwean diaspora in the reconstruction effort, including staged resettlement and the infusion of much needed skills and experience.

Our task as an international community in Zimbabwe is great. It has been made greater by our obfuscation over almost three decades. It is our hope that work will be able to commence on June 27. If our hope is denied, then let us finally act as an international community to value the human rights of those living in Zimbabwe higher than the rights of a despotic regime to sovereign statehood. If our hope is realised, then let us write a new chapter in the doctrine of international community which creates a new future for Zimbabwe and sends a message to both the despots and those who suffer at their hands that in this new world things will change.

See this speech in context