Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome this opportunity to make a contribution to this debate about the Afghan war. I think it is the most important debate that we are having because Australians as a nation do not glorify war. We are not a warmongering society. I know that no-one in this parliament glories in the notion that we are currently at war in Afghanistan. This fact is borne out for me almost every day in my electorate, where driving around the 52 small towns brings me face-to-face with the war memorials and the cenotaphs. A lot of them are the only things still around in tiny towns where there is just a closed public hall and, usually right outside, a big granite cenotaph. These cenotaphs, of course, commemorate the dead, mostly from the First World War and some from the Second World War.

The point about those cenotaphs is that they are a place of mourning loss; they are not a place of glorifying great victories. When we do have statuary associated with these memorials and cenotaphs, it is invariably of a soldier with a bowed head obviously mourning the loss of his mates who have died in battle. So we are not a country that glorifies war; we never have been and we never will be. On the other hand, we are a country that always steps up, never expects others to do our heavy lifting, that is always there for our allies and is there to help keep peace wherever we can or to fight back tyranny when it comes near us or threatens others like us.

This is an important debate for restating what the nature of our engagement is in the rest of the world when it comes to deploying our Defence Force men and women. I stand proudly here too as the mother of a major in the Australian Army and as the daughter of a mother and father who served as volunteers in the Second World War and as the granddaughter of a light horseman who served in the First World War as a volunteer. But these are very typical antecedents of people who live in country Australia. Very often generation after generation volunteer and some return maimed, disabled physically and often also with mental health issues to deal with. But, of course, many do not return at all.

I have to say that in my experience very recently at Al Minhad, which is the place of deployment for our Australian Army, Navy and Air Force into Afghanistan and the Gulf, I was hugely impressed at the calmness, the professionalism and the stoicism of the Australian men and women of the Australian Defence Force. Some of them are in supporting roles and will never be going forward into the combat zone but they do essential work, whether it is in intelligence, in communications technologies, in pure administrative work or in supplying the people going forward.

There is a whole raft of jobs that are done by those who do not get the glory of the action when it comes to being on the ground but who are essential and no less often stressed, being so far from home and being in conditions that are institutionalised, where their own personal freedoms have been absolutely exchanged for their duties for their country. Those people in Al Minhad were often older people, in their later 20s and 30s, with officers older again. Almost all of them that I spoke to had families back in Australia, and those families too make an enormous sacrifice. We must always remember the wives, husbands, children, brothers, sisters and partners left when any of our Defence Force goes forward and carries out the will of the people of Australia via the directions of this parliament.

I was concerned, though, in talking to some of the psychologists and others on the base. They of course spoke strictly professionally and appropriately to us, who were visiting parliamentarians wanting to know how we could help. I think it is important that the Australian government ensures, through our defence forces, that the very best decompression, as they sometimes call it, is offered to our serving men and women when they are leaving their deployment of, say, six months or longer. Indeed, even when they are just taking a break during their deployment we should ensure they do not just spend those few days on a base—in this case, Al Minhad in the Emirates—which is still not like a normal society. They are still surrounded by people all in uniform and under strict regimes. There is no alcohol on the base, of course, and they are still many hours away from their families.

I was impressed when I spoke to the Dutch, who were in the process of withdrawing at that stage. They talked about how their troops, when they are in a decompression stage—in other words, leaving deployment—went off to Cyprus and spent several weeks there in the company of chaplains, counsellors and other support people. Their family could be with them, they could be exposed to a normal tourist holiday type venue, behave like ordinary people out of uniform and have a real chance to readjust. If we could do something like this for our serving personnel, it would give them a better chance to try and get their thoughts in order before they stepped off the plane in Darwin, Sydney or Adelaide and into the arms of their loved ones waiting for them. It is very important that we look at how we are going about the task of ensuring that post-traumatic stress is absolutely minimised when it comes to our great Australian Defence Force personnel. We expect so much of them and we are beginning to learn more and more about the stresses that can affect any human being and can recur years later if there is not proper support given at the right time.

We have experience in Australia of a great group of our Defence Force personnel coming back to this country who were not fully supported by the government of the day, were certainly not supported by the media and were not supported by many in the population. They were our Vietnam War returnees. They are still scarred, many of them, by the experience they had, where they were spat upon, abused and called baby killers. I know that is a long time ago now—some 40 years or so for some of them—but the scars they carry because of a non-caring, misunderstanding Australian public will be with them forever. So it is very important in this debate in this place that we restate very, very carefully—from the government side, from the opposition side and from the crossbenches—that we are proud of the work, the commitment, the courage, the stoicism and the sacrifice of Australian Defence Force personnel who serve in the name of this nation. We are proud of their conduct when they are deployed in other places. The reputation of Australians at war and in peacekeeping is amongst the best in the world in terms of our civilian interface and our adherence to understanding the rights of others in such circumstances.

I was very impressed at Al Minhad as I came to understand how we are trying to win the hearts and minds of the people in Oruzgan province in Afghanistan. This is a province which has very low levels of literacy and numeracy, where for generations women have not been allowed to be educated and where there is very poor health for all of the population and in particular for women and children. In fact, Oruzgan ranks as one of the least developed provinces in Afghanistan. The literacy rate for females is on or about zero, and it is only 10 per cent for males. We have our trade schools in place, which aim to give young men in particular—at this stage—a skill that they can carry back into their communities, and this is a good thing that we do. I also very strongly commend the work that is beginning to be done and thought about with women in communities. That will obviously be very dangerous work, but we have to understand that, until we have the population understanding that the Taliban is not an alternative that will ever give them freedom and peace, until they believe that categorically, then the war will continue to oppress them.

Over 100 locals have now been trained and over 132,000 square metres of contaminated land has been cleared of mines under our Australian aid programs. We have improved food security through the distribution of wheat and other food items, including take-home rations for female school students—those pioneer women who are going to be educated. We support basic health and hygiene education, providing 1,780 primary school students—34 per cent of whom are girls—with basic health and hygiene education. Australians in Afghanistan, a long way from their loved ones and the comforts and security of their home, are trying very hard to give this war-torn nation a chance to experience some of the peace and security that we take for granted too often in our country. The provincial reconstruction teams are doing an exceptional job. We aim to spend some $20 million in 2010-11 on development assistance.

It is important that Australians understand the full scope of the work that our Defence Force personnel and those we employ through our aid programs are doing in Afghanistan. It is important to understand that this is not going to be a quick fix in a nation that has been war-torn literally for generations. As a nation that embraces democracy, that has enjoyed freedom but understands freedom comes at a price, it is important that we understand and state again and again in this parliament that we will always stand up and deploy our defence forces where we think we can make a difference, where we think that with our allies we can bring peace and security to other parts of the world and where we can make sure our own nation does not have terrorism visited upon it, because terrorism has been allowed to thrive in our near neighbourhood.

I want to state personally on behalf of the electorate of Murray our thanks to the Australian defence forces. Our electorate has long had an association with and supplied our brightest and best to the Australian defence forces. Our soldier settler communities are the backbone of what today is still a thriving food-producing community and our cenotaphs and our memorial cairns, our honour boards inside all of our little country halls and churches, pay lifelong and long-lasting respect to those who looked after our country in the defence forces before this current generation. This has been a very special opportunity for the Australian parliament to restate our respect and our commitment to do our best always for the security, safety and proper resourcing of our defence forces. We need to look at the long-term needs of our forces and of our personnel when they return home. I am sure that there is more we can do in that particular area. I thank the House very much for giving me this opportunity. I hope this debate will be read carefully by our defence force personnel, both those serving and those in Australia, so that they understand the gratitude of our nation.

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