Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Before the Prime Minister visited Afghanistan, she attended the military funerals of many Australian soldiers killed in action there. At the request of the then Minister for Defence, I too partook in the funeral arrangements for the first reservist killed in action since World War II, Private Greg Sher. Obviously, he died in Afghanistan. Like the Prime Minister, nothing I have done as an MP has been as difficult as that solemn duty of participating with the Prime Minister in the Sher funeral. I have regarded it as my important duty to stay in contact with his family, his dear parents, Felix and Yvonne, ever since.

My judgment is that most of the families of the fallen service personnel, and certainly most of our troops in theatre, support the continuing mission in Afghanistan. Frankly, it is offensive and patronising to minimise their role by claiming that ‘the views of our enthusiastic diggers and operational level commanders are obviously important but they are only one perspective when it comes to understanding Australia’s strategic interests and the most sensible ways to achieve them’, as the member for Denison did. In the real world there are many top analysts, apart from the leadership of the government and the opposition, who share their views of Australia’s service personnel. I have been a supporter of the Afghanistan commitment since the ANZUS treaty was invoked after 3,000 Americans and 10 Australians, amongst others, were murdered on 11 September 2001. Afghanistan was used as the base for al-Qaeda—which in Arabic actually means ‘the base’—from which the attack on America was organised.

Only someone unfamiliar with members of this House would suggest that we are here robotically following some party orders rather than authentically representing our own views on this issue. For those Johnny-come-latelies, I spoke last year very strongly to condemn the blatant rigging of the presidential election in Afghanistan and the rampant corruption with which the Karzai administration has been associated. Whether it is Karzai’s dubious brother, the Governor of Kandahar, or the disgusting admission in today’s newspapers that his chief of staff accepts brown bags of cash from the theocrats in Iran, many Australians—even those who support the mission—will question whether such expenditure of the blood and treasure of Australians is worth the support of a government that allows such corruption.

For years, we have had to endure the smart alec parrot calls of the former foreign minister, Mr Downer, about cutting and running from Iraq. Now, during this debate, I discover that he agrees with the Greens and in fact told the palaeoconservative weekly, the Spectator:

That goal was achieved. Al-Qaeda was destroyed in Afghanistan.

The member for Denison is even more extreme than Mr Downer. He suggests that the view of Afghanistan as ‘a launching pad for Islamic terrorism is no longer relevant’. That is not the view of Australia’s military chiefs or of the Afghan theatre commander, US General David Petraeus. Our Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, is more measured. She has said:

… our vital national interests, in preventing Afghanistan being a safe haven for terrorists who attack us and in supporting our ally, do not end with transition. Our aim is that the new international strategy sees a functioning Afghan state become able to assume responsibility for preventing the country from being a safe haven for terrorists.

The Minister for Defence, Stephen Smith, reiterated this more balanced approach when he said:

Terrorism in Afghanistan and in its neighbourhood remains a real threat.

                  …              …              …

Our fundamental goal is to prevent Afghanistan from again being used by terrorists to plan and train for terrorist attacks on innocent civilians.

Since 2001, over 100 Australians have been killed in terrorist attacks—in 9-11, Bali, Jakarta and the London bombings. Most of the people who planned and carried out these attacks were trained in Afghanistan, and some of those attacks were planned and funded from Afghanistan. Jemaah Islamiah, the author of the Bali bombings, is the Asian affiliate of al-Qaeda. Many of its operatives were trained in Afghanistan. In fact, among terrorists they are called ‘the Afghanis’, which shows their stature, if that can be called stature.

Time after time, terrorists who have now been jailed for their crimes in Australia have come from Lashkar-e-Taiba, which was responsible for the attack on Mumbai in 2008. These people have tried to attack Australia. Thankfully, we have laws that have enabled them to be arrested, charged, tried fairly, found guilty and convicted. I am pleased to see that the Victorian Court of Appeal recently confirmed that Mr Benbrika will stay in jail for another 15 years.

It is true is that all of these organisations do not operate solely out of Afghanistan. They have outposts in Somalia, Yemen and the southern Philippines. There is no doubt that Afghanistan and the Pakistan border region is the jihadist ‘terror central’. In contrast to some of the non-experts who minimise the insurgency, top counterinsurgency specialist Australian Colonel David Kilcullen hit the nail on the head on Lateline on 4 October this year. He said:

We’re here because the Taliban pose a threat to regional stability. And in Pakistan we have 100 nuclear weapons, Al-Qaeda headquarters and a very strong Taliban movement, and that’s the threat that we’re really focussing on, that regional threat which could have very significant implications if we fail.

This is their safe haven, their base camp and their chief training area in the south of Afghanistan. If we can deny them the free use of this area, we can prevent them from gaining control of the whole of Afghanistan. That will inflict heavy defeat on them. This is the aim of Australia, the US and the international security force. The idea is for the international security force to let the military surge degrade the Taliban and the al-Qaeda command structure, to stand up the Afghan National Army and police and to build a social network for the Afghan government so that foreign forces can slowly withdraw.

The Afghan government says that it wishes to take security control of the country from 2014. That is the time when the training of the Afghan 4th Brigade—Kandak, as it is called—in Oruzgan province by the Australians will be completed. If, on the other hand, we withdraw ignominiously from Afghanistan it will be a huge victory for the terror network. It will inspire them to new attacks. It will make it easier for them to prepare and mount such attacks. We and our allies may stop suffering casualties on the battlefield, but we have only to look at the Swat Valley in Pakistan, where the Pakistani government prematurely withdrew, to see the descent into Dante’s inferno that would happen if we were to take the advice of some of the people in the House. All police, teachers and social workers had their throats cut; all girls’ schools were blown up. That is what happened when the Taliban took over Swat. There will be more victims of terrorist attacks like those in Bali and Mumbai if al-Qaeda is allowed to re-establish itself in Afghanistan.

We should also remember that although we are fighting in Afghanistan in the interests of our own security, it is not all we are fighting for. There are 28 million people in Afghanistan who over the past nine years have known a greater measure of freedom than ever before in their history. This is particularly true of Afghan women and girls, who were denied the most elementary rights under the Taliban regime and who will suffer if the Taliban return. As my colleague and good friend the member for Eden-Monaro, Dr Mike Kelly, said in his standout speech—the best speech made in this debate—we have achieved much in Afghanistan since 2005 through assisting with the infrastructure of schools, health services and trade-training facilities, as well as through providing security in Orzugan province. In contrast to what the member for Denison suggested, we are providing extremely effective training for the Afghan National Army 4th Brigade. As Dr Kelly pointed out, our mission is to make ourselves eventually redundant, not to create a dependency.

On the ABC’s Lateline, Colonel David Kilcullen echoed Dr Kelly’s words. Speaking on the importance of our training of the 4th Brigade, he said:

… but the way that the combined team Oruzgan has been stood up and in particular the good progress that the Afghan National Army, Kandaks, which our guys are working with, have made, I think has gone a long way to fill that gap.

The member for Denison may have minimised the ADF’s progress in Oruzgan but by contrast Colonel Kilcullen praised the performance of our troops, saying:

The Afghan Army’s actually had some pretty good growth this year and I think we’ve seen that growth translated, particularly in the Australian sector, into greatly improved performance and effectiveness on the part of the guys that our people are training.

The Greens political party have argued that the west cannot deliver democracy in Afghanistan. It is hard to see how they can be so confident as they have neither contradicted reports that they have never requested a briefing on our role in Afghanistan, nor have they been to the country. It is a shame that the Greens political party have not availed themselves of opportunities to go to Afghanistan under the parliamentary defence program over the last few years. Senator Bob Brown is a man whom I admire; he is a person of courage. He once went on the run from Chinese communist authorities in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. I urge him and his political associates to take this issue more seriously. They should stare into the face of Islamist extremism and see if they continue to hold the same view about leaving Afghanistan to these clerico-fascists.

US President, Barack Obama, has stated that the coalition strategy is an approach tied to the ‘core goal of disrupting, dismantling and eventually defeating al-Qaeda and preventing al-Qaeda’s return to safe haven in Afghanistan or Pakistan.’ As the perceptive foreign editor of the Australian, Greg Sheridan, explained of Obama’s strategy on 7 October:

Instead he aims to punch back hard against the Taliban, keep al-Qa’ida from coming back, train the Afghan security forces and give the Afghans a shot at running a half decent government.

Withdrawing from Afghanistan before we have been able to create a situation in which the current government has at least a fighting chance of survival will mean deserting the millions of people for whom we have been able to provide at least some measure of security and freedom over the past nine years. I think this House ought to think carefully before it supports such a step. Dr Kelly, the member for Eden-Monaro, made the salient point:

It never ceases to amaze me that those who are quite rightly passionate in the defence of asylum seekers from Afghanistan are not prepared to extend their compassion to the people who remain. Are not the women and children of Afghanistan deserving of our best efforts to prevent a return to the brutalisation of the Taliban years? The silence of some activists against Islamist extremism shocks me, as this extremism should be total anathema to the agenda of liberals and social democrats.

The House ought to consider how many of those people will eventually arrive at our borders as refugees if Afghanistan falls to the Taliban. The last time the Taliban was in power in Afghanistan there were seven million Afghan refugees in Pakistan and Iran, and those refugee camps are the source of many of the asylum seekers now trying to reach Australia. If the Taliban returns to power, that trickle of people will become a flood.

The tough-minded, Left orientated author David Burchell, and academic at the University of Western Sydney, said:

When it comes to evil regimes, the Taliban in Afghanistan stands front and centre—

and that the conflict is really—

a primal contest between universal human values and an atavistic medievalism, where the latter is too often winning out over the former because, encased in our cocoon of high minded complacent, and habituated to experiencing the world as a theatre for our private moral dramas, we no longer really care.

In her opening statement on Afghanistan, Prime Minister Julia Gillard spoke of attending the funerals of those who have lost their lives serving our nation there. The Prime Minister went on to quote the great Australian poet James McAuley:

I never shrank with fear

But fought the monsters of the lower world

Clearing a little space, and time, and light

For men to live in peace

I am proud of the tough stance the Prime Minister is taking. I am proud of her supporting our brave men and women fighting on behalf of this nation. I am proud of Australia’s involvement in Afghanistan, despite all of my doubts about the corrupt government in power there, views that I make very clear to the Afghan ambassador and to the various people that we have access to in this parliament.

Australia squarely confronted the monstrous Taliban, which blew up the Bamiyan Bhuddas, who stood in Afghanistan in respect of another culture for thousands of years; who used a UN sports grounds to flay, then stone to death women; who denied girls education; whose horrifying treatment of minorities were explored in such deeply troubling films as Kandahar and the Kite Runner. I am fully conscious of the fact that this problem can never be solved by Australia alone. I am fully conscious of the fact that our great ally, the United States, has a plan for standing up with the Afghan government and the Afghan security forces, and that we cannot indefinitely invest our people’s lives or our treasure in keeping the conflict in Afghanistan going. But I think the plan that the government has outlined, with the support of the opposition, and with the bipartisan view of most sensible people in this country, is that we ought to give it our best shot. Australia is making a very valuable contribution in Oruzgan province. Our people serving there are doing great credit to this country, and I think that most Australians expect us as politicians to do what the famous Edmund Burke said: not just reflect what public opinion says but we owe the public our judgment. And my judgment is that the policies of this government, supported by the other side, are right in Afghanistan. (Time expired)

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