Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Hansard source

On 19 March 2009 Sergeant Brett Till was killed in Afghanistan. He left behind Bree, his wife, and his two children, Jacob and Taleah. This weekend, on Saturday, we will celebrate the first birthday of Bree and Brett’s only child. Bree contacted me when these speeches debating this matter began. She said—and it is worth repeating for the House:

I appreciate the respect for the fallen, but we stay because we need to stay—not for spite or pride. Risking more loss of life does not make lost lives less painful.

That was the advice of the widow of a soldier fallen in Afghanistan to this House about how we should think about these matters. We need to stay in Afghanistan not to justify the lives lost—we honour those lives and the fact that they were lost—but to complete the task that those who lost their lives made the ultimate sacrifice to complete. This task remains as valid today as it did when the Special Forces Task Force was deployed nine years ago, in October 2001. In this debate we have the opportunity to reaffirm why we need to stay.

Ten years after making his case for international intervention not just in Kosovo but more broadly, as a new doctrine, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair returned to Chicago to reaffirm his case in his post-politics world. He made a plea for patience with this doctrine, and I make a similar plea today in relation to our engagement in Afghanistan. Mr Blair said:

I understand completely the fatigue with an interventionist foreign policy—especially when it involves military action that takes its toll on a nation’s psyche, when we see those who grieve for the fallen in battle. The struggle seems so vast, so complex, so full of layers and intersections that daunt us, that they make us unsure where we start, how we proceed and where and how on earth we end.

As we contemplate our continuing involvement, let us remind ourselves of what Mr Blair had said 10 years before:

Globalisation … is not just economic, it’s also a political and security phenomenon. … We live in a world where isolationism has ceased to have a reason to exist. We cannot turn our backs on conflicts and the violation of human rights within other countries if we still want to be secure.

He said:

Where we are called upon to fight we have to do it. If we are defeated anywhere, we are at risk of being defeated everywhere.

As Tony Blair more recently argued:

… the struggle in which we are joined today is profound in its danger; requires engagement of a different and more comprehensive kind; and can only be won in the long haul. … We live in an era of interdependence: the idea that if we let a problem fester it will be contained within its boundaries no longer applies … Their problems will become ours.

We are in engaged with our allies in this struggle. We are in Afghanistan to provide stability to a nation in crisis that has endured generations of upheaval and most recently has been brutalised by an oppressive and invasive Taliban regime that harboured al-Qaeda and ignored the fundamental human rights of their own people. We are in Afghanistan to deny a haven to terrorists who spend every waking hour devising and implementing their wicked plans and schemes to destroy everything we hold true as Australians. We are in Afghanistan to enable the nation of Afghanistan to once again govern itself and take charge of its own future, where its own citizens can assure each other of the freedoms we too often take for granted.

These are noble goals; these are worthy goals; these are our goals. They have not become any less important with the difficulty of this task or its duration or because of any frustration we may feel in achieving it. Do these goals represent an achievable purpose? We have no choice. If they are unachievable, we must make them achievable. As Blair also said:

This struggle we face now cannot by defeated be staying out, but by sticking in, abiding by our values, not retreating from them.

We are not responsible for terrorism. It cannot be justified on any grounds. We should be unapologetic in combating it.

But how do we defeat it here in Afghanistan? At a practical level we must understand that we are fundamentally in a battle for governance. In this battle our primary enemy is corruption. The need to increasingly address our attention to civil reforms has been highlighted by numerous experts, including our own Dr David Kilcullen and Peter Leahy from the National Security Institute. US General Petraeus has given positive signals to address greater effort in these areas also since taking up the command.

This is not an argument for greater use of soft versus hard power. To the contrary: the two can and must co-exist in our efforts in Afghanistan, and we must remain equal and true to both. We cannot hope to secure the civil reforms necessary to achieve working governance in Afghanistan without establishing a more secure environment. There are others in this place, and certainly outside, who can better advise how these security objectives can be operationally won, and I will leave it to them. But success will ultimately turn on the reforms to governance that so far frustrate our progress.

Dr Kilcullen argues that the Taliban are outgoverning the Afghani government: ‘They are the ones collecting taxation, running small businesses, having agricultural policies, issuing title deeds and ID cards, even issuing passports in parts of the country.’ Whit Mason, from the University of New South Wales Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies of Law, argued:

Most Afghans crave little more than peace and security from any predator, whether they be criminals, insurgents or corrupt police and officials.

He talked about the modicum of rough justice and security provided by the Taliban and the territories they control. The state, by contrast, he argues, ‘cannot protect civilians against either the Taliban or common criminals. Police often extort money and the judiciary is seen as the most corrupt institution in the country.’ Make no mistake: corruption is the resident evil that denies human beings worldwide their chance of a better life, whether it is the dictator regimes of Africa, the juntas of Burma or the corrupt bureaucracies of Afghanistan.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reported in January that Afghanis paid out $2½ billion—almost one quarter of their GDP—in bribes in the previous 12 months. One in two Afghanis had to pay at least one kickback to a public official in the previous year. Transparency International has rated Afghanistan, after Somalia, the second most corrupt country in the world. When I recently met with Afghan asylum seekers in the Curtin detention centre, they told me they had lost confidence in the Karzai government. It is no wonder when initiatives, such as the High Office of Oversight, established by the Karzai government to tackle corruption, was found by the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction to suffer from significant gaps, was critically understaffed, lacking in basic skills and experience, and the organisational, external and personal independence required by international standards were not present. The challenge of confronting such corruption is that it becomes cultural and intergenerational. It becomes hard-wired into the DNA of a nation. It is not long before children have to bribe their teachers or be sent from home school, as we know happens in many developing countries in Africa today,

As the UNODC report recommends, Afghanistan does need an independent, fearless and well-funded anticorruption authority. The appointment of governors and district leaders must include a negative corruption pledge. People holding public service positions should disclose their incomes and assets. Administrative procedures must be made more user-friendly and public services made more accessible and service orientated. Full transparency must exist in public procurement, tendering practices and political campaigns. Serious attention needs to be given to salary levels and structures for public officials. Proceeds of crime must be confiscated. Prosecution of corrupt officials must proceed. The chief justice must discipline their judiciary. It cannot be, as the report says, ‘Cheaper to buy a judge than hire a lawyer.’

Despite setbacks, there are examples of progress in these areas and they are listed in the numerous reports put together. It is pleasing to note that Australian forces and civilians are actively engaged in addressing these issues in Afghanistan and Oruzgan province. These include our Federal Police, aid workers, civilian contractors and of course our ADF force element, incorporating Army Chief Engineer Works personnel and combat teams for organic force protection.

It is worth noting that, during the past four years, as security steadily improved the number of NGOs deployed in Oruzgan assisting the local population grew from just six to 50. That means better health care, education, commerce and infrastructure. More broadly, the report to congress Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan, in April 2010, found very pleasing developments: two-thirds of the districts of Afghanistan can offer Afghan citizens access to basic health care; a polio immunisation campaign is underway; 648 midwives have graduated from supported programs, representing a quarter of all midwives in the country. Also, the total number of trained midwives in Afghanistan has reached 2,500, compared to just 475 under Taliban rule. Prenatal care visits are up 17 per cent and the number of women using school birth attendance is up 40 per cent. Currently, approximately two-thirds of school-age children are attending primary school in Afghanistan. Nearly seven million students are enrolled in primary and secondary schools and 37 per cent are female. Under the Taliban, only 900,000 students were enrolled in primary and secondary schooling—all boys, no girls.

University enrolment in Afghanistan has grown to 62,000, compared to only 7,881 under the Taliban. Between 2002 and 2010, more than 75.6 million textbooks have been printed in Dari and Pashto, for grades 1 to 12, in subject areas such as language, maths, biology and geography. Finally, more than 680 schools have been built or refurbished. That is worth being in Afghanistan for; that is why we are there. These are the goals which we seek. There is of course much more to be done. These measures should form the primary benchmarks by which our success in Afghanistan is measured.

Particular challenges we should be mindful of are the fact that around 60 per cent of the Afghani population is under the age of 25. These are a key recruitment pool for insurgent groups. The opportunities for those young people in Afghanistan in the future will be overlooked at our great peril. The focus of these efforts must be very much geared to those individuals.

The equity of aid distribution must also deal with the spectrum of need across the nation and not marginalise those areas of the country that are presently the focus of military engagement. The Lowy Institute was told in June this year of a story of one group interviewed in Afghanistan, which said:

“we didn’t grow poppy, we supported the Government and we embraced non-violent means to raise our concerns, but the Government of Afghanistan and the international community focuses only in the insurgent-afflicted areas. We feel we don’t matter to the government or the international community because we didn’t pick up guns and fight”

This is an important warning to us in our activities and programs in Afghanistan in how we dispense, distribute and support this country in getting to its feet and creating a future for itself. Of course, our own troops are intensely engaged in the training of the 4th Brigade of the Afghan National Army’s 209th Atal—which means ‘hero’—Corps in defending their own country. We have around 700 soldiers in the first mentoring task force who are currently committed to this operation. Creating the opportunity for this country to take hold of its own future is an exciting and worthy goal. This is a fundamental point. It is about building capacity for self-governance. To achieve this will require the Afghani people to develop a thirst and confidence in their own future.

When I meet Afghan asylum seekers in our detention centres and I see individuals who have given up on their country, it is a sad thing. We do not judge them in making that decision, and the fact that they have taken the decisions they have is evidence of the greater effort we need to make to give Afghans a greater sense of confidence in the future of their nation, as our grandfathers and fathers did when they took up arms and ensured the security of our nation in the conflicts where Australia was directly under threat.

In addition to training and reforming the governance of Afghanistan, made possible by security delivered by our defence forces, Afghanistan must also address the difficult issue of reconciliation. Whether it is in Rwanda, South Africa or Afghanistan there can be no reconciliation without truth or justice. Simple amnesties will not suffice. The truth must be told, wrongs acknowledged, injustices condemned and victims and families heard to heal the wounds. These wounds, of course, include and go well beyond the recent Taliban rule.

It is important that we find the sort of depth of leadership that was provided by Archbishop Desmond Tutu in pursuing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission process in South Africa, which has been such a healing process for that country. A similar process was put in place in Rwanda post the genocides. If South Africa can do it and, in particular, if Rwanda can do it—where almost a million people were macheted to death in the space of around 100 days—then Afghanistan can indeed do it. Our troops, our civilians, our forces, our fellow Australians and our allies are engaged in this great battle and we cannot shirk from it.

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