Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to join my colleagues on both sides of the House in paying respects on the 10th anniversary of the Bali bombings which occurred on 12 October 2002. I follow my colleague and friend the member for Riverina, who gave us a very passionate and insightful speech on his reflections on those tragic events.

The attacks on the Kuta nightclub district, on the Sari Club and on Paddy's Pub saw 202 innocent people lose their lives and more than 200 people injured—88 Australians died, 38 Indonesians died and representatives and citizens from Britain, France, the United States, Holland, Japan, Sweden, Korea and other countries also lost their lives. People of all different faiths lost their lives that day. The attack was indiscriminate, with the simple goal of wreaking as much havoc as possible. Terrorism does not distinguish between its victims.

On the night of that attack our Prime Minister at the time, John Winston Howard, called it an act of terrorism. He said it was a wicked and cowardly act. He was to say to a father of one of those young people missing, Mr Phil Burchett, 'We'll get those bastards who did this.' Thankfully, through the efforts of Australian, Indonesian and international law enforcement agencies, we were successful in that aim—Amrosi, Mukhlas and Samudra were all punished by execution. Hambali, an ally of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of the September 11 attacks and the link between Jemaah Islamiah and al-Qaeda, was also punished. Khalid Sheikh Muhammad was pulled out of his rat-hole and taken into custody. Noordin Top was killed and the spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiah, Abu Bakar Bashir, a man with blood on his hands, was also to pay a price. It is important that we remember and give credit to the men and women in the Australian Secret Intelligence Organisation, led by Dennis Richardson, to the men and women in the Australian Federal Police, led by Mick Keelty, and to the men and women in ASIS, which does so much work to protect Australians.

The Howard government, with support from the other side of the political divide, gave these organisations the necessary resources to do their work. I had the honour of working in Mr Howard's office in 2003 and 2004 when much of the work post Bali was still being done. Another one of my bosses, Alexander Downer, Australia's longest serving foreign minister, worked diligently with his Indonesian counterparts, as well as American counterparts—I remember Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, was one—to ensure everything was done to capture these terrorists. It is important to understand that this was a bipartisan effort. Just as Simon Crean went with John Howard at the time of the attacks on Bali, so too did Tony Abbott go to Bali just weeks ago with Prime Minister Gillard for the commemoration.

But it is not just people in politics and law enforcement agencies who did so much. Fiona Wood, the Australian of the Year in 2005, was a burns specialist whose selfless and skilful work was able to save lives after these tragic events. Military medical teams were sent with limited notice to Bali to work in warlike conditions. Qantas staff quickly despatched planes to bring home the injured. A good family friend of mine, Graeme Southwick, is a plastic surgeon who played such an important role because he happened to be on holiday in Bali at the time. There are all those people in the Darwin and Perth hospitals who gave support and assistance to the injured. Peter Hughes, who was a survivor of the Bali attacks, set up a foundation for burns victims, and Dr David Marsh and his wife Claire, who was a nurse, were there at the time and they have set up a foundation to ensure that medical equipment gets to Indonesian hospitals. So much was done by so many people to save lives after the tragic events of 12 October 2002.

If there is one bright element to this terrible event it is the deeper level of cooperation we now see between Indonesia and Australia.

To that end I would like to share some words of Dr Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the President of Indonesia. Dr Yudhoyono was Security Minister at the time and since 2004 he has been President of Indonesia. He said: 'The Bali bombings created a set of critical chain reactions—

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