Barry Wakelin (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Defence. Can the minister update the House about the role of Australian combat troops as part of the coalition to bring stability to Iraq? Is the minister aware of any alternative approaches?

Brendan Nelson (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Grey for his question. I know that he welcomes the Abrams tanks and the 1,000 Australian diggers in his electorate at the moment, training at the Cultana range. Yesterday marked the sixth anniversary of the heinous attacks by al-Qaeda, driven by Osama bin Laden, on innocent civilians in New York and Washington, where more than 3,000 people lost their lives, including Australians. The ongoing struggle in Iraq—which principally is to bring security and peace to the people of Iraq, supported by the United Nations Security Council; to see that the Iraqi security forces are in a position to provide for that country’s own security; and for Australia to stand by its key allies, the United States, Britain and other countries—continues.

Two weeks ago today I was in Baghdad, and General Petraeus briefed me and the Chief of the Australian Defence Force on the progress that is being made with the surge in Baghdad. As has been reported in testimony to the joint sitting of the US congress and Senate, notwithstanding continuing violence there has been significant progress over the last six months in Iraq. Attack levels are the lowest they have been in 18 months. We have seen a 50 per cent reduction in ethno-sectarian violence across the country and an 80 per cent reduction in Bagdad. In Anbar province, for example, whereas last year al-Qaeda conducted in one month 1,300 attacks on innocent Iraqis, in this past month there have been 200. Similarly, in Ramadi, Baquba, Baghdad and other areas of Iraq there has been a significant improvement, but there is a long way to go.

Australia currently has just under 1,700 troops across the theatre of Iraq. That includes a battle group which is in Tallil to provide very important training to the Iraqi security forces in Dhi Qar and Al Muthanna provinces and also to provide backup security to the Iraqis themselves, who so far have performed extraordinarily well. Australia has trained some 16,000 troops at this stage. In addition to that, our troops are engaged in very important engineering projects, including schools, hospitals, bridges and roads. On the advice of the Chief of the Australian Defence Force in September last year and the advice of the Chief of Army, Lieutenant General Peter Leahy, the government was advised by me that, in order to provide an acceptable level of risk to our forces, that battle group should be increased in size. On the advice of our military advisers, in order to protect our own troops we increased the size of that group by 38 soldiers and we added another four Bushmaster infantry mobility vehicles to the battle group. In other words, the advice I was given by our military commanders was that in order for our diggers to do their job they needed more people and they needed more equipment. We provided that.

I am asked about alternative policies. On 5 September this year the Leader of the Opposition said this in a doorstop interview in north Melbourne:

... Labor has a policy which supports the negotiated, staged withdrawal of Australian combat forces. It’s a policy we would pursue in Government.

Yesterday, I noticed that the spokesman for foreign affairs for the Labor Party said:

We intend to commence a phased withdrawal of Australian troops from Iraq in the middle of next year ...

There are extraordinarily important points here. The first is that, having rid Iraq and the world of Saddam Hussein after the September 11 attacks, the Australian government and the Australian troops are supporting the Americans, the Iraqis, the British and other countries to bring security to Iraq, endorsed by the United Nations Security Council. Our troops in the south—those combat troops which the Labor Party says it will withdraw in a negotiated, phased way—have been increased in size for their own protection as they provide training and protection to the Iraqis and support our key allies. The ignorant naivete of the Leader of the Opposition, in an act of political opportunism to the Australian people, is such that he will have a negotiated, phased withdrawal of those troops.

The Americans have 165,000 troops in Iraq. They will, at some point—and we have already seen indications of it—have a phased, managed withdrawal. To have a phased withdrawal—which Australians are being led to believe by the Leader of the Opposition—will place in danger the lives of Australian troops. That battle group is either there or not. It will also place in danger struggling Iraqis who have shown enormous courage to build their own democracy. Troops help those Iraqis build their own schools and hospitals, and a withdrawal would abandon the Iraqis in the process of training them. This is the same Leader of the Opposition who was very happy to deploy 300 troops to Afghanistan on the basis of a television report. It is absolutely essential that the decisions made about Australian troops—who wear our uniform, in our name, under our flag—in countries protect them and their critical mass for their own security. The naivete and opportunism of the Leader of the Opposition is such that, if he does what he proposes to do, he will place at risk the very safety of our own people.

We have a responsibility to see this job through. Al-Qaeda is, in the words of General Petraeus, the No. 1 enemy in Iraq. We have a responsibility to Iraq, the Middle East and the free world to see the job through and make sure that our own troops are as safe as they possibly can be in the process.