David Jull (Fadden, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is directed to the Minister for Foreign Affairs. What is the government’s present approach to the political situation in Iraq? What alternative approaches are being promoted?

Alexander Downer (Mayo, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

First, can I thank the honourable member for Fadden for his question. This will be, for certain, one of the last questions, if not the last question, that he asks in the House of Representatives. I know we on this side of the House, and no doubt many on the other side, believe he has been a great member of parliament. He will be very much missed. I know in the electorate of Fadden the Labor Party has put up a candidate who is an official for the Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Union. Imagine asking the people of Fadden to put a union hack in place of a great man like Jully!

Let me make this pretty clear: the government of Australia supports a democratic Iraq, an Iraq free from dictatorship and an Iraq free from terrorists. But this requires hard work. As the US Ambassador to Iraq, Ambassador Crocker, has said, the process will not be quick. It requires security. General Petraeus has said that political progress will take place only if security exists, which of course is the whole point of the surge. I would say that it is encouraging that the surge has been working and that some of the political signs, albeit rather early signs, are more positive than has been the case for a long time.

The honourable member asked whether there were any alternative views. I think it is well known that the opposition policy is to abandon Iraq. I noticed, going through the records, that the Leader of the Opposition said on the Sunday program on 18 August: ‘Labor has argued consistently against the surge.’ The member for Barton, who is the shadow minister, has often said that the surge was a mistake and has been opposed to the surge.

Let me make this clear about the surge: since December 2006, there has been a 45 per cent decline in civilian deaths and a 55 per cent decline in sectarian deaths, and al-Anbar province, which was a hotbed of al-Qaeda, has been cleared of al-Qaeda. Those things have been achieved because of the surge—a surge which was completely opposed by the Leader of the Opposition, which, if I may say so, says something about his judgement.

The Labor Party also argues that troops should be withdrawn from Iraq and that if foreign troops were withdrawn from Iraq there would be political progress. Somehow this is the way to achieve some kind of political reconciliation in Iraq—to rip out from underneath the people of Iraq their security. Very few people who know anything about the issues think that makes even the slightest sense. That is simply a policy built on the back of some opinion polling which has been worked by Hawker Britton. It is nothing else.

Let me tell the House what Ambassador Crocker, who I suspect knows more about this issue than the Leader of the Opposition or the member for Barton, said to the US congress on 11 September, in response to a question which happened to be about Labor’s policy—that is, whether withdrawing the troops would increase political pressure for reconciliation. Ambassador Crocker said:

I think we have to be very careful with that, frankly, and I’d be concerned at an approach that says we’re going to start pulling out troops regardless of the objective conditions on the ground. And what might happen in consequence of that could actually push the Iraqis in the wrong direction, to make them less likely to compromise rather than more likely.

The fact is that the Labor Party have never shared the government’s position. Our position is that we support democracy in Iraq. Labor were happy to allow Iraq to remain a dictatorship. After all, they tried to raise half a million dollars for their 1975 election campaign from that dictatorship. Do not let anybody forget the Blues Point Tower meeting between Gough Whitlam, a great Labor hero, and Ba’ath Socialist Party officials from Iraq—a great affiliation under the socialist international flag, no doubt.

Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Tanner interjecting

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Melbourne is warned!

Alexander Downer (Mayo, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Labor Party seems to think that the terrorists can just hack it out in Iraq and establish a base there and that that does not matter. At the end of the day, that matters to our national security. For terrorists to succeed in Iraq is for terrorism to win internationally. That, in turn, undermines our own national security. This government is not about populism; it is about standing up for our national security.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Alexander Downer (Mayo, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The trade union officials on the frontbench laugh, even though they know they have a leader who is totally driven by opinion polls. Probably, intellectually, there are few people on the Labor side who think we are wrong, but all of them have decided to adopt a narrow, populist approach which will reduce our national security and not enhance it.