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

I move:

That the House:

(1)

congratulates Mr Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), on his appointment as Prime Minister of Zimbabwe, which is a just recognition of his long struggle for democracy and reform in Zimbabwe;

(2)

acknowledges the courage of the people of Zimbabwe in defying the thuggery and intimidation of the Mugabe regime in voting for a change of regime at the Zimbabwe elections of March 2008;

(3)

condemns the Mugabe regime for instituting a reign of violence and intimidation which forced Mr Tsvangirai to withdraw from the second round of the presidential election, despite his clear lead in the first round;

(4)

calls on the international community, and particularly Zimbabwe’s African neighbours and its fellow members of the Commonwealth, to maintain pressure on the Mugabe regime to ensure that it carries out the terms of the power-sharing agreement between the regime and the MDC; and

(5)

calls on the Australian Government to render every assistance to Mr Tsvangirai in carrying out the reforms urgently needed to restore democratic elections, good government and economic prosperity to the long-suffering people of Zimbabwe.

Notice of this motion was given on 13 October, when there were at last some grounds for optimism about the situation in Zimbabwe. In the month since then, unfortunately, the situation has reverted to its previous state—if not quite a state of hopelessness, for we always have hope, then at least a state in which no escape from the impasse is immediately in view.

The motion congratulates Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, on his appointment as Prime Minister of Zimbabwe. Sadly, that appointment has not come to pass, because President Mugabe has reneged on key elements of the agreement which was brokered by former South African President Thabo Mbeki. President Mugabe has unilaterally appointed members of his own ZANU-PF party to the key ministries of foreign affairs, defence and internal affairs, a move which would leave Mr Tsvangirai as no more than a figurehead prime minister. Quite rightly, Mr Tsvangirai has refused to accept office in those circumstances. Indeed, Mr Mugabe has denied Mr Tsvangirai travel permission; that is an unbelievable situation for a prime minister of a country.

This is a piece of arrogant bad faith by Mr Mugabe. I remind the House that the only reason Mr Mugabe is President of Zimbabwe today is that he unleashed a campaign of violence and intimidation against the people of Zimbabwe so that it became impossible to hold the second round of the presidential election. Mr Tsvangirai had a clear lead in the first round and there is no doubt that he would have won the second round had it gone ahead. The majority of the people of Zimbabwe wanted to be rid of the Mugabe regime. This was shown in the parliamentary elections, in which the two factions of the MDC between them won a majority of seats.

Mr Tsvangirai showed great statesmanship by deciding to withdraw from the second round although he would have won it, because he felt he could not ask his supporters to go on losing their lives in the face of the reign of terror unleashed by the ZANU-PF thugs across the rural areas of the country. Mr Tsvangirai made this sacrifice in the hope that the international community would respond by insisting that Mr Mugabe would resign, or at the very least agree to a power-sharing arrangement.

President Mbeki brokered a deal on which Mr Mugabe and Mr Tsvangirai shook hands in September. Under this deal, Mr Tsvangirai would be Prime Minister, and the MDC would get 16 cabinet posts and the ZANU-PF would get 15. This deal at last offered the long-suffering people of Zimbabwe some prospect of respite from the economic chaos, the international isolation and the lack of security to which they have been subjected as a result of the incompetence, corruption and lawlessness which have come to characterise the Mugabe regime.

The establishment of a power-sharing regime would have allowed the lifting of international sanctions against Zimbabwe. It would have brought aid and investment back to Zimbabwe. It would have allowed a reversal of the ruinous economic policies that have bankrupted a once prosperous country, debased its currency, destroyed its agricultural export industries and driven hundreds of thousands of skilled and educated people into emigration. All this has been put at risk by President Mugabe’s blind determination, at the age of 84, to cling to power and to preserve the shell of his regime in the face of all the disasters he has inflicted on the people of Zimbabwe.

Although the first part of this motion has sadly been overtaken by events, the other parts remain highly relevant. In the words of the motion, this parliament should most urgently call on the international community to maintain pressure on the Mugabe regime to ensure that it carries out the terms of the September agreement. The people of Zimbabwe have shown great courage in defying the Mugabe regime’s thugs and voting for a new government. It is time the international community, and particularly the countries of Africa, and also Australia, came to the aid of the poor people of Zimbabwe.

Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Justice and Customs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Melbourne Ports for introducing this important private member’s motion in the House. The coalition has a strong record of opposing Robert Mugabe’s undemocratic regime. In August 2007 Prime Minister John Howard met with opposition Movement for Democratic Change, MDC, leader Morgan Tsvangirai. Prime Minister Howard told Mr Tsvangirai that the coalition supported the Zimbabwean opposition and hoped for true democratic change of regime in their elections. The coalition government delivered targeted sanctions against Mugabe’s corrupt regime in order to send a strong message that they were against the brutalities of the regime. But, politics aside, it is important to look at the human aspect behind the President Mugabe’s violent regime. Behind the politics are real people experiencing a brutal day-to-day existence that has left their lives shattered and has caused many to flee to neighbouring countries.

Robert Mugabe’s party, the ZANU-PF, trains and sponsors the National Youth Service, also known as the Green Bombers due to the military style uniforms they wear and their reputation for violence. The US Department of State describes the Youth Service as a group of ‘undisciplined child soldiers used by the ruling government to suppress political dissent through overt acts of state terrorism’. The child soldiers are responsible for many acts of politically motivated violence and are often under the influence of government issued narcotics. Former recruits to the youth camps have spoken about a horrific training program that breaks down young teenagers before encouraging them to commit acts of violence.

After the 29 March 2008 elections, Patrick—not his real name—was beaten with iron bars in the northern Mashonaland Central Province. Patrick, a schoolteacher, described how the ZANU-PF Party youths attacked him, wanting to know why his school, which was used as a polling station in the elections, recorded a high number of opposition votes. Patrick has three broken ribs, a bandaged right arm and is barely able to sit up. In hospital he had a drip attached to his stomach. Teachers are often the backbone of the country’s electoral process, acting as polling officers on election day since Zimbabwe gained independence in 1980. However, in rural areas, several schools have been shut down because of political violence that has been rampant since the March polls. More than 5,000 teachers have been beaten, approximately 600 hospitalised and 231 teachers’ houses burnt down.

Mugabe’s youth militias are increasingly well trained in torture techniques, which they use on civilians. Lyn, an 86-year-old farmer, was supporting her family with food grown in her fields. She was assaulted in July 2008 for not attending ZANU-PF meetings. Her back was injured and her arm broken by ‘war veterans’. She said: ‘I am now disabled. I can’t work in the field … I want my attackers to be brought to justice.’

No-one has been held accountable for the gross human rights violations, including beatings and torture, that occurred in the context of the elections, despite the fact that the attackers are identifiable. The police also refuse to investigate the abduction and beating by ZANU-PF youth of thousands of MDC supporters. This lack of accountability for mistreatment in Zimbabwe remains entrenched despite the signing of the power-sharing agreement on September 15, as mentioned in this motion. Police continue to detain accused persons beyond the 48-hour statutory limit, show contempt for court rulings and frequently deny detainees access to legal representation or relatives. Several former detainees have reported to Human Rights Watch that police officers frequently beat or mistreat those in custody.

The Mugabe government’s disastrous policies have crippled a once thriving economy, leaving Zimbabweans enduring hyperinflation. Over 80 per cent of the population are unemployed and living below the poverty line, and Zimbabweans have the lowest life expectancy of any country in the world. Sadly, in Zimbabwe female life expectancy stands at 34 years, while for males it is 37 years. It is concerning that human rights have not been at the centre of the negotiation processes that have happened recently. The negotiations should be about providing justice and relief to people, not just about politics. The Zimbabwean people are now living on a knife edge and they cannot afford to wait for the political bickering to end.

My state colleague, the member for Albury, Greg Aplin, spent a considerable amount of time in the then Rhodesia and keeps in touch with people in this troubled country. He told me this evening that everything we see on the television and the photos we see are all completely accurate. In fact, the situation is worse. It is an anomaly that this man, Mugabe, has run the country into the ground since 1980. No African leader has managed to hang on for so long. Why has he not been removed? He is surrounded by vested interests and those interests are obviously served by keeping him there. I congratulate the people of Zimbabwe for the courage they are showing in the face of this incredible adversity.

Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I commend and support the statements made by the speakers to this motion—in particular, by the mover of the motion, the member for Melbourne Ports. The motion rightly deplores the situation in Zimbabwe, condemns the corrupt and violent Mugabe regime, and calls for both assistance and strong diplomatic pressure from the international community, particularly Zimbabwe’s southern African neighbours, and from the Australian government. It is disturbing in this context that on 11 July 2008, when the United Nations Security Council voted on a draft resolution which would have imposed further sanctions on Zimbabwe, including an arms embargo, the resolution was vetoed by China and Russia.

In June, I joined a number of members in discussing a motion in this place on the subject of Zimbabwe. At that stage we contemplated the impending run-off election of 27 June, an electoral process that was a farce. Since that time we have seen the bright prospect of improvement in Zimbabwe, through the MDC commanding the majority of seats in the Zimbabwean parliament, through the appointment of Morgan Tsvangirai as Prime Minister and through discussions concerning power-sharing arrangements between the MDC and the ZANU-PF. However, for the time being an improvement is illusory. The real power—and the blatant misuse of that power—continues to rest with the Mugabe regime. Human Rights Watch reported last week that ‘Zanu-PF’s institutions of repression remain intact, and there has been no change in their abusive conduct and attitude’.

Overnight, the leaders of the Southern African Development Community were meeting in Johannesburg to try and end the deadlock over the power-sharing issue. They recommended that Mugabe and Tsvangirai share control of the important home affairs ministry. This proposal was rejected by Tsvangirai, who noted that his dispute with Mugabe is not only about the ministry of home affairs but about striking a fair balance of power in the unity government. In a recent New Yorker article Tsvangirai was quoted as saying:

In an ideal world, in such negotiations, you have an honest partner, not a dishonest one. Mugabe has been dishonest … What I am trying to get is a good deal with a bad man.

Indeed, one could hardly blame Tsvangirai for not wishing Mugabe to share power over Zimbabwe’s police and security forces, given the role of these forces in the state sponsored violence and intimidation during the election campaign.

As this year draws to a close, it is part of human nature to reflect on the kind of year it has been, to consider on different levels how the year might be characterised. It began with the opening of the 42nd Australian parliament and, among other things, a bipartisan commitment to begin each new parliament with a welcome to country ceremony. It also began with an apology to Australia’s Indigenous peoples by the national parliament and for me these powerful and significant gestures of recognition, healing and national maturity will always mark 2008 as a special year. I have no doubt that the year will also be remembered for the global financial crisis which has dominated our national and international focus in the second half of the year, and it will be remembered for the arrival of a new and transformational president in the United States of America.

But I will also think of 2008 as a year in which African conflict in countries like Zimbabwe, Sudan and the Congo continued, intensified and came to seem intractable. The death toll and the abject misery in those countries are sometimes hard to contemplate. But let us confront some sharp facts in the context of this motion about Zimbabwe. I take the following numbers from the 27 October article in the New Yorker: inflation in Zimbabwe is officially at 11 million per cent, although some analysts put it as high as 230 million per cent; unemployment is at 80 per cent; approximately two million Zimbabweans rely on international aid agencies for food in the face of chronic malnutrition and spreading starvation; and 20 per cent of the population is estimated to be infected with HIV-AIDS. Tragically, as the member for Melbourne Ports mentioned in this place in June, the life expectancy for people in Zimbabwe has nearly halved in the last decade.

Of course, to the numbers we add the stories—and they are terrible stories. I note that Human Rights Watch has reported on the violent suppression of a peaceful demonstration by the Women’s Coalition of Zimbabwe and the Zimbabwe National Students Union on 27 October. Demonstrators were beaten and tear-gassed. Authorities arrested 42 women, and at least 35 demonstrators were treated for injuries. The demonstration was calling on the country’s leaders to address the severe food shortages in the country. The National Coordinator of the Women’s Coalition of Zimbabwe was quoted as saying, ‘We are dying of hunger—people have no food.’ This is in a country that was once the breadbasket of Africa. There appears to be no limit to the degree of suffering the Mugabe regime will inflict on the people of Zimbabwe in order to retain its power and privilege. I join my parliamentary colleagues in supporting this motion and in calling for renewed international focus and action in Africa in the strongest terms. (Time expired)

Judi Moylan (Pearce, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have now spoken on motions and brought motions in relation to Zimbabwe several times over the last few years. I have to say that it saddens me to think that we are again debating this issue in this chamber, but I thank the member for Melbourne Ports for once again raising the matter. When I spoke on this in 2005—and I had spoken on it three years earlier than that—I said that it was terrible to think that in 2005 there were still what I call tin-pot dictators running around countries like Zimbabwe, treating their citizens appallingly. What has also been appalling is the way in which the leaders of the African continent have fed the ego of this particular tin-pot dictator, Mr Mugabe. They have done that while millions of innocent men, women and children have suffered the most appalling deprivation, needlessly, purely for the sake of ego for someone who has stayed too long. It should be a matter of great shame for that continent that they have continued to support this individual in the way that they have.

By contrast, we have seen Mr Tsvangirai, the man who was elected as president but who has been unable to act fully and take control of that country in the way that he was elected to do, demonstrate amazing courage to the world. I do not know of too many people who would have the courage to continue to fight for the people of Zimbabwe in the way that he has. It is incredibly moving when you think that every day his life has been threatened and that now, having been properly elected in democratic, or so-called democratic, difficult elections, he is unable to start ruling that country in a way that diminishes the terrible suffering that these people have had to face in these last few years.

It is a human disaster of monumental proportions. The unwillingness to act is very hard to fathom in a country that now has the world’s lowest life expectancy, the highest inflation and in excess, as the member for Fremantle said, of perhaps 1½ million orphaned children with AIDS, with AIDS now killing an estimated 3,500 people a week in Zimbabwe. How can the leaders of the African continent continue to support a leader who has presided over such appalling human suffering? It is a human rights tragedy of monumental proportions, and it is a disgrace that so far we in the democratic countries of the world have not been able to take effective action to prevent the ongoing tragedy which unfolds before our very eyes. When I spoke in 2007, I made a comment that over the past 10 years Mugabe, in seeking power for power’s sake, has brought his people to their knees.

I then read out the statistics on inflation, which of course are much worse now than they were then, and the fact that gross domestic product at that time had dropped to $5 billion, almost half of what it was seven years earlier. Ignoring the rule of law and legitimate democratic processes, the despot Mugabe has driven white farmers from their land and is now ruling through brutality and fear. These misbegotten policies have seriously eroded food production and employment opportunities—and this in a country that was the food bowl of Africa. It is unbelievable, as I said, at this time that we can continue to countenance the kinds of things that are happening in Zimbabwe today.