Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House calls on the Government to set a date for the safe return of Australian troops from Afghanistan.

There is no greater responsibility for any country's politicians than to make decisions regarding war and peace. War is the most destructive and violent power of government. It creates widows and orphans. It maims and destroys body and soul. It crushes societies and economies. This means that we should only engage in war when it is absolutely necessary and when it can be justified in the cause of peace. For a long time, the decision to wage war was seen as the prerogative of the executive. This monopoly on the decision to wage war was a hangover from the feudal era. War was a decision of kings. The democratic revolutions retained this concept of sovereignty and invested the war-making power in the executive. But the decision to keep this kingly concept of war was always contested.

The Australian Greens believe that the decision to go to war should be in the hands of the parliament and we will continue to press for this democratic reform. The United States ensures that congress needs to back a president's decision to go to war. Many other countries do something similar, including Germany, Spain, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Slovakia, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey. And we should join them.

But, regardless of who sends our men and women to war, the onus is on us to look for every opportunity to return to peace. It is the responsibility of the Prime Minister and the government to make clear when a war will end. Now is that time for our Prime Minister. Now is the time for her to make a clear and unequivocal statement of when our troops will leave Afghanistan. Anything else leaves the Australian people and our troops in limbo. The onus is on the proponents of war to show why we should continue to risk the lives of Australian men and women for no purpose.

The original purpose of the war was to respond to the 911 attacks and to remove al-Qaeda. That has long been accomplished. And Osama bin Laden is now dead. The Karzai government in Afghanistan is in negotiations with the Taliban with the aim of creating a national government involving all sides of this conflict. In this context, what is the great purpose for which we fight? Even if the proponents of war are correct and the withdrawal of foreign forces leads to a return of the Taliban, what is the justification for keeping our troops there for two more years for the same result? How do we justify the death of our troops by holding on until the Americans decide to leave?

The new Minister for Foreign Affairs, Senator Carr, says we should remain in Afghanistan to protect women. Yet just this month the Afghan President Hamid Karzai endorsed an edict from the country's top religious council that confirms that women are inferior to men, sanctions the beating of women by their husbands in certain Sharia compliant circumstances and argues for greater segregation. Last month, the government that we are in there defending also demanded that women newsreaders wear headscarves. In 2010, the Karzai government in Afghanistan also passed a law which applies to the country's minority Shiite population and, in particular, to its women. This law allows police to enforce language that sets out a wife's sexual duties and restricts a woman's right to leave her own home. According to US reports, child custody rights still go to fathers and grandfathers, women have to ask before they get married for permission to work and a husband is still able to deny his wife food and shelter if she does not meet his sexual needs. This is the government that we are told that our soldiers should continue to kill and die for.

It is now clear that the war in Afghanistan cannot be won, however you measure victory. It is now clear that the reasons successive governments have given to be in Afghanistan no longer stand up to scrutiny. It is also clear that the main reason we are there is not to defend democracy or human rights but simply because the United States asked us to go and wants us to remain. And it is now clear that, although our alliance with the United States is important, a simple request is not a good enough reason for our troops to fight and die in an unwinnable and unjustifiable war.

This is a decision we must make for ourselves as a country. It is a decision that other countries have made for themselves. It is time to bring the troops home. It is time to bring the troops home safely and for Australia to shoulder the burden of Afghanistan's problems in a new way. And it is time to bring the troops home so that they can be honoured for their service. We should no longer ask them to carry out this unjustified task.

For the sake of clarity, it is important to note that the Greens do not oppose the deployment in Afghanistan based on any absolute opposition to the use of military force or from any lack of commitment to our troops. We led the call for military intervention in Timor Leste and are proud of the role our men and women played in the struggle for freedom and independence in that country. But already 32 young Australians soldiers have lost their lives and at least 218 have been wounded in action in Afghanistan. That is all the more reason why we should be having this debate.

No-one knows exactly how many people have died and been injured in the war in Afghanistan because, in those infamous words of the US military, 'We don't do body counts.' But we do know that it is in the tens of thousands. The appalling massacre this month was not an aberration. Nearly every other week there is another story of a massacre or accidental killing of civilians—more collateral damage in a war in which, like Vietnam, our troops find it harder to tell the difference between insurgents and non-insurgents.

This war has now been going on for over ten years, almost longer than World War I and World War II combined. We must remember that in the eyes of many of the people now fighting the coalition forces in Afghanistan this is a continuation of their fight to remove foreign forces from the country—a fight begun with the Soviet invasion in 1979. The Prime Minister said that this war may be the work of a generation. If coalition troops are there for another decade, a whole generation of boys and girls will have grown up knowing us only as an occupying force and as the enemy, and we must expect all the consequences that flow from that. On this, I think we should listen to Malalai Joya. In 2005, she was the youngest woman elected to the Afghani parliament. She condemned the warlords of whom the assembly was overwhelmingly comprised. Now, she says:

We are in between two evil: the warlords and Taliban on one side, and the occupation on the other. The first step is to fight against occupation—those who can liberate themselves will be free, even if it costs our lives.

Respected defence analysts have said that the process of training the army and police in Afghanistan has been far less successful than the government has made out and may never be achievable. The desertion of personnel, infiltration by Taliban supporters and the quality of the troops and police all mean that very few are able to operate without coalition forces in support. According to some recent reports, the attrition rate far exceeds the number of new recruits. None of these problems have been acknowledged by the government, which continues to make the confident declaration that it is the 'Afghan government's determination that the Afghan National Security Forces should lead and conduct military operations in all provinces by the end of 2014'. It is important to note the careful language that is being used here suggesting that even by 2014 there may be no self-sufficient Afghan military or police, suggesting that we may be there for much longer. The former leader of the coalition forces in Afghanistan and current director of the CIA, General David Petraeus, summed up his thinking on the length of deployment in this way:

You have to recognize also that I don't think you win this war. I think you keep fighting … You have to stay after it. This is the kind of fight we're in for the rest of our lives and probably our kids' lives.

While we talk here of decades and generations, President Obama is reported to have responded to Pentagon requests for more troops by saying:

I'm not doing ten years. I'm not doing long-term nation-building. I am not spending a trillion dollars.

If the US is increasingly asking how much it will cost in lives and money to be successful, and indicating that it will not make that kind of commitment, why are we not doing the same? And what would count as success, anyway? Is it the maintenance of the Karzai government, described by David Petraeus as a criminal syndicate? As the Vice-President of the United States, Joe Biden, asked: 'If the government's a criminal syndicate a year from now, how will the troops make a difference?'

According to Australian defence analyst Hugh White, the real reason the Australian government has troops in Afghanistan is that the United States has asked us. That is why the Greens believe that we need a relationship with the United States that is strong but is based on autonomy and independence. The experience of the British in standing up to American pressure to take part in the Vietnam War was that it did not undermine the British-American relationship. Australia could still retain the support of the United States even if we pursued a more independent foreign policy. While others in the world are discussing exit strategies, Australia is continuing to write blank cheques. The Greens know what 64 per cent of the Australian public know: it is time to set a date to bring our troops home.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Is the motion seconded?

Andrew Wilkie (Denison, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Science, Technology and Personnel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to respond to the motion standing in the name of the member for Melbourne, representing the Greens party. I remind the parliament that, as we debate the motion, 1,550 of our men and women are engaged in combat operations in Afghanistan, let alone the further 800 in the wider Middle East area of operations. Right now it is 2.00 pm in Afghanistan. Special operations troops are moving through Oruzgan and neighbouring provinces. At least 10 mentoring taskforce patrols are out working with the Afghan National Army. Australian Federal Police officers are working with the Afghan National Police. Members of the provincial reconstruction team are working with a range of community groups, looking at community issues and programs. There are 150 officers and senior NCOs working with a range of command elements. Trainers with the Australian artillery corps are working with the artillery school training Afghan gunners. Our men and women are working to achieve a better outcome in Afghanistan. They are working to achieve a land where stability becomes the norm, not the abnormal, and a country that can no longer be used by insurgent and terrorist elements as safe ground for harbouring, recruiting, financing and training criminal and terrorist elements.

In a spirit of bipartisanship, knowing that I speak for a majority of the parliament, I rise to say that our men and women should return safely to our land when the job is done—not before, not based on an arbitrary timeline, not on a troops-home-before-Christmas schedule and certainly not on the whim of the Greens party, which stands here and speaks of an unwinnable and unjustifiable war. I have said before to the Leader of the Greens: 'You stand and condemn all that we do in Afghanistan. If you have the courage of your convictions, go to Afghanistan, visit the troops, walk the ground and have a shura with the locals. Then you can speak with some knowledge.' Senator Brown has declined the invitation to go.

I say to the member for Melbourne: forgive me if I handle your motion with some disdain, when you walk into this House and speak on behalf of a party that, even though invited, refuses to go to the battlefield to get a first-hand view of what is actually happening in the country, meet our fighting men and women, shake their hands and look them in the eye. You talk in here about bringing our soldiers home with honour. You know nothing of honour, sir, because you refuse to go there, speak to them and demonstrate through your actions that you honour their service. So forgive me if I look at your motion as one more in a line of frivolous motions regarding our defence forces and national security that the Greens see fit to introduce into parliament. You have given no thought to the repercussions of your actions or your words. I will stand here and join with the government in a bipartisan way to support our men and women and say to them: what you are doing is valuable, this is not an unwinnable and unjustifiable war. You shed your blood, your sweat and your tears for something that matters.

Before discussing the wider elements of the merits of the motion, let us first couch this debate in the history of the Greens' defence and national security policy, because it is important to understand the motivation of the member for Melbourne. He comes into the House to talk about combat operations, yet the Greens party has no explicit defence policy. It has no veterans policy, yet he speaks of bringing our troops home with honour. It has no national security policy; the Greens' line-in-the-sand approach will simply make matters worse. This parliament views that a considered metrics based, command-led withdrawal is the best recipe for success. Anything less is to consign the Afghan people to a future nightmare of insurgent violence, drug addiction through poppy harvesting and religious terrorism.

The Greens' published peace and security policy is at best naive and at worst frankly dangerous. The Greens call on Australia to end its cornerstone national security treaty, the ANZUS alliance, to end all foreign troop deployments and training in Australia, which are fundamental to our regional cooperation, and to close all foreign bases in Australia, despite the fact that we have none. Further, the Greens have called for an end to arms trade fairs and the cessation of exporting Australian manufactured defence materiel. In other words, the Greens want to shut down the bulk of Australia's defence industry, which is worth more than $2 billion a year and directly employs over 10,000 people, many in regional locations. This is the heart and soul of the policy of the Greens. This is what they want to do to Australia's defence industry.

I could go on and on unpacking the irrational, contradictory, confused and nonsensical Greens defence policy, but suffice to say that those with more than a passing interest in defence matters join as one to denounce any watering down of the executive powers of government as they pertain to national security. Those outside of the executive are literally dripping in an inability to understand the core issues without the available intelligence, knowledge and information at hand. Only the executive is capable of making considered, detailed and reasoned decisions about the application of force in the furthering of our national security and foreign affairs policy. If the Greens wish to be taken seriously on defence and national security, they should take seriously the need to formulate policies and not just thought bubbles, and they should think seriously about the repercussions of their thought bubbles within the wider context of Australia's national security and not the narrow interests of their political base.

In responding to this motion I do so with the full knowledge that it is not motivated by the welfare of our hardworking ADF personnel; it is not motivated by doing what is right by our ISAF and Afghan partners or by the 48 nations of the world that have joined together under a United Nations mandate to fight the insipid curse of separatism, terrorist elements, insurgency and criminal forces that all fuse together within wider Afghanistan to seek to do us harm. If the Greens came from a position of even a minimum degree of enduring interest regarding defence matters then perhaps I could take this seriously. If the Leader of the Greens had bothered like every other major leader of a party to visit our hardworking men and women and seek an understanding of what they are doing within the wider Middle East area of operations perhaps we could take this seriously. But carping from the sidelines, speaking of bringing men and women home with honour and drawing time lines arbitrarily in the sand does not fill us with that degree of confidence. If the Greens were serious about national security policy they would not have a position to end the ANZUS alliance, the bedrock of our security in the region.

There is bipartisan support for our ongoing engagement in Afghanistan. There is bipartisan support for a metrics based, command-led withdrawal from Afghanistan that is not based on arbitrary time lines but on thoughtful, considered judgments on the ground, on the degree of training and the standards we have achieved with the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police and on the degree of support the provincial reconstruction teams have provided in the region.

There was a time when we had 30 operating bases and patrol bases. We now man fewer than eight, with mobile mentoring teams being the order of the day. We have already commenced handing over significant areas, village by village, roadside by roadside, valley by valley, to the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police. The drawdown across the area is already occurring within a staged, set, metrics based environment that does not need people on the sidelines with no experience, no interest and no desire to see what is going on to get involved.

We take our responsibilities seriously, as do the other 47 nations of the world in partnership under a UN mandate in Afghanistan. We do not think casually about our involvement. We feel deeply for the wounded in action and those tragically killed in action and their families and loved ones left behind. War should never be entered into lightly nor withdrawn from on a whim. There is an executive with this House for a reason. It is called the government. It is designed to make sound, reasoned and sensible decisions, and it is the body who is best placed to make decisions on withdrawing forces. (Time expired)

Andrew Wilkie (Denison, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to again voice my opposition, in the strongest possible terms, to Australia's continuing involvement in the war in Afghanistan. I do not dispute the claim al-Qaeda was responsible for the attacks on America on 11 September 2001. Nor do I dispute the claim that al-Qaeda was based principally in Afghanistan, so there was a legitimate need to invade that country if the terrorist organisation was to be brought to heel. In fact, I was an analyst in the Office of National Assessments at about that time and it was abundantly clear to me that al-Qaeda was anything but a band of terrorists hiding in a cave somewhere in Afghanistan. The reality instead was that al-Qaeda was so large as to deploy formed bodies of troops and was an intrinsic physical and financial part of the Taliban regime, controlling virtually all of the country by late 2001.

Hence I do believe we should have joined the international community in the invasion of that country, just as the international community, including Australia, should have moved quickly to rebuild the country in 2002. But of course the international community, including Australia, did not seize the brief opportunity to maintain the fragile peace while it poured in the billions of dollars of promised aid, preferring instead to cut and run and in the process create the conditions for the civil war we have battled ever since. Yes, it is a civil war. All the nonsense we continue to hear from the government and from the opposition about needing to stay in Afghanistan to rid the world of global terrorism is just that—nonsense. The fact is that Islamic extremism no longer relies on a single group and Afghanistan is no longer terrorism central. What we have instead is a transnational collection of violent individuals and groups, some acting alone and some connected, who collectively comprise the global Islamic extremist threat. Against this backdrop al-Qaeda is now irrelevant, its earlier roles of direct action as well as controlling and inspiring others now virtually redundant. In other words, there is simply no reason whatsoever for Australian troops to remain in Afghanistan any longer to keep us safe from terrorists. Nor is there any reason to remain in Afghanistan in solidarity with the United States, because the US is now set to get out sooner than later and, in any case, the bilateral relationship is more than strong enough to withstand us showing a bit of independence sometimes. If there were a reason to stay on in Afghanistan, surely it would be to make it a better place. But, regrettably, that is a pipedream. The dreadful reality is that Afghanistan will remain strife torn until foreign troops have left and the country has been allowed to find its natural political level. It was ever thus.

In offering my thoughts tonight I make no criticism of the Australian Defence Force. They are doing their job and doing it magnificently. In particular, my former wife, Brigadier Simone Wilkie, is said to be excelling. But regardless of whether Australian forces fight on for two months, two years or 10, Afghanistan will revert to chaos when international forces withdraw. This is set to be a chilling replay of the way the formidable successes of the Australian task force in Phuoc Tuy province were eventually swamped by the broader military defeat in Vietnam. If this is to be the case, to paraphrase US Senator John Kerry, himself a war veteran: how do you ask a soldier to be the last one to die in Afghanistan and how do you ask a soldier to be the last one to die for the mistake of staying on unnecessarily? God help the Australian politicians who have it within their power to end this war but who choose not to, for in their hands is the fate of our sons and daughters, and it is in their hearts they will need to live with John Kerry's questions.

In closing, Mr Deputy Speaker, I would like to put on the record the member for Moore's concern about the war in Afghanistan. He had hoped to express them himself tonight but is unable to.

Luke Simpkins (Cowan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I stand here with, I am sure, the vast majority of this House to affirm my support for our mission and our troops in Afghanistan. We know what Afghanistan was like leading up to 2001: the Taliban were running the show and they had invited al-Qaeda to Afghanistan. Whilst we heard from the member for Denison that Afghanistan should be allowed to go back to a natural political level, I am not so sure that, in the broad world interest, we want that country to be the home base for terrorism that it was and stands to become again if we drop the ball on this. Nor do we want Afghanistan to become again the socially and politically crippled and barbaric nation that it was before, when half a million people lived in Kabul and they had a terrible standard of living. Then, fewer than a million boys attended school in Afghanistan and now there are close to seven million Afghan children attending school, a third of whom are girls. That was not allowed under the old regime. We should be very careful about trying to step back from that sort of future. We should have confidence and not be like the member for Melbourne, who denigrates the Afghan people by saying that their troops and their police are just not up to the task.

It is not going to be easy and it has not been easy. As we know, there has been a cost involved with this. But we should be prepared to back those people. We should be prepared to back a developing democratic nation whose soldiers and police are prepared to lay down their lives, as so many do. Whilst there have been aberrations, a handful who have done the wrong thing by committing crimes and betraying their allies and their own people, the reality is that the vast majority—something like 330,000 by 2014—are the people we should stand behind and be prepared to back. They believe in their country and, whilst others in this place may not believe in that country, it is right for the majority of us in this chamber to stand by Afghanistan and believe in a better future for them. We have a duty to every girl in that country who was not able to attend school or have a job outside the home. It is the right thing to do. There are good things in this world, and they are always worth fighting for. We should not be backing away from this. Look at what happened in 2001. It is acknowledged, I suspect, by all people in this House that al-Qaeda based their terrorism in Afghanistan. That is what happened with September 11.

There is a better future and we must never allow the circumstances, the home base, that existed in Afghanistan to exist again. We must never allow a September 11 to exist. Also, we must always be on our guard against terrorism. The fact that it may take generations should not mean we should be scared of that fight. Sometimes we have got to get people out there and fight. That is the reality. We need to do the things that need to be done. Sometimes you just cannot turn the other cheek. Sometimes you have just got to pick up weapons and do what needs to be done. It is not just about the security of this country and the Western world; it is also about a better future for a lot of people in Afghanistan. It might happen in other places in the future. Again, we should be prepared to do what needs to be done in those cases.

There is always the hope that by 2014 we might see even better stability, social development and economic capacity in Afghanistan. That future will be delivered by democratic government supported by the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police, with as much support from friends and allies as is required. We should ensure that the home base for terrorism in Afghanistan is never again allowed to exist, we should be prepared to fight for as long as it is required and, certainly, beyond 2014 we should not be afraid to have our soldiers and our supporters in Afghanistan back a better future for the Afghan people.

Gai Brodtmann (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Recent events have once again brought into sharp focus our role in Afghanistan, and I do not think anyone here is under the illusion that our task there is simple. Restoring stability to the nation of Afghanistan is a complex and long process and, yes, the incidents we have heard so much about lately do make our mission more challenging. I know Afghan President Hamid Karzai has, in the face of these unforgivable circumstances, made a number of statements in the last few weeks. But the important thing to remember here is that there is a commitment in place that has not been broken. President Karzai has spoken to US President Barack Obama, and both have recommitted to the strategy made by international partners at the Lisbon summit, where it was agreed to hand over the lead on security to Afghan forces by the end of 2014. Australia, too, remains firmly committed to this strategy.

We are continuing our important work in Oruzgan where we are training and mentoring the 4th Brigade of the Afghan National Army. More importantly, we are confident we can transition to Afghan-led security responsibility in the Oruzgan province by 2014—perhaps even earlier. Following that milestone, Australia will continue to have a role in Afghanistan, possibly through institutional training, a special forces presence, military advisory roles, capacity building and development assistance.

This transition process is extremely important to the future of Afghanistan and of the Middle East more generally. For the transition to be successful, the Afghan national security forces need to assume their security responsibility on a sustainable and irreversible basis. This will require some level of continued support from international forces. To withdraw would put this strategy in jeopardy.

Transition is a long process, which the Gillard government is committed to. We want to ensure Afghanistan has as orderly a transition as possible. We need to remember why we are in Afghanistan. We are there at the request of the government of Afghanistan and we operate as part of the United Nations mandated International Security Assistance Force. There are 49 other members of the ISAF who are working alongside us and we are making good progress. We have helped build up the Afghan national security forces from around 192,000 in late 2009 to around 300,000 today. While much of the focus on Afghanistan is on the military, one must not forget the broader mission we are engaged in. We are doing very important work in Afghanistan. We are doing good work.

I know this because in May last year I visited Afghanistan as part of the Defence Subcommittee of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade and I saw firsthand the important work Australia is doing. I gained a greater understanding of what we are there to do—to not only combat terrorism and stabilise Afghanistan but also nurture and grow much more fundamental human rights within the country. I gained a greater understanding of the great work being done by our serving men and women. Australia has done a lot of good in Afghanistan. We have helped build infrastructure—we have constructed training centres, roads, airfields and mosques. Better roads mean food can get to market and local economies can prosper. Alternative crops have been introduced to help stop the country's addiction to the poppy trade and we are giving young people skills so they can help build up their nation.

We have seen the beginnings of an education revolution within Afghanistan, where girls are going to school and getting an education for the very first time. Six million children now go to school in Afghanistan and we are still counting—and one-third of them are girls. In 2001, the number of children in school was around one million and none of them were girls. We are also teaching soldiers to read.

Despite what others might say or suggest, there continues to be universal support in the international community for the transition process in Afghanistan to go ahead. Australia's involvement in Afghanistan is important and our transition strategy is well in hand. It is something our troops have been working extremely hard to achieve for some years, and something we must continue to support, for the people of Afghanistan and for those soldiers from all nations who have lost their lives in trying to restore security and stability.

Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last Friday I was lucky enough to join the honourable member for Eden-Monaro, the Parliamentary Secretary for Defence, Dr Mike Kelly, to farewell Force Support Unit Six, or FSU 6, as they departed for Afghanistan. I was lucky that I was not asked to speak after Dr Kelly, because he said it all. He spoke about family, about respect, about love, about duty and about responsibility. At the morning tea afterwards, I spoke with a soldier who was about to leave his wife and two beautiful girls, in grade 6 and grade 3, for his third tour. I asked the girls if they were proud of their dad or if they were going to miss him. They said, 'Of course we will miss him, but we are very, very proud for what he is doing.' I asked him what he was doing and he said that he was about to leave on his third tour. He said that he was really looking forward to re-establishing ties in Afghanistan. He was really looking forward to seeing what he had started on his first two tours and to see how far down the track things had gone. He was really excited about catching up with the Afghans he had met, about the relationships he had made professionally and socially and about what they had done to their country.

Our troops are doing a professional job. They are doing that because they are professionals. They are there not to perpetuate war but to ensure that this country, Afghanistan, is given every opportunity to provide for itself. War is no longer two lines of soldiers shooting at each other. The members for Melbourne and Denison would do well to remember this. A friend of mine who came back from Afghanistan said:

There will be a form of democracy in Afghanistan, but it probably won't look too much like Australia's. It will be their form of democracy. It will be what they are prepared to do and what they are prepared to fight for.

We cannot do everything, but what we can do is make sure that every opportunity is given them to provide the best for their own country. I agree with the member for Canberra: withdrawal is a long and difficult process but it must also be orderly and ordered. We cannot draw a line in the sand arbitrarily and say that we shall be out of there by then, because we do not know what is going to happen. It is a fluid situation in Afghanistan and it has to be treated as such.

The people of Australia must bear with this parliament and trust our soldiers and the services that they are delivering. FSU 6 are deploying to three sites: Tarin Kowt, the United Arab Emirates and Oruzgan province. I appreciate what they are doing and how they are going about their work and I think everyone in this place would do well to remember that these people are going over there. To draw a line arbitrarily just to get a bit of press at the wrong time of the day, because you were not part of the leadership debate—

Debate interrupted.