Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I thank the minister for his statement on Afghanistan and wish to underscore the importance with which the Australian Greens view this matter. I begin by saying that we totally support the role that Australian defence forces are playing in Afghanistan under the direction of this and the last Australian government, while noting that parliament has never had a full debate on the matter or given a vote of approval for the ongoing deployment of forces from this country to Afghanistan. It is the belief of the Australian Greens—and it is consistent, according to the polls, with the majority of Australians—that our defence forces should be disengaged from Afghanistan in a way which would be prudent and which would, particularly, look after their safety. We too note the awesome toll of dead and wounded Australians. The details that Senator Faulkner has provided to the chamber point to the extraordinary risk and on sad occasions—quite devastating occasions for the individuals and families involved—the loss of life or the loss of physical or mental wherewithal that can come from being engaged in hostilities that our troops are exposed to and sometimes come to grief from.

Our reasons for wanting Australian troops out of this theatre of war in Afghanistan are consistent. We do not believe that Australia should be engaged in a war which was a result of the complete mismanagement of involvement in Afghanistan by the Bush administration. Under the Bush administration, the US went to Afghanistan in pursuit of al-Qaeda, then withdrew largely to go to Iraq and then re-engaged in Afghanistan, but after the Taliban had taken advantage of that hiatus to become much better established. That ought not to be a matter for Australian rectification.

But, beyond that, one only had to listen to the testimony of former Marine Captain Matthew Hoh, a highly respected US state department official who resigned from his post in Afghanistan, on ABC TV’s Lateline last night to understand that we are likely to be engaged in this civil war for many years to come, even if there are major new troop commitments from not just the US but other NATO and non-NATO allies. It is a civil war and, as this officer testified, we are simply occupying the land of Afghanis who will fight, through the Taliban or otherwise, to dispossess the occupiers and get back control of their land. It is effectively an ongoing and irremediable civil war that we have picked a side on. We have picked a side with a very corrupt regime, the Karzai regime—and I do not need to go back into that. This is very, very troubling. I have given all parties a copy of the transcript of that interview last night and I seek leave to have it incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

I also commend the courage and the clear-sighted and restrained manner in which Captain Matthew Hoh presented his assessment of the war for our analysis. I recommend that all senators look at that interview by Tony Jones on Lateline last night.

That said, I thank Senator Faulkner for this opportunity and for his commitment. I thank him for keeping this parliament up to date on these extremely important events in Afghanistan and on Australia’s involvement there. We take a different view to the major parties on this. We are very strong about that. We hope the government will listen very carefully to that, but in particular look at that testimony from Matthew Hoh, which in a way summarises the concerns that many Australians have about the ongoing involvement of the Australian defence forces, who we think should be disengaged from Afghanistan.