Russell Trood (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek to make some remarks in relation to the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee’s report on peacekeeping. I am aware that other senators have made contributions in relation to the report but as the deputy chair of the committee I want to make my own set of observations.

The committee undertook this inquiry in the context of two very important trends in international affairs. The first was Australia’s own very extensive contribution to peacekeeping activities over a long period of time. Indeed, Australia’s experience here reaches back 60-odd years to 1947. Throughout that period of time we have had a regular involvement in peacekeeping activities in various places around the world over various periods of time and in a range of different kinds of guises using various elements of Australia’s capacity. We now still have 11 peacekeeping missions around the world and so we have made over a long period a very considerable contribution to peacekeeping as an activity of the international community.

The second broad trend which I think prompted the committee’s inquiry is the intensity of peacekeeping activities virtually since the end of the Cold War. The end of the Cold War provided an opportunity for the United Nations to reassert itself as an element or an instrument of peacekeeping, and we have seen over the last 10 to 15 years that the United Nations has sought to exercise that opportunity. It has declined somewhat in recent years but there has been an intensity in relation to the United Nations’ peacekeeping activities which has been one of the foundations of examining Australia’s own role in peacekeeping. These particular realities have been the foundations for this inquiry.

We received a relatively small number of submissions to the inquiry but they were, I think, of uniformly high quality. The consequence of that was that it has enabled the committee to make a very comprehensive set of findings with regard to peacekeeping activities. Indeed, we have examined the whole plethora in a report that was rather more extensive, perhaps, than I anticipated it might be when we began the inquiry. We have ended up with a report of some 375 pages with 38 recommendations, and because the report is so thoroughly comprehensive it is almost impossible to deal with it at any length in the time that is permitted to me. But I do commend it to the Senate because I think it covers a range of issues which are of vital importance to Australia’s security and certainly of critical interest to those who have an interest in the peacekeeping activity.

Perhaps I could just take the opportunity to mention a couple of issues that I think are of importance. The first of these is that the inquiry discovered that peacekeeping was an increasingly complicated activity. In the early years of peacekeeping it was often an activity that took place in the context of two states that had a conflict and had been separated for a period of time. A peacekeeping force was injected between them to lay the foundations for, perhaps, further peace negotiations and a settlement further on.

Today, 40, 50 or 60 years on from that, we are in an environment where they are not just military activities. In fact, they are increasingly anything but military activities. They often involve the fortunes of failed or failing states and they are not just matters of military interest; they frequently involve questions of economics, of social structure and of aid activity. That is certainly true of some of the peacekeeping activities in which Australia is engaged in—in the Solomons, for example.

So they are increasingly complicated activities for any state that seeks to involve itself in peacekeeping activities. This means that mounting a peacekeeping operation is an increasingly complicated exercise. It is complicated from the perspective of the state in organising the elements of the force which will contribute to peacekeeping, but it is also complicated from the perspective of undertaking the peacekeeping mission itself.

The inquiry looked very closely at the range of new dimensions to peacekeeping. One of its encouraging conclusions, I think, was that Australia had adapted very effectively to the challenges that it now confronts as it becomes engaged in peacekeeping activities. The coordination of Australian agencies and the bureaucracy is very effective, the resources that are deployed to peacekeeping missions are substantial and the institutions that are involved in peacekeeping have adapted to the challenges. An example is the Australian Federal Police, where the International Deployment Group has become a very important element of the way in which Australia can respond to the challenges of peacekeeping. And, indeed, in AusAID, a new division, the Fragile States Division, reflects something of that change.

The second broad area I wanted to touch on relates to the particular challenge that peacekeeping poses for military establishments. In the early years this was a pretty straightforward situation. Peacekeeping activities required some kind of military intervention and states that were prepared to contribute used their military forces, which were generally structured around high-end missions in relation to the use of lethal force. They inserted those forces into those situations and they had virtually little alternative but to use that high-end lethal force capability. As peacekeeping activities have increased, military forces have increasingly looked at the need for, perhaps, doctrinal change or structural changes to force structures.

I think the general consensus of the inquiry is that, where countries have chosen to structure a force around peacekeeping particularly, it has been ineffective. Australia has resisted that choice and I think the committee was unanimously of the view that that was the correct decision for Australia. We support the decision that Australia continue to structure its defence forces around a very wide spectrum of missions, which includes high-end use of lethal force down to what might be called the low-end missions closer to which peacekeeping occurs.

The challenge for any military force, however, is how long it can engage in peacekeeping activities over a long period of time when it has a need for military forces for other deployments and activities. It seems to me that this is probably an activity that is going to require continuing investigation by military forces and, I think, by Australia’s military forces. We should resist any temptation we might have to restructure the Australian military establishment or the force structure around peacekeeping activities, but I think we need to be alert to the possibility that, if peacekeeping activities are going to be an increasingly important part of the demands on the Australian military establishment, we might have to make more comprehensive arrangements for providing those force deployments.

The final thing I will mention is the need for increased understanding of the challenging nature of peacekeeping. Australia has a peacekeeping centre at Williamtown, but the new Asia Pacific Centre for Civil-Military Cooperation ought to be a foundation for expanding our deeper understanding of peacekeeping operations, for developing doctrine, for research, for training and for engaging with other countries that have similarly engaged in peacekeeping activities and, indeed, have peacekeeping centres around the world. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.