Mr
GARRETT
(
Kingsford
Smith) (
10.16
a.m.)—I rise to add my voice
to the growing number of people concerned about the prospects for any kind of
peaceful future for Iraq in the near term and to repeat a number of questions
that have been put to the government in relation to
thi
s
issue both by the
opposition here in the parliament and by the public and my constituents. It is
critical that we not be distracted by cheap politicking from the essential
features of the
Iraq engagement nor from the
fact that this war, which the
Howard government took
u
s
into, was against the
wishes of a majority of Australians. That this military engagement was based on
a lie remains a great shame; that it breached the norms and accepted principles
of international law is to our discredit. The decision of the
Howard government to
participate in that most serious of national undertakings without thinking
through the consequences that flow from committing troops to the far side of the
world without a strategy for engagement or exit i
s
increasingly exposed as
short-termism of the worst kind. It is to the great credit of Australia’s
service men and women that the engagement has been conducted with great courage
and skill, but it is a matter of phenomenal luck that, throughout the war in
Iraq, our personnel have been relatively unscathed—and we must fervently hope
this remains the case. Tragically, it has not been so in relation to US
personnel nor the region generally.
These men and
women are poorly served by the downpour of clichés that pass for debate from
government members on thi
s
issue. It seems that
members opposite are completely unaware of the international dynamic that led to
the war and the increasingly intractable problems that the war has spawned.
Central to the Iraq question—especially in light of the growing need for
additional resources to be applied to antiterrorism measures and the predicted
shortfall of $ 1 billion per year in the defence budget identified this week by
the Kokoda Foundation—is the question of why the government does not simply
throw away the neo-con phrasebook and square up to explaining what is happening
now in relation to Australia’s ongoing involvement in
Iraq.
The British
Joint Intelligence Committee made it plain in its assessment of February 2003
that the threat from al-Qaeda and associated groups would be heightened by
military action against
Iraq. This was confirmed by
AFP Commissioner
Mick
Keelty before the government
pulled him into line. The French Ambassador remarked only this morning that
France’s stance on the war was
right and
Australia’s wrong.
Notwithstanding the upcoming referendum on an
Iraq constitution, it is
difficult to conceive of anything other than increasing instability, terrorism
and violence in
Iraq. That is to be hugely
regretted. So it is time for the government to explain clearly what it now means
by ‘getting the job done’. Are there conditions and a timetable for troop
withdrawal? What will our response be if civil war breaks out across
Iraq? What in the interim
will be done in relation to the pressing, serious
shortfall
s
in security capacity in
our region? Those are the questions for the Prime Minister and the foreign
minister, and we demand an answer. (Time
expired)