Page 1006 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 21 April 2021
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I would like to express directly to you my deepest sympathies and apologise for the delay, resulting in decisions taken at the time in bringing into service alternative protective vehicles that could have saved lives.
There is an article here as well which is just tragic, but you have got to multiply this by 37. The body of Corporal Sarah Bryant, the first female British soldier killed in Afghanistan, was buried in July this year at the Cumbria church where she had been married two years earlier. Bryant, an intelligence specialist, was killed, with three SAS reservists, when their Snatch Land Rover was blown apart by a Taliban bomb. She had spent less than five months at home with her husband during that time. Bryant was also one of the 34, at that time, British service personnel killed in lightly armoured Land Rovers, a vehicle marred in controversy for most of the time since its deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan. This is a quote:
The government’s failure to replace it with a vehicle providing more protection from any forces is cavalier at best, criminal at worst”.
(Second speaking period taken.) That is a real live example. I am aware of it because I served in Iraq. I travelled in the back of those vehicles. The battalion that I was co-located with had a number of incidents with IDSs where its soldiers were saved.
That is the sort of military capability built by Thales, here in Australia, that the Greens want to defund. And they want to defund defence. That is just one example. There are many other examples where that is the sort of military technology and capability that keeps soldiers alive. There are other examples which would keep sailors alive. There are other examples that would keep aviators alive.
It is impossible for defence members and veterans to have, on the one hand, a Greens veterans minister who says, “I care about you,” knowing all the time that it is the Greens policy to rip the guts out of defence, to take away those sorts of capabilities that it so desperately would need to go to conflict so that when we do next go to war—and war is inevitable, and history will teach us that—they would go there unprotected and they would die, just as those 37 British servicemen and women died in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It is just not consistent with the rhetoric from the Greens to then have a minister, as part of her party, say one thing about defence capability and then another thing in terms of supporting veterans, all of whom are current serving or former serving defence members. That was their second mistake.
The third mistake was the motion that was brought into this place last sitting weeks. It was clearly a bit of a wedge. Instead of taking the opportunity as we had to say let us have a royal commission and a national commissioner, which would then address the desires of all veterans, Ms Davidson and this government decided, “No, no, we will just pick one and not the other.” There is going to be a royal commission; and I welcome that. I think that is a good thing. But it seems to me that, from what I can read, against the wish of many, many, veterans, this minister still does not seem to support a national commissioner. If she does, why did she oppose the amendment that I put forward?
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