Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 12 Hansard (12 November) . . Page.. 3410 ..

MRS DUNNE (continuing):

Today I want to ask what this great tragedy means for our future. Will Australia be the same after the Bali bombings? As is often the case, the answer is yes and no. I agree with the Prime Minister when he said at Kuta that young Australians will still travel and will still seek adventure. Young Australians will still undertake that rite of passage journey that is part of the Australian life. As parents, though, we will just worry a bit more as we wave our children off on the plane.

But young people whose idea of a successful holiday is something that involves whitewater rafting, bungee jumping and the running of the bulls, will not be put off by the slight increased risk of terrorist attack. The indomitable Australian spirit will survive. And we saw that same spirit in the aftermath of Bali, in everything from the mobilisation of medical emergency teams to the thousands of people who did what they could by donating a pint of their blood, or the simple act of national solidarity by wearing a sprig of wattle.

Was it our indomitable spirit that also made us a target? At this time it is not entirely clear whether the attacks were targeted at Australia or at the West in general. It is perhaps unfortunate that after such a terrible event the immediate reaction is to come up with a one-line reason for why it happened. Many of those one-liners have attributed these actions to Australia's association with the US, and there have been calls for us to disassociate ourselves from US policy in relation to Iraq, to terrorism in general-to just generally dissociate ourselves from the United States.

I am strongly of the view that Australia's interests, as well as our moral duty, lie in continuing a strong, though not unquestioning, alliance with the US. While we may have many important differences, we have a common heritage, and in general their values-freedom, democracy, justice and the rule of law-are our values.

It therefore follows that the enemies of those values will not only be the enemies of the United States but the enemies of all those who espouse those values. There is little in reality that we can do to avoid this: to avoid being a target of terrorism would involve abandoning not only the US but others such as the East Timorese. Even if we were to abandon our obligations as a privileged member of the international community in defence of the disadvantaged in counties such as Zimbabwe and Cambodia and in refugee camps in Kurdistan and Pakistan, it would be by no means certain that we would be free of the threat of terrorism.

Even if we were to cease to promote our values in the international community and retire into isolationism, our mere practising of those values at home, our domestic approach to civil and human rights which brands us as a free Western society, would make us a threat to others and leave us open to attack from those who repudiate such values.

Beyond the question of whether isolationism would reduce our exposure in the short term, however, is a more alarming prospect. If we were to change our foreign and domestic policies in response to a terrorist attack in the direction in which we imagine the perpetrators would want us to move, then we would be saying to these and all other terrorists, "This is an effective way to change Australia's mind. You act and we'll react."

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .