Topics: Terrorism, Australia’s national security and carbon emissions.

E&OE…

Kieran Gilbert

With me on the program now, the Parliamentary Secretary for Education, Senator Scott Ryan, and the Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Matt Thistlethwaite. Gentlemen, good morning to you. Senator Ryan, first to you. Looks like that national security focus has not hurt the Government’s standings in the polls at least.

 

Scott Ryan

Well look, I’ll let other people commentate on that today. The truth is that over the last month we’ve seen the Prime Minister, on a daily basis, talk to Australians in great detail about the extent of the risks that ISIL and returning fighters are posing to Australia. We saw that with the events last week, with the police raids, and we saw that culminate yesterday with a video message. I think the Prime Minister’s made clear that his first priority is to keep Australians safe, but he also wants us to be informed, to know that the Government is dedicating all the resources necessary to ensure the safety of Australians, but also for Australians to continue to go about the way of life which actually makes us a target for these people.

 

Gilbert

Matt Thistlethwaite, what do you think about the suggestion that there was theatre, a fair bit of theatre, around the raids of last week? That’s the criticism the Greens have levelled to the authorities in the wake of those dramatic raids of last week in Sydney and Brisbane.

 

Matt Thistlethwaite

I don’t accept that characterisation at all, Kieran. I don’t think there was any theatre about what occurred last week; it was Australia’s security, intelligence and police forces doing their job. It was purely an operational matter, there’s no political involvement at all in these decisions from our intelligence and our security forces to make these arrests in the way that they did. And I think it can give comfort to the Australian people that we know that our security and intelligence services are top-notch, that they’re doing a great job, and I think that over the last five years they’ve managed to uncover and stop four credible terrorist threats in Australia. So, they’re certainly doing a good job.

 

Gilbert

We’ve seen that fatwa released by the Islamic State. Does it really change anything? We knew they wanted to kill us. It might be poetic, it might be a bit flowery in its language but does it really change that much?

 

Thistlethwaite

It’s a concern and we need to be vigilant about things like that, but we shouldn’t be intimidated. Australians should go about their ordinary lives, their day-to-day lives and have some comfort in the fact that we’ve got top-notch security and intelligence organisations and personnel in Australia who are doing a first class job to protect Australia’s interests. So I think Australians shouldn’t be intimidated by threats such as this

 

Gilbert

Senator Ryan, what did you make of that yesterday? Australia got a mention, France, Canada, in fact they think he said all of Europe, it’s no real surprise. Al Qaeda has mentioned Australia in a similar context before.

 

Ryan

It was a reminder of the threat that we face. For 200 years, from the days of the potato famine to fleeing World War II, the Jewish refugees after the Holocaust and the Vietnamese refugees after communist aggression in South-East Asia, this country has provided a haven for people seeking freedom and opportunity. And that video yesterday was a reminder of the reason they hate us because we do exactly that, we provide their very basis for existing. This country proves that people can come from anywhere in the world and have incredible opportunities, and Australia is the most successful country at that. That video yesterday highlighted how indiscriminate their murderous message was, it didn’t discriminate between Jew, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Baha’i, and that’s why this group poses such a threat.

 

Gilbert

And said European, there are many European countries who haven’t deployed military. I guess that debunks the argument that our military deployment has made us a bigger target. If he’s saying ‘kill all Europeans’, not all Europeans who have made military deployments

 

Ryan

We’ve had dozens of Australians killed in Bali before, and the action in Iraq over a decade ago, I think everyone can accept despite a few fringe comments that this group hates us because of what this country has proven to the world, which is that people can come from anywhere and all we ask is that they actually sign up to our values of tolerance, and they’ll have all the opportunity this country offers.

 

Gilbert

The former British prime minister Tony Blair, says the west should be ready to send ground troops back into Iraq to combat Islamic State militants. Speaking from outside the UN headquarters in New York, Mr Blair told Sky News that “the extremist group has been weakened by western troops in Iraq but has been able to regroup in northern Syria”. He also warned “that IS is a threat that extends far beyond the Middle East”.

(Video of Tony Blair)

 

Gilbert

Tony Blair, the former Labour prime minister of the UK says that airstrikes, Matt Thistlethwaite, won’t be enough. That, in his words, they can be ‘hemmed in’ and to a degree ‘contained’ by air power, but they can’t be defeated. He’s saying that special forces operations, ground forces, are going to be necessary from the west.

 

Thistlethwaite

What’s important, Kieran, is that Australia is acting in our country’s national interest. So the Government’s working in our national interest, but also that we’re acting as part of a coalition force and that we’re acting in concert with what’s been going on in the United Nations with the responsibility to protect, and that’s the basis that Labor has offered bipartisan support to do this operation. It’s a humanitarian exercise that the world has committed to and that’s the position that the United States has taken, and that’s the position that Australia has taken.

 

Gilbert

Senator Ryan, what are your thoughts on this? The prospect, though, of boots on the ground which Tony Blair says is necessary to defeat this group.

 

Ryan

Well he also went on to say it shouldn’t be ruled out. But I think, as Matt outlined, that this is a humanitarian mission at the moment and the ethnic cleansing, the barbaric violence that we’ve seen over the last few months, before any threat was issued to Australia and also before Australia was even commenting and joining this coalition. The truth is that we can’t necessarily solve all the problems, but we can protect and we can make a terrible situation a little bit better, so that international coalition has been assembled on that basis. I think it’s also important to note that Tony Blair did outline there what the Prime Minister has been outlining for quite a period of time now, which is that there is a domestic threat to Australia. There is a domestic threat from people returning from these battles and coming back to our country and posing a threat.

 

Gilbert

Now Tony Blair has written on his website a comment piece in which he says that “this Islamism, a politicisation of religion to an intense and all-encompassing degree, is not confined to a fringe”. He says that “it’s an ideology that was taught and preached every day to millions in some mosques, certain madrassas and in formal and  informal education settings the world over”. He’s saying that this Islamism is not just the fringe, that it’s the spectrum and world leaders need to start taking this on. What do you think about that?

 

Ryan

I think he’s pointing out that there is an ideological component to it, and even if you look in our region, where the history is of peaceful coexistence of people of various religions and faiths and backgrounds, what we have had, and the Indonesian experience of this post-Bali outlined this, was that certain parts of the world or certain places had exported a particular school that did preach fundamentalism. The truth is that fundamentalism in any religious nature is always a problem, it always has been, and we do need to combat fundamentalism.

 

Gilbert

What do you think about this point made by Tony Blair, that Islamism, the politicisation of the religion, is broader than just the fringe – that it’s a bigger problem?

 

Thistlethwaite

Well in Australia certainly, Kieran, the Muslims that I know in my community are peaceful people. They’re certainly committed to their faith, but they don’t go around preaching fundamentalism. Australians who observe Australian laws, but practice their religion in a manner of peace and mutual respect and I think that we need to be ensuring that we’re promoting harmony within Australia and that the Government is not seeking to divide people when it comes to issues such as this.

 

Gilbert

Ok, a quick break. Back in just a moment with Matt Thistlethwaite and Senator Scott Ryan.

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Gilbert

This is AM Agenda, thanks for your company. With me the Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Matt Thistlethwaite, and the Parliamentary Secretary for Education, Senator Scott Ryan. We’ve got this UN climate summit underway. Ban Ki Moon has convened it. Matt Thistlethwaite, the Prime Minister is not there, Julie Bishop is. I guess given the current demands facing the Government, that’s reasonable isn’t it? Given the national security focus?

 

Thistlethwaite

Well, given that Tony Abbot’s going to be there tomorrow, I think that it’s not too much for him to maybe arrive a day early. It’s a very important international summit, and you’ve got the likes of Tony de Brum, who’s the Foreign Minister of the Marshall Islands, who yesterday described Australia’s recent actions on climate change as ‘a betrayal’. And I think in some respects he’s right. It’s a betrayal of our Pacific neighbours for whom climate change is a present danger. We’re seeing communities displaced from northern atolls of the Marshall Islands. It’s a drastic issue for them. Australia’s the only nation in the world that has moved backwards on climate change by removing a price on carbon, and what have we seen? In the first month that it was removed, carbon emissions in Australia have actually gone up. For the first time since 2005 our carbon emissions from coal-fired power have increased: moving backwards on climate change. So we’re betraying our neighbours in the Pacific, but we’re also betraying the next generation of Australians because they’re the ones who are going to have to take further actions into the future to arrest the decline and it’ll cost more.

 

Gilbert

Now the Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said that the next global agreement on dealing with carbon emissions needs to focus on the issue of economic growth. The US Secretary of State John Kerry said it’s a great economic risk, this issue of carbon emissions. Here’s a little of what he had to say at the UN.

(Video of John Kerry)

 

Gilbert

Now, Senator Ryan, a very different message there from John Kerry as opposed to Julie Bishop. We might agree on security, on Iraq, but no so much on climate change.

 

Ryan

Well, in Australia there’s bipartisan agreement on the five percent target which Foreign Minister Bishop has restated. What the Foreign Minister also outlined is sort of the false divide between developing and developed economies that was part of Kyoto. That said that certain economies can continue to grow emissions while others put on caps and reductions. That’s not the feasible basis for continuing a global agreement when you look at the rapid growth of emissions coming out of China, South East Asia and places like Indonesia. As those places industrialise they rightly seek access to cheap energy and basics like hot water for their people.

 

Gilbert

So that’s the point, isn’t it? That they’re major developing, emerging economies, we’re not, we are a developed economy.

 

Ryan

But let’s also take this into account: the sheer size of Australia’s contribution is one and a half percent or less, so the Australian contribution to this is very limited given the dramatic and rapid increases in places like China and Indonesia. Matt points out here that Australia’s emissions went up, what he doesn’t point out is that our power prices went down.  What Labor’s on about here is trying to walk both sides of the street, yet the truth is Labor forced power prices up…

 

Gilbert

Are you worried that the Government is falling away from the mainstream internationally here? If you look at this UN summit there are a lot of world leaders there.

 

Ryan

Well, no. Let’s be honest, and Matt talked there about the Foreign Minister from the Marshall Islands, I don’t think given the events in Australia of the last 10 days there could be any legitimate criticism of the Prime Minister being here and actually outlining to Parliament, like he did yesterday, the national security challenges. And I can imagine certain people being upset if the Prime Minister wasn’t here to do that to the House of Representatives as Labor asked all last week.

 

Gilbert

All right, gentlemen, we’re out of time. Senator Ryan, good to see you, and Matt Thistlethwaite, always a pleasure.

 

(Ends)