There has been little informed democratic debate in Australia about the causes of terrorism – in particular Israel’s occupation of Palestine. The War on Terror cannot succeed by dealing with the symptoms alone. How can Australia work to address the causes? (Brendan Doyle)

Marise Payne; Kevin Rudd; Kerry Nettle; Brendan Doyle; Aden Ridgeway 2

Aden Ridgeway: Well, I'll keep it pretty short, I think that the first thing that needs to be said is that nothing, whether it’s the War on Terrorism or a war against indigenous disadvantage, can be treated by looking at the symptoms alone. And I think that the thing we need to keep in mind here is that what’s being thrown out the window with the doctrine of pre-emptive strikes, is to compromise and put at risk the entire culture of human rights as we understand it. And I think if anything, it’s also compromised international law to such an extent that it is now permissible by governments like the United States to change the rules, and do anything that it wants to any country at any particular time without reference to bodies like the United Nations, and without reference to a body of law, international law and humanitarian law which talks about the conduct of nations towards each other.

So, I think if anything, the issue of trying to deal with future circumstances of this sort really does come back to sending a very loud, clear and consistent message to the Australian government that it ought to rethink and remove itself from this war, to get back into the arena of the United Nations, to use our influence, and there’s a history of our involvement in developing a world understanding and a world agreement about how we deal with conflict. And I think that that’s the only way that these things can be done, because if nothing else this new inconsistency in the way that we interpret law is allowing us, and other countries to condone what are terrorist acts against other nations. We change the laws and we change the definitions to suit our circumstances, but the end result is exactly the same. And are we encouraging that sort of behaviour in return? I think yes. So I think we have to get back to observing the rule of law. That’s what it was created for. Observing fun damental human rights, and then you ought to promote that across the globe. And most of all, none of these unilateral negotiations directly with the United States that they’ll lead the way. They’ve got to go to the table and be an equal just like everyone else, and Australia’s no different.

Marise Payne: Thanks, Aden. If I read the question correctly it is about whether there’s an adequate level of debate of the causes of terrorism in Australia, and what we might do about addressing those causes. I think it’s a reasonable observation to say that the level of debate about the causes of terrorism in Australia could be higher, but I don’t think it’s entirely accurate to say that there is very little of it. There is, within the parliamentary environment – if you include that as part of the debate process, and I think it is appropriate to do so – some significant debate on the Israeli and Palestine issue - in fact since the last election about 400 different speeches concerning Israel and Palestine in the House of Representatives alone. And that’s just at that level. There is of course various aspects of community debate and public discussion as well, of which this is a very important part of the process. Whether you think that advances our position is another matter altogether.

In terms of whether we can succeed in dealing with the War on Terror by dealing with the symptoms alone, I agree it is not possible to do that, and in most international fora, and when the opportunity is there, we make it quite clear that we understand it can't only be fought on the law and order and security issues. It's very important that we make sure that the ideas by which terrorists seek to justify their actions don't go unchallenged, but aggressively challenged. It's not, I think, true to say that terrorism is only driven by poverty and lack of opportunity - far from it, in fact, in terms of the work of absolute extremists and absolute fundamentalists. Their approach is more often than not to undermine what we would call common human aspirations, to disrupt social and economic advances in life, to distribute and sow fear and insecurity, and to impose their will through violence and intimidation. That's absolutely part of the process, and these two approaches need to go hand-in-hand: dealing with that sort of behaviour, and dealing with the issue that the question raises. Very specifically, in terms of engagement between Australia and countries in the region, for example, where you might think it's very appropriate for us to do this, we are taking some significant steps to increase understanding between our non-Muslim, broadly speaking, society and Muslim societies, whether it's the Australia-Indonesia Institute, and the interfaith dialogue they've established, whether it's our efforts to assist the Indonesian government in the Islamic school system there, whether it's the Council for Arab Australian Relations which was formed last year to promote economic political, cultural and social links with Arab countries - they are very important and specific part of this process. And our aid budget, of almost 1.9 billion dollars is also directed in many of those cases to assisst in development, poverty reduction, in areas where it is the most challenging issue facing people, to assist those countries across the board. And I that all of those are components of the answer to this question.

Kevin Rudd: Many years ago, when I was at University, I spent a year or two studying Chinese Buddhism, and the Buddhist Sutra had this nice story, which I'm sure others are familiar with here: it's like the sound of one hand clapping, and sometimes I think when we talk about terrorism, it sounds very much like the sound of one hand clapping - and that is, that there is this permanent, sustained debate about better intelligence, better policing, better security work, harder and tougher crackdowns, harder and harsher sentences, etc. Now, I'm no dove on these questions, all that's useful, all that's important, but it is the sound of one hand clapping.

The sound of the second hand clapping, the other hand clapping, is in fact what you do constructively, by way of policy, about the causes of terrorism, and what actually causes this phenomenon. And you'll never have a perfect answer to it, but you can get some of the way along the path. And it's the way in which I see it is that ... if we take our nearest neighbour, Indonesia, which is a useful example to take, because it's not just our nearest neighbour, but it's the largest Islamic country in the world ... Fact one: since the Asian financial crisis, the Indonesian public school system has collapsed, through the absence of fiscal resources on the part of the government in Jakarta to sustain it. What's happened as a result of that? Well, a large number of kids now, particularly in Java, but beyond Java, are going to school at, increasingly, militant, fundamentalist, pesantren and madrassas funded by Wahhabism out of Saudi Arabia: not a huge number, but an increasingly and measurable increased number. And this is because Mums and Dads don't have any other financial option, because the state school system has either broken down in parts of rural Java and rural Indonesia, and therefore, if you want your kid to learn anything, this is the education that's on offer. Therefore, it strikes me, given that this is a very large country next door to us, and a country with which we should have a close and constructive and cooperative relationship, that this is front and centre for dealing with the future recruiting grounds for Wahhabist Islam, which gives rise to Jemaah Islamiyah, and six sister organisations out in the field of terrorism.

Secondly, in Java, you currently have unemployment of about forty million - forty million - so, if you don't have employment, and this unemployment number has again gone through the roof since the Asian financial crisis, and the IMF's, I think, woeful response to the Asian financial crisis, you are not dealing, again, with a causative factor, which creates a subsequent breeding ground for terrorist activity. And the third and final point I'd make is a political one: there is a grave danger that unless we do see a just and lasting settlement in the Middle East between Israel and Palestine, we progressively will see the middleeasternisation of Islamic politics, in broader Islamic southeast Asia. Now, we therefore, apart from the intrinsic justice of what needs to be delivered within the Middle East itself, have a here a local set of interests at stake as well, which is to see Israel-Palestine resolved, so that it doesn't become a lightning rod for the further radicalisation of Wahhabist Islam, and groups around Wahhabist Islam in our nearest neighbour, the largest Muslim country in the world.

Kerry Nettle: We've often tried to have the debate, and its often been in Parliament, about the need to address the causes of terrorism. I think the problem is in being listened too, in terms of the predominant actions that the government is taking. The actions that exist within theWar on Terrorism in fact seek to fuel some of the reasons behind the actions of terrorism. And by that I mean, the actions on the War on Terrorism that accentuate the US's foreign policy objectives in the Middle East do more to fuel terrorism th an they do to address the root causes of terrorism, which is what we need to be doing. We need to be developing fair and just international relations with countries around the world, because we’re not going to get genuine human security from being involved in conflict or from being a closed society and choosing not to assist our neighbours. We need to be developing independent foreign, defence and trade policies - it means coming out clearly and opposing preemptive action being put forward by the United States, but also means coming out and condemning targeted assassinations, of whomever they may be, when they occur.

In relation to specifics: it means the withdrawal of Australian troops from Iraq, it means advocating for a peace process in Israel and Palestine, and not supporting ... – a genuine peace process – I don’t mean the sort of peace process that George Bush has just signed onto which ignores international law in relation to the settlements in the West Bank. We need to ensure that our aid program – and it is embarrassing in terms of the level of aid program that we contribute to internationally – we need to ensure it’s targeted at poverty elimination and not targeted at ensuring that Australian businesses or strategic interests can further themselves. We need to also be rejecting international trading agreements that disadvantage poor countries in our community by simply signing onto a bilateral agreement with the United States. We also need to support international institutions like the United Nations, like the International Criminal Court, where war criminals such as Saddam Hussein should have been taken. We need to do all these things without removing the civil rights of our citizens, because if we do, we damage the capacity of our democracy to move forward. We need to bring in measures such as airport security at regional airports, but we don’t need to bring in things like the ASIO legislation that take away the capacity of us to engage in free, open and democratic debate in our society.

Shelley Reys: Thank you, Kerry. I would like to ask if anyone on the panel would like to make a quick response to anything that's been said. OK, Brendan, are there any comments that you'd like to make in relation to the way in which your question was answered?

Brendan Doyle: Yes, thank you. I'd like to start by saying that, this afternoon I got some news that my 23-year-old son is in a hospital in London with pneumonia, and of course I'm still feeling pretty upset about it, but at the same time I know he'll be OK, because he's in a hospital in London and he's being treated with antibiotics. And I couldn't help thinking about - in relation to this question tonight - about if I was, let's say, a Palestinian father whose kids have just been bombed by an Apache helicopter provided by the United States for Israel to take out someone in Gaza or the West Bank. If that Palestinian father then went to an Israeli checkpoint with a gun, to start shooting at Israeli soldiers, that Palestinian father would be called a terrorist. And I think that, unfortunately, our government, along with the US government would call that Palestinian man a terrorist. So, I really think that in the whole debate about what terrorism is, it seems to me that we have to be pretty sure about what we're talking about.

I think the very word terrorism is itself as part of the arsenal of the propoganda war. When the US snipers are shooting women and children running down the streets of Falluja, that's not called terrorism, but if an Iraqi adult picks up a gun and shoots back at the American soldiers he's a terrorist. So I'm afraid I have a very cynical feeling about the way the word terrorism is bandied about.

In relation to the Israeli-Palestine situation, which to me is very clearly a case of international law has been broken in a very, very serious way, Israel has been illegally occupying Palestinian territory for many decades now, and I'd like to read just a little bit about this situation in Israel and Palestine, because I think it's extremely important in the whole debate on terrorism. The reason I think that is because they are so many young unemployed men in the Muslim world: they look to the Middle East, and they look at the situation in Israel and Palestine, and they know that it's wrong, and they know that they're going to be treated in the same way if they happen to get in the way of American power. I just want to read something that the late Dr Andrew McNaughtan, who was an active member of our group, North Shore Peace and Democracy, and who passed away late last year - he wrote something about the situation in Israel, which I think is very very pertinent: it's only short, too, and I'd like to read it out.

Andrew McNaughtan wrote: "Over the past decades the US has provided profound diplomatic, financial and military support to Israel. This support (which has rarely questioned or opposed Israeli policy) has been crucial to Israel whilst it has pursued a policy of occupying significant portions of what remained of Palestinian land - particularly in the West Bank. These continuing encroachments (which could only have occurred with US backing) have now made it very difficult to achieve a resolution of the Israel- Palestine conflict - because any true resolution will almost certainly require the creation of a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel." - And that doesn't mean creating Bantustans to park Palestinian people inside walls, it doesn't mean creating another apartheid state, that's not what we are talking about. "Creating a viable Palestinian state will require the removal of encroaching Israeli settlements - something Israeli is very reluctant to do. Thus US policy (which has always favoured Israel) has contributed to making this issue much more intractable."

As to what, what can Australia do? Well, for a start, we must not openly ally ourselves with this position. The Australian government must not continue to support Israeli policy in Palestine. We must criticise the Americans for continuing to arm Israel. And - I'm going to finish very briefly - I could say a lot more, but I'd just like to say: how can Australia work to address the causes? By being compassionate world citizens - and I think that's the problem - we've become - we've lost our sense of compassion, and until we get that sense of compassion again, and Kerry talked about human rights, and that to me is the key to it - we have to put those human rights into practice, we have to practise compassion, and that will be the start of a compassionate foreign policy.

Shelley Reys: Thank you Brendan. Now, I'm going to move on to our third question ...

Aden Ridgeway: I just wanted to make a few comments, Brendan, if you don't mind, and be respectful about it. This is not coming from the Democrats perspective, it's my own view about many of the things concerning the Middle East, and particularly having been to Israel and Palestine now on at least four occasions, and having a relationship here in Australia with the Jewi sh and Arab communities, and - I think one of the things that I'm always cautious about is this promotion of the message about the need for us to make a choice between one camp or another. And I think that the whole process of peace and reconciliation getting to some common ground understanding where groups actually come together, is more about how we actually encourage people to sit down, and I was privileged in the last fortnight to be out at Greenacre, at Malek Fahd school with a thousand Muslim people, a lot of children, Cardinal George Pell, members of the Australian Jewish community, all sitting down and having a dialogue: they recognise that there are faults and problems, that these things happen on both sides, and technology is - perhaps one way of looking at the inequality is how that is used - that I would want to, I suppose, implore a message: at least try and understand that the way to bring about peace isn't about one side or the other, it's about trying to encourage them to find a way, because ultimately they have to live with it, not us, and I think we've got to encourage them to get there.

Shelley Reys: There are not three questions, in fact there are five, so we have three to go, and we'll have to watch our time. And I'd like to move on to our third question, and it comes from David Roffey ...

© NSPD 2004. Last modified 16/05/04.