Interview with Laura Jayes, Sky News

Subjects: National Day of Commemoration for Australia’s troop involvement in the Middle East; withdrawal of Australian troops from Afghanistan; Afghan Locally Engaged Employees visa grants; COVID-19.

LAURA JAYES:

Joining us live now is Peter Dutton, our Defence Minister. Thanks so much for your time.

PETER DUTTON:

Thanks Laura.

LAURA JAYES:

The Federal Government, and you in particular, want to see this National Day of Commemoration for Australian troops and their involvement in the Middle East. Why this focus on Afghanistan, and when might that day be?

PETER DUTTON:

Laura, firstly, thanks for having me on the program. We’ve had 39,000 troops who have served in Afghanistan and the Middle Eastern campaign has gone on for a long period of time – and as your package there demonstrates very ably – it’s a precarious part of the world and people desperately want to see peace; we want to see girls educated and we want to see terrorism thwarted.

The contribution of our troops over a long period of time has contributed to a period of stability, the ability for girls to be educated and importantly, from our perspective and that of our Five Eyes partners and others across the developed world, there has not been an attack the scale of 9/11 for over 20 years. We want to make sure that that remains the case, but I want those diggers to hear very clearly the message that because of their efforts in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in the region otherwise, they have stopped terrorist attacks from taking place in our country, in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, in Europe and elsewhere and we are incredibly, eternally grateful for that.

This day I hope will serve as a reminder each year to Australians that we want to commemorate their service and we want to also recognise the 41 diggers who lost their lives during the course of that campaign.

I think it’s a similar story to other days of national significance in the military calendar – Anzac Day, Vietnam Veterans Day etc. It’s our way of recognising and honouring the service of those that have fought in our name, in our country’s name.

LAURA JAYES:

The Taliban are resurgent right across Afghanistan at the moment, reclaiming vast amounts of territory, and we saw that there. And I think you’ve just answered this question; many people say what was the point? After two decades in Afghanistan what did we achieve? But I think there’s a lot for Australian troops to be proud of, and like you just said, we’ve thwarted and stopped any large-scale terrorist attack since 9/11. Is that the measure of success?

PETER DUTTON:

That is. I mean from a selfish perspective, the fact that we haven’t had a 9/11-style attack in the developed world over the course of our engagement in that region, that should say to all Australians that our sacrifice has been worthwhile.

Now, for those families and for their mates, they will never recover in many circumstances and we have to support those that have come back with mental scars and who are still suffering significantly today, but I want them to hear today that this National Day of Commemoration will be about them, and it will be about the period that they gave to their country, those that gave their lives to our country, and the fact that they kept us safe and that they have provided a life and a future for many of those young women who have been educated – now maybe even left the region and gone to other parts of the world to tell their story – and they will do that for their lives.

There are many individual examples that you could look at that they should be incredibly proud of. Many of them carry the injuries and the scars, as we recognise, and we want to provide every support to them to help them live out, you know, their lives in the best way possible.

LAURA JAYES:

Have we cut and run leaving Afghanistan and Afghans that helped us during that two decade campaign?

PETER DUTTON:

Well Laura I think you’re accused of one of two things. I mean one is that you’re involved in a never-ending war. We’ve been there for two decades, and you could say, "Well, why not two more or beyond that?" But that’s a very significant contribution that Australia has made and that people with the same values as us have made in Afghanistan and Iraq over that period of time.

The other thing that you can be accused of is cutting and running. In a sense, there’s no way to satisfy that answer. We’ve done an incredible amount over two decades. We should be very proud as a country and as a reliable partner to Afghanistan and to our partners, and for what we’ve done our nation is incredibly grateful. To those men and women who have made a significant sacrifice – their families, their kids, who have missed out on the time when mum or dad was away on deployment – we really pay complete homage to them, and we’re very grateful for the service that they’ve provided.

I think we should be proud of the two decades, but as I say from a selfish perspective, we are incredibly proud that we haven’t had a 9/11 in this country. We haven’t had a repeat of 9/11 in the United States, and we want that to be the case into the future. The work that those diggers have done over there; they are the modern day Anzacs, and we pay absolute tribute to them.

LAURA JAYES:

What about the Afghan interpreters and those Afghans, the locals that helped Australia in this 20-year campaign? Have we done all we can there?

PETER DUTTON:

Yes; and if you look at the record here Laura, we will continue to do the right thing. We’ve got since 2013,1,480 visas that have been issued to these interpreters, to their families, to those locally engaged employees.

Even over the last couple of years we’ve seen over 200 visas issued to those people and their families. But there is a rigorous approach that we’ve got to it, and we don’t make any apology for that. If we got the wrong person here, somebody who had played both sides, somebody who had worked for us in 2016, 2013, 2010, but had now affiliated with the Taliban, but was wanting to come here because of that earlier support of our Australian troops and they committed an act of atrocity here in Australia, well I suspect the people that are making the calls for that individual to be here would be not seen and not heard of.

So my job, my responsibility, along with the Foreign Affairs Department, Home

Affairs etc, is to make sure that we act swiftly – and we are – to get those people here who have provided us with support – and that’s exactly what people like John Howard and others are arguing for – but we aren’t going to compromise the arrangements that we’ve got, the security clearances that need to be conducted because it is, as your package reported then, a very complex web of allegiances switching and swapping and I want to make sure that we have the biometric testing done where that’s possible. I want to make sure that every security check is conducted so that we’re not bringing the wrong people here; that we’re bringing those people that need and deserve our support to our country to start a new life and that’s been the case, as I say, for almost 1,500 people over the course of the last eight years or so.

LAURA JAYES:

Are all Australian troops now out of Afghanistan?

PETER DUTTON:

Yes Laura. I can confirm that today. We’ve had 1,500 troops there recently. The number got down to 80, and we’ve now withdrawn from Afghanistan and that marks a very significant contribution – over two decades, 41 lives lost, 39,000 troops who have served their country with great distinction – and we should honour the service of those troops and be very grateful for the fact that they’ve delivered us peace and security relative to the rest of the world over that period of time. We’ve now withdrawn, that’s appropriate for us, and we now pivot of course to our own region.

LAURA JAYES:

And when did that withdrawal happen?

PETER DUTTON:

Well, that’s happened in recent weeks. It was ahead of the September deadline that we had set, but the advice of the Chief of Defence Force to me, to the Prime Minister, to the National Security Committee, was that now was the appropriate time for us to withdraw those forces. We’ve done that. That doesn’t mean that we won’t be a part of campaigns with the United States, perhaps involving the SAS or special forces where we deem that to be in our national interest or in the interests of our allies and for now, though, that campaign has come to an end.

LAURA JAYES:

So, you say that Australia might still play a role. There are no Australian soldiers, though, in Afghanistan. But as we see, the problems are still persisting there. We may have a broader strategic role alongside the United States?

PETER DUTTON:

Well again Laura, if you go back to the early days of these campaigns, we were concerned about Al-Qaeda. We are concerned about any group that might have a capacity to mount a mass casualty attack in a country like ours. We know now that ASIO and the Federal Police and ASIS, our other agencies, including Defence and defence intelligence agencies are all working day and night to keep Australians safe. The reality is that the threat of terrorism hasn’t gone away and whether we see that manifesting in our own country, in the Middle

East or elsewhere around the world, then we will be part of an effort to defeat that and to make sure that we can keep, in our case, Australians safe and wherever possible the lives of our allies as well. That’s the values that we’ve always adhered to and always will.

LAURA JAYES:

Indeed. Can I ask you one final question about COVID because it all comes down to vaccine supply, Minister. It does seem that it is holding us back at the moment. You’d be looking at this very closely, no doubt. Is the delivery of Pfizer and the timeliness of that between now and the end of the year, does that mean the difference between you winning the next election or not?

PETER DUTTON:

Well Laura to be honest, I don’t think it’s anything about the next election; it’s about us keeping Australians safe and secure. Right from the very start of this pandemic 18 months ago, we took an early decision to close our borders, and as an island nation that was very effective in keeping this virus at bay, and we have had a very strict regime of people coming and going, including quarantine. We’ve worked very closely with the states and territories. Greg Hunt has done an exceptional job as Health Minister. The Prime Minister’s leadership, working in concert with the Chief Ministers and Premiers has been quite remarkable and we now move into this next stage. Now it’s a game changer to be getting a million Pfizer doses a week.

LAURA JAYES:

But we’re still at the back of the OECD. Would you have done things differently if you had your time again?

PETER DUTTON:

No; look, to be honest, I was talking with my counterpart in Canada the other day – 23,000 deaths. And he said to me, “You know, how’s the vaccine rollout going in Australia?” And I said, “Well look, you know, I think there’s a bit of complacency. I think people don’t think they’re going to get the virus or that this is not a problem for Australia.” And you know he essentially said, “Well, people were bursting out of their doors when they could to get the vaccine in Canada because they’d seen an elderly lady next door die, or they’d seen a family member taken to ICU on a ventilator.” And we know now that in New South Wales we have a significant number of people in ICU or on ventilators, and this Delta strain is targeting younger people than the Alpha strain started out doing. So we need to be very mindful of this.

People, if they’ve had hesitancy, they should take the advice of their GP. Go and see the GP, get the AstraZeneca, get Pfizer, get whatever your doctor is advising, whatever is available, as quickly as possible because this Delta strain is a very different scenario that we’re now dealing with, as we’re seeing in southwestern Sydney right now and we have done everything at a federal level we can through JobKeeper, through financial assistance to help people keep their houses, keep their families intact, to keep their businesses running, to keep their children safe, their elderly parents safe, and we’ll continue to do that.

There will be a phase, hopefully by the end of this year, when the vaccine is rolled out where we need to rebuild our country and I strongly believe that Scott Morrison has the leadership skills. He’s demonstrated that over the course of this last year and a half, and he’ll continue to do that to keep our country safe and secure and to build us out into a better future from Covid. That’s what I think people will concentrate on next year whenever an election might be.

LAURA JAYES:

Okay, Minister Dutton, thanks so much for your time. Appreciate it.

PETER DUTTON:

Thanks Laura.

[ends]