Speaking with the enemy

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This was published 13 years ago

Speaking with the enemy

By Michelle Grattan

A hung parliament allows a debate between opposing views - it's talking to the Taliban that remains thorny.

We don't get many big, set-piece parliamentary debates and we're only having one on Afghanistan because the Greens were in a position to insist. As former defence minister Joel Fitzgibbon admitted during his speech, in his time such an initiative ''seemed unnecessary'' - ministerial statements and shadow ministerial responses sufficed.

The ''hung'' parliament has many drawbacks, but this week's exercise has shown its positive side. We might have heard most of the arguments many times, but the government and opposition have been forced to remarshal their bipartisan support for the war in a hothouse where their arguments are being contested - albeit it by a tiny minority.

But that minority is also under scrutiny; Tasmanian independent Andrew Wilkie (a one-time army lieutenant-colonel and a former whistle-blower on the Iraq war) and the Greens' Adam Bandt are launching their parliamentary careers in a glare of attention.

The debate (which continues next week) has forced Julia Gillard to address Afghanistan policy comprehensively in the first days of her re-elected government. The Prime Minister decided to be blunt, emphasising how long Australia would be there, rather than how quickly its work might be done. She said that after the current mission of training Afghan forces in Oruzgan province is finished in two to four years, we can expect some form of engagement for at least a decade.

Later, Gillard sounded muddled and uncertain when pressed for details about the likely form of the long-term commitment. More tellingly, she floundered when dealing with questions about the negotiations under way between the Karzai government and Taliban figures. This appeared to be a sign of her inexperience and probably her political caution in the area.

Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd, addressing Parliament yesterday, gave a neater summary, noting that President Hamid Karzai had said recently that the Afghan government had been holding unofficial talks with the Taliban for some time, and that General David Petraeus, commander of the international force, had confirmed that the US and NATO had facilitated some contact between the two.

The early-stage negotiations make the political argument for the Afghanistan commitment trickier for the Australian government - especially as our engagement is not popular at home.

Despite having troops fighting and dying in Afghanistan, we are minor players and will always be semi-spectators to longer-term developments.

It is relatively easy to prosecute the line that we must counter these bad Taliban to prevent Afghanistan again becoming a haven for terrorists. That, together with giving support for the American alliance, is why we are there, Gillard said.

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It becomes a whole lot more difficult to ''sell'' this case to an already sceptical public while simultaneously arguing that there is also a need, unless the US and other countries want to be bogged down endlessly in this intractable war, to achieve a political settlement that involves some elements of the Taliban.

Yet it was significant that a number of MPs, including Fitzgibbon, opposition junior defence spokesman Stuart Robert, and country independent Rob Oakeshott, recognised and acknowledged the need for negotiations. Also this week, former foreign minister Alexander Downer wrote in The Spectator Australia: ''In exchange for the withdrawal of most foreign troops . . . the Taliban [need] to be brought into the democratic process of the country.''

Without the debate, the issue of negotiations with the Taliban would not be getting as much ventilation at a political level in Australia.

For Gillard, weaving the various and awkward strands of the Afghanistan narrative together will be a continuing challenge, particularly if she attends the international conference on the conflict in Portugal next month.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott went into this week's debate looking ragged, following his row with Gillard over their Afghan visits, and having had to retreat (after being put in his place by the Australian commander) on the opposition's suggestion that the troops were being under-resourced.

Abbott, nevertheless, is always the dog with the bone. Despite formally accepting that resourcing ''is necessarily the government's call, not ours'', he said that ''we would never be critical of a government that chose to err on the side of giving [our forces] more support . . . our instinct would be to do more rather than less''. We have yet, however, to hear Abbott on the thorny issue of negotiations with the Taliban.

The concentration on Afghanistan and the new power of the Greens has also brought up a pivotal question: should Parliament have to approve Australia going to war? The Greens have put up a private member's bill for this.

At first blush, requiring parliamentary approval is quite a compelling idea. What more important decision could there be than to put Australian lives on the line? On closer scrutiny, it seems to me much less sound.

Under the Greens legislation, both houses would have to approve. The government rarely controls the Senate. That means that where there was disagreement between government and opposition over committing troops, whatever minority held a Senate balance of power would have the ultimate say, putting the fate of a core government decision into unacceptably few hands.

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It is not surprising the government and Coalition oppose the Greens' bill. But whatever one thinks of the proposal, the new parliamentary circumstances ensure the idea gets a decent airing - as it should when we are losing soldiers.

Michelle Grattan is Age political editor.

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