PRIME MINISTER:
I’m pleased to be here with the Defence Minister to announce that the last Australian troops have left Uruzgan Province. We have ended our longest ever troop deployment. As I said a month or so back in Tarin Kot, this war is ending not with victory, not with defeat, but with hope that Afghanistan is a better place and that Uruzgan in particular is a better place for our presence. I firmly believe that to be the case.
Every day that our troops have been in Uruzgan Province they have been upholding our interests, our values and the universal concepts of decency, which our soldiers stand for wherever they are anywhere in the world.
We know they've paid a high price – 40 dead, 261 seriously wounded – but that sacrifice has not been in vain. Uruzgan today is a very significantly different and better place than it was a decade ago. The infrastructure is better. The Government functions much better. Girls go to school. Medical facilities are in place. So, while it is a bittersweet moment when our soldiers leave – bitter, particularly for the families who have lost their loved ones – nevertheless, it is an episode in the long and proud martial story of our country that we can look back on with pride.
While our time in Uruzgan is coming to an end, our involvement with Afghanistan does continue. There are some 400 Australian military personnel who remain in country, in training and support roles, mostly in Kabul and Kandahar and the Australian Government will be providing $100 million a year towards the Afghan national forces.
I want to say thank you – a very deep thank you – to all of our servicemen and women who have been in Afghanistan; over 25,000 of them over the last decade or so.
I want to say a very deep thank you to their families who have suffered grievous absences as well as, in some cases, grievous and shattering loss.
I also say a deep thank you for the Australian people for the support they have given our armed forces throughout this deployment.
I might ask the Minister to say a few words.
DEFENCE MINISTER:
Thank you, Tony. Yesterday was a very significant day for the Australian Defence Force. In honoring our 40th killed in action, we will bring home not just our personnel, but we will bring home the lessons learned. The task for the Government now is to assess what we have been doing for the last 10 years from the perspective of the way forward for the Australian Defence Force. Counter IED, intelligence operations, a whole host of counter-insurgency lessons, the most difficult form of warfare. The task for the Government now in paying homage and respect and honour to the 40 and the 261 who have contributed so much is to learn those lessons, for the ADF to be a better, more resilient, strong force and to continue to disclose the courage and resilience that it has over the last 11 years. That's the task for us. We're setting to it with a great deal of enthusiasm and energy.
PRIME MINISTER:
Do we have any questions?
QUESTION:
To what extent will Australia continue monitoring conditions in Uruzgan?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, it's now the responsibility of the Afghan Government and the Afghan security forces to maintain conditions in the province. That's the whole point. The whole point of the transfer of security responsibility is that it is now the Afghan Government, the Afghan Army and the Afghan people’s responsibility. Nevertheless, we will have an ongoing training and support role at least for the next year or so in Afghanistan and, obviously, that gives us a capacity to keep an eye on things, which we'll exercise.
QUESTION:
How many soldiers will be involved in this ongoing commitment?
PRIME MINISTER:
I'll ask David to elaborate, but it's about 400, all in a training or support role. None of them are expected to be involved in combat, although obviously sometimes in support roles you do get caught up in these sorts of activities and they will be mostly based in Kabul and Kandahar. David?
DEFENCE MINISTER:
Thanks, Prime Minister. We will be training Afghan police using approximately 18 Special Forces trainers in Kabul. We’ll also have personnel deployed to the British Officer Academy in Kabul to engender the level of training that we see that the Afghan National Security Forces will enjoy. Can I say that this last fighting season, the Afghan National Army has virtually fought without supervision. The success we’ve achieved in providing a resilient, responsive, flexible force for the Afghan government has been seen over this last fighting season, so we’re not leaving without being assured that the government has a reliable defence force at its disposal.
So, we will take up positions in administration, non-combatant roles embedded with ISAF as it is deployed, pursuant to the Status of Forces Agreement with Kabul and you’ll see and hear about that as the bilateral security agreement is rolled out between the United States and the Afghan government.
QUESTION:
When did the last troops leave the ground?
DEFENCE MINISTER:
Yesterday.
QUESTION:
[Inaudible] and are those troops still on their way back?
DEFENCE MINISTER:
They are in the air on the way home.
QUESTION:
There’s been some speculation form some analysts saying that the expectations that despite the progress that’s been made, the Afghan army, the Afghan government and so on is just still not quite up to the job and the Taliban has been waiting for forces to come back in and progressively take over one way or another. Do you see any likelihood of that, or is that just scare-mongering?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well Ean, we can’t predict the future. We have no crystal ball, but it’s very easy to be defeatist at a time like this and I don’t think there’s all that much evidence to justify it. As the Minister has just pointed out, the Afghan National Army has performed with considerable distinction over the last fighting season. Certainly, our soldiers are very happy with the progress of the Afghan brigade that they’ve been mentoring over the last few years.
QUESTION:
We heard a couple of days ago about an interpreter who was killed apparently while waiting for promised resettlement in Australia. Is there a problem with delays for visas for those people?
PRIME MINISTER:
We’re getting people out as quickly as we can. As you can appreciate, Afghanistan is not like Australia; people live in remote locations and people have extended families, but we are determined to ensure that everyone who has provided material support for our armed forces is looked after and provided with a guarantee of safety. The motto, or the operating principle, if you like, of the Australian army is ‘no-one is left behind’, and we will ensure that those who have materially supported us are not left behind.
QUESTION:
Might they have to wait months?
PRIME MINISTER:
No, they won’t. We’re getting them out as quickly as we can.
QUESTION:
Prime Minister, you talked about the benefits in Uruzgan. What about the broader strategic issue here? Do you feel that…what has been achieved strategically throughout this whole conflict now and was the effort worthwhile?
PRIME MINISTER:
It’s a good question. We have seen the replacement of the Taliban. We have seen the driving out from their safe havens and bases of Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda sympathisers. The relative stability of Afghanistan over the past few years has enabled a degree of stability to return to Pakistan. Just a few years ago, everyone was understandably anxious about where Pakistan was going. I think there's little doubt that Pakistan is in a substantially better position now than it was three or four years ago and our efforts in Afghanistan have been a material contributor to that. So we have helped to pacify, stabilise and improve Afghanistan and by our work in Afghanistan, we have helped to bring an element of stability to the wider region.
QUESTION:
Just on another issue, we're now faced with a deficit of $50 billion. Will you be taking further saving measures to combat this?
PRIME MINISTER:
Now, I don't want to leave Afghanistan if there are further questions on that. Are there any further questions on Afghanistan?
QUESTION:
Yes, the second part of my question – so, has that been worth the loss of life and so on?
PRIME MINISTER:
Look, if I'm a parent and it's my son who has paid the ultimate sacrifice, I guess that's a very heavy question. As a Prime Minister who has to try to look at these things in the totality, I accept that we have as a nation paid a high price. I accept that 40 families have paid an almost unbearable price, but nevertheless if you look at the benefits for our country, for Afghanistan and for the wider world, my conclusion is, yes, it has been worth it, but not for a second would I underestimate the price that's been paid by individuals and families and the price that will continue to be paid, because while there are 40 dead and 261 who've been seriously wounded, there are hundreds if not thousands who will carry the psychological injuries with them for many years to come.
Now there was a question about the MYEFO. I'm not going to pre-empt the statement tomorrow. I just want to reiterate the fundamental position of the government, which is that government, like families and businesses, has to live within its means. We have been living – thanks to the former Labor government – wildly beyond our means for far too long and if we are going to get taxes down, if we are going to restore growth and prosperity to our country, we've got to get spending under control. What we'll see tomorrow is effectively Labor's last Budget statement. It will be, I have to say, the first truthful Budget statement about the Labor era, but having laid out the scale of Labor's fiscal disaster, the repair job begins.
Thanks very much.
[ends]