PM: Thank you. Today is a bitter day for Australia. I don't know a better word than the word bitter to describe how we feel today. Three Australian soldiers have lost their lives in Afghanistan in an incident overnight. Seven Australian soldiers have been wounded, some of them seriously. An Afghan interpreter has also been killed.
I join the nation in the sense of grief we are all feeling as we digest this news. I particularly offer my most sincere condolences to the three families who are in the depths of grief today. We are thinking of them, our thoughts are with them as they deal with this terrible and distressing news.
Our thoughts are also with the families of the wounded who would be so anxious about the circumstances of their loved ones. We are certainly thinking of them too as they deal with news that their loved ones have been hurt in Afghanistan.
The Chief of the Defence Force and the Minister for Defence have described the circumstances to you of this horrible incident overnight. Of course we will learn more in the days and weeks ahead about the details of this incident but as has been described an Afghan National Army soldier opened fire on Australian and Afghanistan personnel who were attending a regular parade. Details are still coming in and we will know more in the days ahead.
But we may never know the answer to the most searching question and that is the question of why.
Now I recognise the circumstances of this incident are going to raise many deep and troubling questions in the minds of Australians. Attacks like this are designed to do just that, to corrode trust, that's the purpose of these attacks. It's an attempt by our enemy to strike at the core of our training and mentoring mission in Afghanistan. So I do also want to say this: our partners in the Afghan National Army are shocked and horrified by what has occurred. The people of Afghanistan are trying to build a nation. A nation free of violence and free of fear. We know the act of this Afghanistan member was not in the interests of the people of Afghanistan.
Can I also say this to the Australia people: we cannot judge the progress of our mission by this one dreadful incident. This attack does not change our mission in Afghanistan and that is to ensure that there is no safe haven there for terrorism. And it doesn't change our determination to see the mission through.
I've asked the Minister for Defence to engage in a full examination of the circumstances of this incident and to advise us if there are any additional measures we can take to reduce the risk of similar incidents occurring. The Minister for Defence will undertake that task.
For now I want to say this: our dead will come home with honour and the nation will grieve their loss. The wounded will receive the best possible care that we can provide. We will do everything we can to get them the best possible medical care.
The three soldiers who died were fine Australian professionals. Fine Defence Force personnel and very brave men. The soldiers who are wounded are fine members of our Australian Defence Force. They go into the Defence Force because they want to fight for their country, they go into the Defence Force because they want to fight for their mates. In this dreadful incident they were denied that right to fight, coming as it did whilst they were on parade. That is part of the true horror of this incident overnight. But our dead will come home with honour, we will mourn their loss and we will not forget them.
I will take questions solely on this matter.
JOURNALISTS: (Inaudible)
PM: Yes, I'll go to David and then down the line.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, you described this as an attempt by the enemy to strike at the trust (inaudible). Do you therefore believe this was a Taliban attack and what do you say to Australian soldiers whether they should be trusting their Afghan counterparts.
PM: I can't tell you standing here now what the motivations for this attack were. As I've indicated we will get more details in the days and weeks ahead, it takes some time to establish the facts. But the truth is we may never know the direct motivation of this individual but I did want to make the point that attacks of this nature are designed to corrode trust, to corrode trust between our soldiers and the soldiers that they train. We need to remember that we are training soldiers in large numbers in Afghanistan and across the nation of Afghanistan there are some 300,000 Afghan soldiers. So attacks of this nature are about corroding trust.
For our soldiers I can understand the shock, the horror, the pain as they absorb what has happened to their comrades in this incident overnight but our training mission is vital and we should note that the Afghan National Army has reacted with a sense of horror and distress to this incident too.
Yes.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, given the scale and shocking nature of this attack, do you think that this will damage the Australian public's support for the Afghan campaign more than anything else that has come before?
PM: I believe Australians will be asking themselves some troubling questions. I think people will look at this with a sense of incredible distress and shock. And so I did want to make the point and let me say it again because I believe it's very important: we should not judge the progress of our mission from this one incident. Despite the gravity of this incident and the horror of this incident, we are making progress in training members of the Afghan National Army, we are making progress in training members of the Afghan National Police. Our mission is a defined one, we know precisely what it is we are there to do, we are on a training and mentoring mission. And we also have a clear strategy and a clear timeline for that mission and you've heard me speak to you, to the Australian people and to the Australian Parliament about that mission and that timeline in the past and our mission and timeline remains the same. So we cannot the judge the progress of that mission through one incredibly distressing incident. And we can't allow our will to be undermined by incidents like this, we can't allow our will to be undermined by the kinds of attacks that are aimed at corroding trust.
I'll go to Chris Uhlmann.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, Osama Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan, the Taliban (inaudible) what's Australia's clear national interest in continuing in Afghanistan?
PM: As I've described to you before our clear national interest is that Afghanistan was used in the past as a nation in which terrorists were trained and those terrorists did come and visit upon the world including violence that resulted in the loss of Australian lives. We went to Afghanistan for the purpose of ensuring strategic denial, that is denying terrorists who would seek to use Afghanistan as a place to train for acts of terror the ability to do that.
Now we have never said that it is only in Afghanistan that we see terrorism in operation, of course that's not the case but we do know Afghanistan has been used in the past as a terrorist training base and we are there to deny terrorists that safe haven in the future. Our mission therefore is one of training so that the Afghan nation can step up to its own security needs. If we were to leave at this stage then we would leave a vacuum which would be filled again by terrorists and by the Taliban.
Yes, we'll come over here.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, you now have the unhappy record of, under your Prime Ministership, having suffered more fatalities than either John Howard or Kevin Rudd, and yet (inaudible). Now that we are creeping our operations beyond Oruzgan and in places like Kandahar should we be prepared now for even higher rates of fatalities in the months and years to come?
PM: Well I'm not going to allow the language of creeping to go unchallenged. As the Minister for Defence has described to you, there are occasions on which we take operations outside Oruzgan province. The purpose of those operations is because they assist our mission within the province in which we work, within Oruzgan. I think the Minister for Defence and the Chief of the Defence Force have described to you that this incident occurred in northern Kandahar, just south of the border with Oruzgan and was about a supply route, a route into Oruzgan province so that's why our forces were there. So we have said in the past that there are times that we work outside our principal province because it assists us with our mission in our principal province and indeed the Minister for Defence has made public mention of these missions including in his Parliamentary contributions to keep the Parliament updated on progress in Afghanistan.
On the tempo of causalities that we have seen in Afghanistan, we have been a nation that has suffered very, very deeply this year with casualties in Afghanistan. I am unbelievably conscious of that, I'm unbelievably conscious of the suffering of the families, of the nation as we see these losses. I'm also very conscious of the need to see the mission through.
Yes.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister (inaudible) that carrying that mission through is becoming too difficult because you don't know who the enemy is? Four of the eleven people killed in Afghanistan this year were killed by ANA soldiers.
PM: As I've indicated we can't judge the progress of our mission in Afghanistan from one incident but yes you're right, this is the second occasion this year that we face the very bitter spectre of our soldiers being attacked by someone who was in the Afghan National Army and someone who apparently was participating in our training mission. So that is a very, very bitter prospect for the nation to digest which is why the only word that - the best word to describe the emotions of today and this situation is that it is a bitter one. But to me, in terms of digesting this news it is important to recognise that attacks like this are about corroding trust and corroding will.
Yes, Lyndal.
JOURNALIST: Given the nature and impact of this incident, how important is it that reports into this incident (inaudible) not only the Defence Force but the people of Australia can understand why this occurred and how to prevent it if it's possible in the future?
PM: Certainly it's my view that the best possible information should be got to families as soon as it is possible but I also understand that when we are trying to fact find and get to the truth and get to all of the details in Afghanistan that that can take some time. So there is a balance here that Defence needs to work its way through of timeliness and accuracy because we want to make sure that the information given to families is accurate information but I am conscious of the need to get the best possible information to families as soon as it can be given to them and I've had occasion to speak directly to families who have lost loved ones in Afghanistan about precisely that.
Yes.
JOURNALIST: (Inaudible) stepped up negotiation (inaudible). In the wake of this sort of incident how do you feel about the prospect of our principal ally in Afghanistan (inaudible)?
PM: Look I think we've got to be a bit careful about our terminology here. I've spoken in the past about the need for political reconciliation in Afghanistan and the processes of political reconciliation. We shouldn't view that, the processes of political reconciliation as somehow disconnected to the military efforts that we are engaging in in Afghanistan and our efforts to defeat the insurgency there. I mean to be very frank, and it seems to me quite a common sense point, that when you are making progress on the ground you maximise the chances of political reconciliation talks being successful. People are not going to sit around a table and talk if they feel like they are making progress on the ground. So political reconciliation in Afghanistan is important. The building of a secure nation there is important. The Afghan people building their democracy and governance capacity is important and we've spoke n about each of these threads of what we do in Afghanistan to the Australian people in the past and I'll continue to do so in the future.
Yes.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, we don't know the cause of this incident at this stage but the Minister has previously said that the Taliban have insurgents involved in high profile attacks, shows that they're on the back foot. That just doesn't really pass the logic test surely, I mean if they're high profile attacks that have been successful the public perception is they're not on the back foot and we're not winning so how does that scenario make sense with the Defence Minister says things like that -
PM: Well I actually think in your question you've explained precisely why it does make sense. The Minister's point is that the insurgents are on the back foot on the ground in Afghanistan, considerable progress has been made in the province in which we work in bringing security. I've had an insight into that through the eyes of our soldiers who are there and have been there on more than one occasion. We talk about the great West Australian Ben Roberts-Smith who's been there on a number of occasions. He can describe to you through his own work there and his own time there how he has seen security strengthened over the time he's been going-
JOURNALIST: But if we're seeing more attacks-
PM: Yeah, I'm answering your question. And so as you see security strengthened on the ground, those who would seek to corrode our will in Afghanistan look for other ways to corrode our will including engaging in high profile attacks so it does cause people to question our mission in Afghanistan. So what the Minister is saying to you is with their lack of progress on the ground we have seen movement to some of these high profile attacks, which is about corroding will and corroding trust by nations like our own that are involved in Afghanistan. What I think that means for Australians is we've got to be clear as we assess our mission in Afghanistan and the progress in Afghanistan which is why I say to the Australian people: as shocking and distressing and grave as this incident is, we cannot judge the progress of our mission by one incident, we must judge the progress of our mission based on all of the facts including the work that we are doing in training and the completion of some of that training work. So the training mission is underway and we are meeting progress that we set ourselves in that training mission.
Yes.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, when you meet Prime Minister Gillani will you be urging him to crack down on terrorist safe havens within his country?
PM: Of course. We talk to our partners all of the time about participation in counter terrorism and counter terrorism work and work that supports our mission in Afghanistan.
JOURNALIST: Do you think you're going far enough though -
PM: Well I'm not going to pre-empt publicly a discussion with a leader when I haven't had that discussion yet.
JOURNALIST: When you spoke to Stephen Harper (inaudible)?
PM: I have had occasion both here and in the past to talk to the Canadian Prime Minister about Afghanistan but when I've talked to him about Afghanistan it's been about the progress of the mission there, it's been about transition and it's been about the timetables for transition and change in Afghanistan.
In terms of the attitudes of the Australian people, I well and truly understand that when we see losses in Afghanistan and particularly when we see losses of this kind that it does cause the Australian people to question our deployment in Afghanistan. As Prime Minister I believe it is very important for me to speak to the Australian people about why we are there and the progress we are making. We are there because it is in our national interest to be in Afghanistan. We are making progress, we have a defined mission and a defined time line.
Can I conclude this press conference where I started by saying that I do want to extend my very deepest condolences to the Australian families who are in the depths of pain today. Our thoughts are with them.
Thank you very much.