Mr JENKINS (12:11 PM) —It is well known that I opposed Australia's involvement in the war in Iraq. I did so at that point in time because there was a mechanism that had been commenced by the United Nations that was being continued and which, if given time, would have succeeded in the intent of that action. Why do I say that? I say that because we now have the value of hindsight into the situation that abounded in Iraq with regard to weapons of mass destruction.

The organisation that had been put together by the United Nations, UNMOVIC, had been carrying out its inspections and had reported on a number of occasions to the UN. It had indicated that it had made progress and that it felt that, given time, it would succeed, and this was ignored by a number of members of the United Nations community, including Australia. When, as has been his wont over the last couple of months, the Minister for Foreign Affairs has latched onto UN resolution 1441 as giving justification for the action that was carried out, he glosses over the debate that was going on in the UN Security Council at that time, when a number of countries disagreed that that was a reading of where we were as a result of that motion.

The parliamentary report on intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction does not go into a number of those matters, but it is a very important work of this parliament. I believe it is an illustration of the way in which the parliamentary committee system can work to its best. It is an illustration of the way in which the parliamentary committee system can review the actions of a government and its bureaucracy and come to conclusions from the perspective of the parliament and make recommendations and give commentary as to what should happen in the future.

My interests in the outcomes of this report go to the way in which a future government might analyse the information that is before it and make a commitment on behalf of the Australian public to a decision to commit troops to armed conflict. This is what we have to return to in the Australian public debate—a confidence that a government will act properly and that that action will be as a result of proper analysis of good information.

I am pleased that as an outcome of this inquiry the government has adopted the need to investigate our intelligence gathering capacity. I share the concerns of a number of my colleagues on this side of the chamber about the breadth of that inquiry, but I think that what we see in this case is an attempt to make sure that we equip our intelligence community to be able to give Australia the best advice.

As the report outlines, we were greatly dependent on the intelligence that was shared with us by other powers. There was a limited capacity for Australia on its own behalf to make independent analyses of that intelligence. But that does not excuse the way the conclusions by those intelligence organisations were used by government and the political spin that that material was given. It does not excuse the fact that that political spin continues even in the reaction to this report. The selective quoting completely out of context by both the Prime Minister and the Minister for Foreign Affairs to try to suggest that this committee report exonerates the government from any ill-doing in the run-up to the Iraqi conflict is completely erroneous. There can be no conclusions that people can come to that do not indicate that this government has a number of lessons to learn from this saga. Most commentary in the media has suggested that and has indicated that the government is absolutely out of touch if it thinks that in some way this report exonerates its actions.

I want to concentrate on the UN processes that abounded at the time of the decision by the Australian government to commit troops, because I think that is an important aspect of this debate that in the aftermath was glossed over. Certainly there has been a great deal of rewriting of history about the intent of Australia's involvement. But all of us remember that the main intent surrounded Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction and the possible use that Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, would make of those WMDs—nothing more, nothing less.

If in fact, as now the government are wont to explain to the Australian community, the reason for our involvement was regime change, the government were pretty reluctant at the time to indicate that. In fact, the real problem was that they went out of their way to indicate that that was not their intent. We have the Prime Minister at the National Press Club on 13 March saying:

So let us not be too high and mighty, as the government have been, in saying that now that Iraq is rid of Saddam Hussein anybody who was against the war in some way was acting in support of Saddam Hussein. There is a great deal of agreement that Iraq will be potentially much better off now that it is rid of Saddam Hussein; my proviso is that we have to see the type of regime that replaces the deposed regime. Hopefully, with the progress that might be made once the international community can play its part in getting the affairs of Iraq under control, that will be the case. But certainly the continuing hostilities and the continuing loss of life amongst the civilian population and military personnel from the United States indicate that we still have a way to go.

Having said that, as I have said before in this place, the fact that Saddam Hussein has gone—as an unintended consequence, if you read the black and white of what the government was saying at the time of the action—is a good thing. But is it now a doctrine that this government will wish to go forward with in other international disputes? Will we see it being used against other leaders with as dastardly records on human rights as Saddam Hussein's? That is the point that this debate has got to if the opposition is to be harangued and if it is to be somehow suggested that our actions and our criticism were or are in support of Saddam Hussein. That is a nonsense. It was not the point at the time in the UN processes when the decision was made for a commitment of troops.

Under United Nations Security Council resolution 1441, as I said earlier, the inspection team had been put in place. That inspection team had reported back. But let us look at the way in which the conclusions of that inspection team were distorted by the government to try to justify its actions at the time. We see in UNMOVIC's report that, when Dr Blix said that he believed that Iraq was cooperative on process but not on substance, he expanded on that view and said that UNMOVIC also noted increasing cooperation and numerous initiatives from the Iraqi side. UNMOVIC reported that the results of inspections were consistent with Iraqi declarations and that no weapons of mass destruction had been found. They were fairly important statements because what UNMOVIC were saying was that they were making progress and believed that in time they would get a result.

But, as this report outlines, when we compare the resources that were available to UNMOVIC to those that were available to the present Iraq Survey Group, it was extraordinary that any progress had been made. As the report says, in comparison to UNMOVIC's size and resources, the Iraq Survey Group has impressive capacity. In February 2003 UNMOVIC had a staff of 250 people from 60 countries. When we compare that to what the Iraq Survey Group started off with when it commenced its operations in mid-June 2003, the number of personnel was in the order of 1,200 to 1,600. This included 100 WMD experts, 50 human intelligence case officers, 33 interrogators, 130 personnel for mobile site exploration and over 200 Arab linguists. Let us compare the resources post the start of the conflict when the ISG went into bat with what UNMOVIC were struggling with over the months in the run-up to the conflict. That is glossed over; the government ignores that.

There was a process in place. That process had the support of the opposition and was fundamental to our case and our position at the time of the commitment by the government of troops to involvement in the Iraqi war. This is where the Australian public wish the debate to go back to: matters that were germane at the time the decision was made. They do not want history to be rewritten in a political sense on the basis of events that have followed. To do that would mean that we would still have this concern about the way in which a future Australian government might make decisions of similar ilk.

That is why the outcomes of these inquiries, if we are to really see a proper investigation of the capacity of Australia's sovereign intelligence gathering organisations, are of the utmost importance. This report of the parliamentary Joint Committee on ASIO, ASIS and DSD is a very important aspect of that work. Australians should be confident that Australia itself has the capacity to know what actions it should take in its own national interest and not do things on the basis that we believe there is some advantage for Australia by just following the whims of a president in Washington or a prime minister in London. If they have come to the conclusion that that was one of the main reasons that Australia was involved, the public understands that the question needs to be asked: was that necessarily in Australia's national interest?

Of course, it is likely that from time to time there will be similar situations that Australia has to confront. I believe we need to learn the lesson that the military solution should not be the only way that we can resolve these matters. There needs to be continuing use of international forums such as the UN and other wider international collectives that search for solutions to these problems in a peaceful manner. Now that we have this hindsight, it is clear that the work of UNSCOM was indeed successful in weakening the ability of the Saddam Hussein regime to do what it had been doing. I believe this parliament should look at this report and the government should take notice of the reaction to it. (Time expired)