Senator JOHNSTON (10:05 AM) —This report, as accurately as it can, goes towards explaining and discovering the actual facts surrounding this matter. If I may, I will go straight to the report, which talks about all of the matters surrounding the context of the question of whether we were involved in interrogating any prisoners in Iraq. The Department of Defence became aware and concerned that there may have been some involvement. Accordingly, as would be good practice, they commissioned a survey of every known person to have served in Iraq at the time. That is set out in paragraph 3.30 of the report. The report states:

To paraphrase: we surveyed the important people who could possibly shed any light upon this important issue. The report goes on:

We not only surveyed our own people in the ADF serving under the ADF; we surveyed anybody who might have been embedded in either the UK or the USA forces. Mr Barton filled out the questionnaire. We distilled it down to just one person out of those 302 plus the 106 personnel: Mr Barton. The report says:

that is, prisoner of war—

Let me underline the word ‘interview’—he did not say ‘interrogate’. He had the opportunity to tell the world, including his employer and his government, that he was involved in interrogation. He did not. He said, ‘I interviewed an Iraqi government official.’ On 10 January, he conducted a familiarisation inspection of Camp Cropper. As to questions about whether he had heard or observed any mistreatment of Iraqi PWs or civilian detainees whilst he was in the Middle East, he responded:

Let me restate that the one person distilled down in the inquiry by the Australian Defence Force’s due process of examining these allegations said—and I requote this for the benefit of senators:

Further, at paragraph 232, in reply to questions regarding what he did and who, if anyone, he reported to, he stated:

and those were concerns about cell sizes and—

It was borne out that no Australian was involved in the interview process or the interrogation process, other than as set out by me and by the report. It is absolutely clear from all the evidence and the facts. May I say that the attack this morning on Dr Gee is understandable. There is substantial disappointment and frustration on the part of the opposition in this place because they have no smoking gun—no evidence, nothing, not a feather to fly with—in this allegation against ADF personnel or any Australians serving in Iraq at the time of the realisation of what was happening at Abu Ghraib.

I come back to the one witness who could and did bring the facts to the committee: Mr Rod Barton. He said, ‘I did not observe any mistreatment.’ His evidence in his transcripts is clear. He was in no capacity an observer of, or a person who brings actual factual evidence of any tangible sort about, interrogation or mistreatment of prisoners by Australians in Iraq. This report gives the ADF a clean bill of health.

As an aside to all this, I say that, when an Australian citizen, for whatever reason, decides not to attend and make himself available for a Senate inquiry, he is—and thank goodness he is—absolutely entitled so to do. He is under no constraint, no compulsion whatsoever, to come before a Senate inquiry. The Senate has the power to bring him, should it so resolve. No such application, no such motion, was directed from the committee to the Senate. For Senator Faulkner to now want to heap the blame for his disappointment at the feet of Dr Gee is outrageous. I have no doubt that Dr Gee is a person of outstanding and high reputation in the community, and I for one support him, knowing as I do the witch-hunt factors that are involved in some of these inquiries put on, by virtue of the former construction of the numbers of this place, by the opposition.

Dr Gee was right, and I stand to defend him and his right not to appear before the Senate committee. If the committee had wanted him to appear and if he was considered by any member of the committee to have knowledge and the capacity to provide evidence to assist in the terms of reference, the committee should have passed a resolution that he be subpoenaed to attend. It did not do so. I for one will never, ever condone the condemning of an Australian citizen for exercising his right not to appear before a Senate committee.

I commend this report to the Senate. It was an important reference. It absolves absolutely the minister and the Australian Defence Force. I am very proud of them at all times, as they well know.