Senator Gerard Craughwell- speech from 20 Oct 2021

Very briefly, our ability to train with other armies around the world, we saw how that benefited us recently in Kabul, when our people went on the ground out there, they knew people on the ground out there, they were able to interact with people on the ground, and that is really important. I agree with certain restrictions with how troops might be used overseas, but Kabul is an example of how quickly things can change, and a minister and a government find themselves in a crisis situation where they have to get people on the ground quickly, in a humanitarian effort to get people back home as quickly as possible, and I'm one of the people that was screaming during the Kabul issue to get troops out there, I'd be one of the people screaming that we should have heavy lift air aircraft to bring people back from wherever in the world a crisis hits. We had it with COVID-19, for example, when the early stages of COVID-19 we had people dispersed around the world, and I would have wanted a minister to be in a position to make a decision to send aircraft to bring people home, to send troops to bring people home, so I'm anxious that we don't use something as crude as legislation to tie hands that we may regret deeply in a few years' time or a few months' time. We live in a very strange world where things change very rapidly, so I'm anxious that we don't do that. Thank you.