3 September, 2012
Sky News AM Agenda
With Kieran Gilbert and Mike Kelly MP
3 September 2012
8:45am
E & OE
Subjects: Afghanistan, Gonski Review
KIERAN GILBERT:
Joining me now from Melbourne, Liberal frontbencher Senator Mitch Fifield, and here in the Canberra studio, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Mike Kelly. It’s good to see you both. Mike I want to start with the very sombre news out of Afghanistan, the tragic news last week of the attack on three diggers. We’re now seeing a fair bit of fallout here. First of all, an accomplice has been captured but a raid conducted in which two local men were killed has attracted the criticism of the Afghan President. What do you know about it? Was it done within the rules of engagement and with Afghan approval?
MIKE KELLY:
Certainly the advice that we had is that the operation was fully approved by the Afghan authorities and that it was affected in accordance with the rules of engagement. The two individuals that were unfortunately killed in the operation were insurgents or insurgent supporters and that they complied with the rules of engagement in the process of engagement as two individuals.
KIERAN GILBERT:
Are you baffled then by the Afghan President’s comments?
MIKE KELLY:
Certainly. You’re in a very emotional environment of course during these days of engagements of conflicts and some of those threats that have been unfolding in relation to the Afghan security forces. So you can understand why people will be on edge and may rush to judge them at times, but what I’ve understood after a quarter of a century of working in these security issues is that you have to wait and be patient for investigations to unfold before you make categorical judgements. But certainly all the advice we’ve had is that this incident was in accordance with the rules of engagement, was fully approved by Afghan authorities, and certainly that’s been confirmed by the Oruzgan Governor and the Chief of Police.
KIERAN GILBERT:
What about the enormous amount of suspicion there must be between the Australian troops, other coalition troops and their Afghan counterparts? There have been forty green on blue attacks this year. I think it is over one hundred in the entire Afghan operation. This has got to just totally diminish any sense of loyalty or confidence that there is there.
MIKE KELLY:
Well it’s a challenge and certainly there is no doubt that there will be that sort of element of suspicion in the back of our troops minds. But the thing to remember is that we’ve trained thousands of individuals and set up a good relationship with so many of them and I’ve witnessed that first hand and been to the patrol bases and to the command headquarters for the Afghan security forces. So I think the relationship over all is a very good one and we are progressing extremely well in terms of our goals in building the competency of the fourth brigade in Oruzgan province. I have just been over there recently and we are meeting the targets that we’re setting so we need to focus on the fact that we are not far off now achieving the program that we set ourselves and it would be insane to just drop the ball at this last minute when we’re almost at that goal. And of course if this incident, and we don’t know the motivation of the individual involved, but if this was an incident of the Taliban trying to exploit these sorts of circumstances, the worst thing that we can do is to feed that strategy by reacting to it adversely and derailing our own strategy.
KIERAN GILBERT:
Senator Fifield, there are a lot of people weary with this war though aren’t there? Your colleague Mal Washer, Andrew Wilkie the independent, Anna Burke the deputy speaker, all of them expressing their concern over recent days. Do you understand where they’re coming from and where many Australians are coming from when they look at what might be some progress but with every step there are two steps back it seems?
MITCH FIFIELD:
Every Australian feels the death of ADF personnel when they’re deployed and no government takes lightly the decision to deploy Australian troops. But it was the right thing to go into Afghanistan. The Australian military are doing good work. It’s important that they see that job through and that any withdrawal is orderly and that it’s done in consultation with our partners on the ground in Afghanistan. Yes, none of us like having Australian troops in harms way but they’re doing a good job. We want to see them complete that task and we want them to come home safely.
KIERAN GILBERT:
Let’s move on to the big issue at home today, school funding. Mike Kelly, you heard what Christopher Pyne said. That this is all out into the never never, that it’s not going to be achieved, that the funding is just simply unrealistic the goals being set here. Is this being put beyond the budget parameters though so that you can make commitments but won’t ever have to pay for them?
MIKE KELLY:
Well it’s the sort of response I’d expect from the Coalition, who’ve thrown up their hands over so many of these critical challenges for our country. We can’t engage on a race to the bottom on wages with China and India and the like. The key things that we needed to see addressed over those twelve lost years of the Coalition were things like skills education, infrastructure and innovation. What were they doing at that time? Handing out flag poles. Now no wonder we’ve been sliding backwards. Now we need to invest in order to keep up. We have no other choice. This country has to do things smarter. We have to be out there at the leading edge of innovation and skills so obviously it requires investment. The plan that we are going to put in place will involve obviously shared expenditure with the states but it will be a cleverer way of doing things. So it’s right to say that you don’t just throw money at these things. It has to be targeted, there have to be improvements in the way things are done and the way we regulate performance in a school, the way we create accountability. And this government has made enormous progress in relation to nationalising curriculum, in terms of improving support for teachers and of course through the investments we’ve already made in schools.
KIERAN GILBERT:
But Christopher Pyne made the point that over the last decade or so, school funding has increased enormously, over 40 percent since 2000 and yet we’ve fallen back on the various measures against our neighbours, systems in Shanghai, in Singapore. Why not look at other issues as well, like this teacher focus that Christopher Pyne is arguing, rather than just simply where the money is going?
MIKE KELLY:
Well the answer to that is we have a comprehensive approach which will include of course, how we support our teachers better and improve performance in classrooms. But how could anybody argue with directing more effort to where there is greater need? We are consigning so much of our human raw material to futures of poor pay or low incomes and putting ourselves at a competitive disadvantage if we do not address these children in schools who have the disadvantages and improve their situation.
KIERAN GILBERT:
Senator Fifield that does seem to be something that the Coalition supports, and you as the Shadow Minister for Disabilities no doubt has time for that argument. But Christopher Pyne says the current system works effectively in dealing with those equity issues. I am still wondering though, where is the argument, where is the proof to say that greater targeting couldn’t improve the system even further?
MITCH FIFIELD:
There is an issue in relation to disability in terms of the portability of funding to support students with disability between the independent and the government sectors. We took a policy to the last election, an education card, for students with disability to partly address that issue. But Kieran, here we go again. We’ve seen this pattern with the Prime Minister before where she makes a grand announcement, very little detail, puts a little bit of money on the table, says we’ll introduce a piece of legislation to give the illusion of activity and then proceeds to browbeat and demonise the states. I imagine that’s what we’ll see today. What the Prime Minister needs to do in her Press Club speech is to detail and release the modelling as to how much this will cost. She needs to be very clear about how much the Commonwealth is expecting the states to put in. She needs to be very clear about how much the Commonwealth intends to put in and how the Commonwealth is going to source that money. She also needs to guarantee that no school will lose a dollar. We saw the Gonski hit-list of three thousand plus schools released or leaked. The Prime Minister needs to categorically indicate that no school will lose money.
KIERAN GILBERT:
Ok just finally, Mike Kelly we’re almost out of time. On that funding issue, how important is it that Julia Gillard does categorically make that statement as Senator Fifield is urging her to do, that no school will lose a dime, in fact that the government will honour that pledge to increase funding.
MIKE KELLY:
We’re absolutely firmly committed to that. The point is that we want to set an objective whereby every child has the same educational opportunity in this country. Now there may be reasons why you can’t achieve that ultimate objective but you must work towards it. And that’s what we intend to do. So no child will lose out in this program that we’re intending to put in place. It’s where we have to go.
KIERAN GILBERT:
Mike Kelly and Senator Mitch Fifield, thanks so much for your time gentleman this morning, appreciate it.