Thank you for the invitation to join you for breakfast and can I thank all of you who put effort into the Australian American relationship.

It’s a relationship I think which is in very good heart at the moment, that has been traditionally supported by groups such as this for a very long period of time, and it’s something that I welcome and encourage. It’s a relationship I think that is really very broad these days.

Obviously there is this national security and global security focus just at the moment, but as one who has been coming to this city so often for a long time, I know the different areas of interest in which I have attended, whether it’s been education, science, the environment – I was Australia’s environment minister for six years and was back and forth on environment issues, and so it goes on – but in every aspect of life, you find people in the United States that are close to Australia. They are either educated there or have business interests or just like the place, and it is very important to us to maintain and support those relationships.

You’ve asked me to speak for just a few minutes, as I gather there are some questions you want to ask, and in view of the global security situation, I will stick to that subject area.

I have just come from a couple of days in Baghdad. I was in Iraq last in April of this year, so we called in just after the end of the major conflict phase and to go back six months later has been quite an interesting experience. I had the opportunity to meet a range of people there. I met with the CPA and Administrator Bremer, I met with the Governing Council, the current President to it Mr Talibani, who visited Australia a few months ago and who I’ve got to know a bit. It was quite fortuitous, we actually met with the whole of the Governing Council, so I sat in on their council meeting for a while and we talked about constitutions and democracies and federation.

It’s in some ways a touch surreal when you realise what was happening beyond the fence. I was able to meet publically with the forces and on the US side General Sanchez and we talked about the security environment. I met with Australian business representatives, of which we have a few, and government representatives who are trying to help build a relationship, and then you fly out of course and you sort of leave those who are making a much bigger commitment to the risks and to the future. And I had a talk, on the way here, with Geoffrey Hoon, in Britain, about the situation as we see it and I’ll go down to Washington after this and meet with Mr Rumsfeld, who will be coming back from Asia. So we won’t just be talking about Iraq, we’ll be talking about some of the issues he would have been dealing with in North Asia. I last met with Mr Rumsfeld actually in April, in Qatar, and having that last contact in the Middle East and then back here in the world of Washington I think sort of demonstrates the contrasts of the societies in which we live.

Of the Iraqi situation, I have no doubt in my own mind that we did the right thing in joining with the United States and with Britain and Poland - the Poles don’t get a lot of credit for it - in a coalition of the willing which removed Saddam Hussein. I have no doubt that that was the only way in which we were going to be assured there wouldn’t be an ongoing threat associated with weapons of mass destruction. I also actually have no doubt in my mind that what was referred to as the phase four, the stabilisation and reconstruction of Iraq post the war would actually be more difficult than the conflict phase itself. And so all that has come to pass, it’s just that you never can be sure exactly how these things are going to work out and exactly what will be the challenges involved in the post-conflict phase. And I guess it’s true to say that we have had some surprises.

I think we may have underestimated what a hugely traumatised society that we are dealing with. You can sort of lay out a logical pattern of events but when you try to apply it to a people that have lived in such a violent society for so long, under that sort of fear regime, it’s difficult to apply. We now believe that in the unmarked mass graves, there are over three hundred thousand bodies and most of them are really deaths of the last decade. It’s indicative of the type of society in which these people lived. And you can’t just lift that yoke of oppression and imagine life in a normal way.

I think we may have also underestimated the complexity of Iraqi society; maybe the roles of the tribes, the ethnic and religious differences and how complex it would be to put together out of that a government that might be referred to as democratic, in which you could have a reasonable sharing of power. And certainly with the removal of Saddam, we now have a much clearer picture of that complexity and of the difficulties that are involved in putting those various interest groups together into a working system. And thirdly, I think we may have underestimated that the losers would have nothing further to lose by fighting back.

I think the insurgency which we are experiencing at the moment, when you think about those who were within the Saddam intelligence services or Fedayeen, or some of the party loyalists who now have no future, with the benefit of hindsight, and of course in a country awash with arms – it now seems much more logical than it might have seemed that they wouldn’t give it away easily; they would attempt to fight back. And if they were to adopt hit and run tactics, whether it’s with improvised explosive devises or rocket propelled grenades, or whatever, then they would be very difficult to combat by a conventional military force. Because basically they would strike in the night and they would gone in a flash and unless you – if you are in a reconstruction phase and you’re trying to win hearts and minds, you don’t have the flexibility that you may have had in terms of your retort – and therefore it’s very difficult to combat.

Having said all that, you come away from the place recognising that there is, notwithstanding these difficulties, so much positive that is happening. We, Australia have been putting a lot of effort into the agricultural sector. Others have been putting effort into other sectors: the health sector, education or whatever. Agriculture: they’ve just taken off a million tonnes of grain, we’re helping them build more professional marketing systems, financing systems; improving the quality of their crops. And you can see that if they are given the chance – and by that "they" I mean the farmer out there, the ordinary rural community – then they’ll do okay. They were once a very successful agricultural nation. They’ve got the basics there, and with a bit of help that can succeed again. They were invited to get to back to local government and over eighty percent of the place has got local government already.

Literally hundreds of Australian newspapers are published today in Iraq. The schools are working. I read a paper put out by the new Iraqi education minister the other day, which set out the strengths and weaknesses of the education system, where they would like more help. But basically it’s up and running and the kids are back at school. The utilities, power, water etc is back to about pre-war standards. We’d underestimated the extent to which the infrastructure had been run down. Money had been, even during the ten years of sanctions – Saddam Hussein hadn’t suffered by that – money had been diverted, it was the poor and the weak who suffered even more. And it’s interesting with electricity as I now tell you, that although it’s back to pre-war levels the wealthy areas of Baghdad, or the power elite, their position is not as strong as it was pre-war; but the poor are actually getting more electricity a day now than they were pre-war. So there’s that equality, or the equalising coming through the process as well.

So how do you – you’ve clearly got a broad sector of the community that want to rebuild life and want to go forward – how can they do that in the current security environment? And what is particularly stressing, as we, needless to say, focus on our own forces and our own people who are being killed, and United States has made a great sacrifice already in this instance. But what is equally important in terms of rebuilding the country or building a new country, is the fact that those who are fighting back are now fighting the Iraqi’s who are part of the new Iraq. And so they are assassinating judges, they are now assassinating mayors, and as you all know they are now blowing up police stations as well. And if they succeed in splitting the community - the community that wants a new and a better future - then we’re going to have a double challenge before us. It’s very difficult to handle.

So, where do we go from here? Well there’s absolutely no alternative but to stick with it. Firstly, because our original security goal is not going to be achieved unless we have a stable and free Iraq, so we have that vested interest in it for ourselves. But secondly, I think that one of the incidental benefits of our action was to give the Iraqi people the opportunity for a better future, and I think we owe it to them to stick with it and see this through as well. And nobody is saying anything otherwise, I’m pleased to say. But the pressure is applied and political pressures start to build and I see a bit of it coming out of Washington already. It’s going to take a broad community resolve to support those in government who are prepared to stick with it.

There are thirty nine countries now that have forces in Iraq. I don’t think many people realise that - there is an international support. There would be others who I would like to see as part of that support because I think the best way of making ground quickly in Iraq is for a broad international constituency to support the new Iraq. Whether they supported the war or not, I do think it is important that they join together and now support the new Iraq. That’s going to particularly important with countries who have indicated that they will be sending forces or support but haven’t yet actually done so – such as Japan and South Korea – and it would be interesting for me to hear from Secretary Rumsfeld the response he got in Asia to that particular issue.

We’ve got to stick with it. I do think that we have to accelerate the process of transfer of power to the Iraqi’s, and nobody’s wanted to go slow – we’ve all actually wanted a transfer as soon as the system is workable. And the Iraqi’s themselves, through the Governing Council, have adopted a process that will give them the greatest legitimacy, but it’s also a very slow and difficult process and I don’t think time is on our side. We have to continue to create and maintain a momentum, whether it’s in the economy or whether it’s in the security environment or whether it’s in the transfer of government, if we’re going to have the best chance for success. So we need to work with the Iraqi’s to find a faster way to transfer those responsibilities. We want to get to a situation as quickly as possible where we the occupying powers are not running Iraq; the Iraqi’s are running Iraq and we are supporting them in doing so. And I guess, seeing as I am in this city, I should say that I see a role for those within the international community that would prefer to be operating more directly under the auspices of the United Nations, to get involved in that process as well. It’s not us that’s holding back the UN from a greater role, it’s the uncertainty and differences within the Security Council in particular that’s doing that. And again I think that it is so important that countries put the past in this conflict behind them and for the benefit of the Iraqi people now join together and find ways in which we can support this transfer of power, and then support them in their governance, and support them as they build their new economy, and support them as they seek to create a more stable and safe environment in which to live.

So we’ve been with the United States in a lot of difficult situations in the last couple of years. We were there in Afghanistan together and we’ve still got forces around the world in the war against terror, that hasn’t gone away. We’ve been into, as I said, into Iraq together. In our own various ways we also take up our responsibilities to contribute to a more stable and secure environment. We now have forces in the Solomon Islands in a very different type of task and we’ve still got forces in East Timor, although that has been a remarkable success to date and we’re now able to draw those forces down. But in this post-Cold War era, anyone who thought that the challenge of international security had been overcome and that we’d all be able to take the peace sooner and not put in the effort that we have in the past, I think they’ve now realised the error of their ways. It is now a very complex and uncertain global security environment and we’re only going to win these battles if we stick together and work together. But I’m sure that if we continue to do so, we will be successful, and that’s a responsibility that we all have.

Thank you for coming to breakfast.

ENDS