United States of America: Terrorist attacks

As many speakers in this debate have noted, the events of September 11 are burned into our collective memory and our individual memories. Many people in this debate have spoken about their own memories on learning of the dreadful news of what was happening on that day. All of us share that sense of shock, fear and anger, and those feelings are as strong in our memories now as they were when we first had them. For many Australians that sense of shock was heightened because of their personal familiarity with the areas in the United States that were under attack, and I want to talk particularly about New York City and the World Trade Center.

 I do not know how many Australians have visited the World Trade Center over the years, but I would not be surprised if it were as many as five per cent or even 10 per cent of our population. Australians, as we all know, are inveterate travellers and the World Trade Center was an absolute must-see on any visit to New York.

They say that when you stood on top of the World Trade Center on a clear day the number of people you could see in the tri-state area—New York, Connecticut and New Jersey—exceeded the population of Australia. It is quite a fascinating statistic. Many Australians have also visited Washington DC, where a third plane crashed into the Pentagon and a fourth was intended to crash, before that was prevented by the extraordinary courage of the people on board.

A very high proportion of the occupants of this building have visited Washington DC based upon our professional interest in the core business of that town, which is of course the same as the town. As has been noted by many, including Mr Howard himself, the fact that John Howard, as Australia's then Prime Minister, was in Washington on the very day of this dreadful attack undoubtedly contributed to the speed and vigour of Australia's response in expressing our solidarity with the United States and in our rapidly invoking the ANZUS treaty.

Many Australians have a familiarity with both New York and Washington DC through visiting there and, of course, a large number of Australians have had the opportunity to live and work or study in the United States. In my own case I was lucky enough to spend two years in New York City studying at Columbia University, between 1993 and 1995. Like all who have had the opportunity to live in New York I was entranced by this city, by its extraordinary energy and by its remarkable diversity. I visited the World Trade Center quite frequently. It was hard to avoid, it is a major transport hub with a number of subway lines and the PATH—the Port Authority Trans-Hudson train—connecting there. I also had the opportunity to attend meetings at companies based in the World Trade Center.

The fact that it is commonplace for Australians to live and work in New York City is confirmed by the awful statistics that 10 Australian lives were lost on September 11, 2001. Australians are not by any means unusual in that regard. The United States, and New York City in particular, are a magnet for people from around the world. As we have heard many times, the grim statistics are that not only were Australians killed but people of some 90 nationalities were killed in that appalling attack.

It was an attack on Western civilisation and on the values that unite the United States, Australia and so many other nations around the world. These values include freedom of movement, freedom to pursue the career of your choice, freedom of opportunity, openness to new ideas and opportunities open to all based upon their talents, not on who they were born to, which class they were born into or where they happen to live.

When you reflect on the nature of the companies occupying the World Trade Center, many of them were companies operating in highly competitive industries like banking, insurance, law and many others where employees were chosen based upon their talents and abilities. Many people had come from around the world because they saw it as a chance to work at the height of their profession and to try their luck in a system that was, and remains, ready to give opportunities to people of ability and capacity, regardless of background. One of the things that is most admirable about the United States and its values is that it is open to so many people around the world. Like Australia, the United States is an extraordinarily successful immigrant nation that has drawn people from around the world to come and live permanently or, in other cases, to come and live, work or study for one, two, three, five or 10 years.

These values are the very opposite of the values that underpin the agenda of terrorist movements such as al-Qaeda and their ideological bedfellows in the Taliban. We need only look at the narrowness of the life they seek to impose on people in the areas over which they have physical control. You need only look at their policy of preventing education for girls. You need only look at the detailed and prescriptive control of how people are to live their lives on a day-to-day basis. You need only look at the existence of religious police, constantly on the lookout for those who are not meeting the dictates about how to live and how to worship.

Let there be no doubt that people should, of course, be free to worship as they choose. Muslims must be free to pursue their religious beliefs, as must Christians, Buddhists, Jews and Hindus and those of every religion or of none. This is core to our values in Australia and it is core to the values of the United States; it is core to the values of the many nations that have suffered terrorist attack. That is why I say that the attacks on September 11 were an attack on Western civilisation and the values we cherish.

Tragically, since 2001 there have been other such attacks—in Madrid and London, in Bali and Jakarta. It is trite but nevertheless true to say that the world changed on September 11, 2001. We have seen that in the way the Western nations, including Australia, have responded. I hasten to add that it has not only been the nations traditionally thought of as Western who have joined in the response, but certainly many of the Western nations have responded.

It is a very melancholy anniversary that we are marking in this debate. It is an anniversary that we would very much prefer not to have to mark. It is difficult to find positives in what occurred, but if there is one positive we can find it is that, since 2001, many nations around the world, including of course the United States and Australia, have come together to defend our shared values. In doing that costs, large and small, have been imposed upon everybody in the populations of the many nations affected. On a day-to-day basis, security is tighter. In many ways, we have accepted some inconvenient restrictions on freedom of movement. That is just one small change in the way we live, compared with what was the norm before the attacks on 11 September 2001.

Those small sacrifices pale in comparison to the sacrifices made in the military efforts to bring stability to Afghanistan and Iraq, and to prevent those nations being havens for terrorism. That has been an enormously costly and an enormously painful exercise. It has cost lives—far too many lives—and it has cost money. It goes without saying that, collectively, we have made mistakes along the way. No human endeavour is perfect, and this has certainly not been perfect. Nevertheless, I think we can note in a cautious way that over the past decade we have been required to show confidence in our values and that we have managed to do that—to some extent at least.

Like all other speakers in this debate and in analogous debates in parliaments and congresses around the world and like people speaking at memorial services and other public events around the world, I add my voice to the many voices in all those events, places and forums which mourn the innocent victims of the terrorist atrocities of 11 September 2001. I add my voice to those voices which express thanks for the extraordinary courage of rescue workers. I add my voice to the voices that offer condolences to those who lost friends, family members or workmates on that day. I add my voice to those voices which acknowledge the cost and sacrifice of the military efforts in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere that were triggered as a response to September 11. Finally, I add my voice to those which express determination to uphold the values of Western civilisation; values which offer all the freedom to live their lives as they choose and which reject terrorist aggression, no matter what objective it purports to achieve.