Q and A

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
Interview – ABC1 Q and A
Monday 16 November 2015

SUBJECTS: Paris attacks; Start-ups; South Australia.

TONY JONES: Good evening and welcome to Q&A, live from the Thebarton Theatre in Adelaide. I'm Tony Jones and here to answer your questions tonight: former UN senior adviser Andrew Macleod, who negotiated with the Taliban in Pakistan; the Shadow Minister for Education Kate Ellis; French ambassador to Australia Christophe Lecourtier; young entrepreneur Holly Ransom; the Minister for Industry and Innovation Christopher Pyne; and Independent Senator Nick Xenophon. Please welcome our panel.

Thank you. Now, in the aftermath of the terror attacks in Paris, we’ve made some late changes to our panel, as you’ve seen. On behalf of us all, I would like to offer an especially warm welcome to the French ambassador, Christophe Lecourtier. Thanks for being here.

Our first question tonight comes from Nick Scarvelis.

NICK SCARVELIS: Ambassador Lecourtier, why do you think the terrorists targeted particular venues and those cohorts of Parisians on the weekend?

CHRISTOPHE LECOURTIER: Thank you so much for your question. Let me first tell you how it's important for me to be with you tonight. I have had two terrible days and nights since last Saturday, so it is my first, I would call it, warm evening with you. Imagine that what has happened in Paris two days ago was exactly, you know, a kind of evening like this one. A Friday evening, people, you know, having dinner or enjoying music or enjoying a sport event and suddenly, randomly, cowardly, in cold blood, gunners come and kill 132 people. So that's what has happened in my city, the place where I was raised, where I spent most of my life. So your question is why this has happened? Well, it has happened because it's a war. I wouldn't like to be, you know, so rude probably with you tonight by saying that, but it's a war because the values that we share, the values that we've been sharing with the Australians probably since the First World War are at stake. There are some people who do not accept our way of life, that do think that death is far more important than life and the kind of life we enjoy. And because we disagree with them, because we've tried to resist what they are doing to us, now they are killing our citizens, they are killing my friends, they are killing my parents, my relatives in the cities of my country.

TONY JONES: And targeting what, in secular France, they consider to be decadent, but which is built into the French way of life, to our way of life?

CHRISTOPHE LECOURTIER: Yes, it has taken centuries probably for us to build our way of life. I know that so many Australians enjoy travelling to France. More than one million Australians every year visit France. You know that there is a special connection because of the Great War between us. But, more than that, you know, we share the same values. It means that we want to be able to go out with anybody, to dress as we want, to be in love with any people we want, we love. So that's the kind of things these people do not accept and, until the very last moment, you can be sure that France will resist that and we shall never retreat one millimetre from our values.

TONY JONES: I am going to go straight to our next questioner. Thank you. I’ll go straight to our next questioner. It's Terry Hewton.

TERRY HEWTON: Bonsoir, ambassador and panellists. On Saturday, my wife Julie and I received a message from a French friend responding to the terrifying Paris attacks. It read, in part, "All are okay. Worst attack ever. They say things will change now, from now. Very sad, dark chapter starting." Now, panellists, given what the ambassador has just said, where to from here? Ever tighter security controls? Or more sophisticated strategies firmly anchored on a strong understanding of the social causes of terrorism?

TONY JONES: Let's start with Andrew Macleod and I will bring you back in, in a moment, ambassador. Go ahead.

ANDREW MACLEOD: Thank you, Tony. Let me start off by saying to Christophe, nous sommes tous Parisian ce soir. And we’re all with you, ce soir.

CHRISTOPHE LECOURTIER: Merci beaucoup.

ANDREW MACLEOD: These are two things to say very quickly. The first one is these are now the times to be thoughtful, not emotional. It’s not the time for slogans and to that extent I'm very happy that we’re now being led by Mr Turnbull, rather than Mr Abbott, because it is the thoughtful leadership.

TONY JONES: Okay. It is also not a time for partisanship. So we’ll move on now.

ANDREW MACLEOD: No, it’s not, but I'm not partisan.

TONY JONES: Okay.

ANDREW MACLEOD: What I...

TONY JONES: I'm talking to the audience now.

ANDREW MACLEOD: Yeah. What I do need to say though is, and Christophe has said this is a couple of times, we are in war. They attacked us. But what we need from our national leadership now is to determine who is the them and who is the us and there are two broad choices. It is us westerners against them, all of Islam, or is it us moderates of all religions, against them, radicals of all religions? And we have organisations in this country, like Reclaim Australia, who are really falling into the trap of Islamic State, who are trying to create the us Westerners against them, all of Islam. If we fall into that trap, we’re saying we want to fight with 1.6 billion people, whereas if we define the us as all moderates of all religions, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, against radicals of all religions, it’s a much smaller number to fight and a much more effective number to fight. So what we’ve got to do at the beginning, Terry, to come to your question, we need to make sure, as a country, the us, is moderates of all religions, against them, the radicals of all religions.

TONY JONES: Christopher Pyne, let’s bring you in.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, first of all, Tony, I think it's wonderful that Christophe has joined the panel tonight and I've been listening to him on the radio over the last few days and I've been incredibly impressed with his courage and strength of purpose and in representing the French Government's view here in Australia. Fortunately every Australian could be under no illusion about France's position. In terms of Terry's question, the very important thing is that we don't allow people to change our way of life, that the terrorists and extremists want us to change the way we live. We are a very sophisticated, successful, liberal democracy and we have to make sure that when this process is all finished, when this is over, and it will be over at some point, we are still a sophisticated, liberal, open democracy. That's the most important priority. How do we achieve that end? Well, we have to achieve it in a number of ways. We achieve it by continuing in our current way of life, and we achieve it by militarily defeating ISIS in Syria and Iraq, that is a necessary foundation for being able to go on with our way of life, but we achieve it, too, by not allowing ISIS to do what they want to do, which Andrew eluded to, which is turning Australian against Australian or European against European. So, we mustn't allow extremist militant Islamists to represent the Islamic faith. Moderate Muslims need to be embraced in Australia or elsewhere, moderate Muslim governments need to be embraced, wherever they might be, because they have at much at stake as we do in defeating the extremists.

TONY JONES: Kate Ellis?

KATE ELLIS: Well, first of all, I would join with the other panellists in passing on my thoughts and my condolences to the ambassador to the people of France. The question where to from here, I believe that now absolutely has to be a time for cool and calm heads, and that means that our leaders need to all step up and be putting forward messages of unity and the importance of it. And I don't just talk about political leaders. I think all leaders across our community. I mean, I, for one, cannot for a moment comprehend why Pauline Hanson was on our television over the weekend speaking about these events and about Muslim Australians. We need to - and I guess in the spirit I've just spoken about, I agree with everything that Christopher just said on this issue. This is a time when, of course, we need to make sure that we have safeguards and security provisions in place but we also have to make sure that we make very clear to everyone that moderate Muslims are our closest ally and they must be our closest ally in this fight.

TONY JONES: Nick Xenophon?

NICK XENOPHON: Well, firstly, we need to embrace the moderates. This can't be about - against Islam. It's about moderates against extremists. But let’s put this in perspective. ISIS did not exist before March 2003, before the American invasion of Iraq. As bad as Saddam Hussein was - and he was, he was a brutal dictator - the US. in a botched strategy, a muddle headed strategy, made a mess of things and it spawned sectarian violence. We have to avoid the mistakes of the past. We must deal with the existential threat that ISIS is to the West but we must - we must acknowledge that we cannot bomb our way out of this. We must acknowledge that if we have indiscriminate - because what happened in Iraq - what happened in Iraq was a bloody mess. We have to learn from that and unless we learn from it, we’re destined to repeat the same mistakes.

TONY JONES: Nick, there’ll be more on that particular subject coming up, I've seen some of the questions which canvas those issues. Holly Ransom, what do you think?

HOLLY RANSOM: I think a lot of what the panel has said - and, Christophe, I’d like to echo my sympathies to yourself and all the Parisians out there , we do pray for Paris and very much that unity we've seen and that demonstration and outpouring of love and hope is something we need to continue to send to that part of the world and to others. I think, to your point, we do need to better understand who it is that we’re fighting. I think we’ve made some mistakes in how the strategy has been played out so, in part, I think you’re right that it needs to be smarter strategies. In part, we need leaders to be more careful with the way that we use language and, in part, we need to understand that this is a really complex and challenging issue. You know, as Christopher alluded to, it’s not just going to be able to be a military strategy that will solve this problem. We do need to approach that part of it. We know part of ISIS' legitimacy is its hold on territory, and that needs to be dealt with. Part of it is a political solution. So how do we ensure stability back into that region, enable governance, restore a nation that is war torn and in part, as well, to Kate's point, I think it is about community leadership. You know, terrorism cannot proliferate where social cohesion is strong and that's part of the solution that each and every single one of us can play a role in, in how do we ensure that the tolerance, unity, that multiculturalism is something that we are living and we’re demonstrating day in, day out.

TONY JONES: Christopher, I bring you back in. There are five million Muslims living in France.

CHRISTOPHE LECOURTIER: Yes.

TONY JONES: A very tiny percentage of them have been radicalised. Some of them have taken part in these terrible events. What happens if you go too far in your measures at home?

CHRISTOPHE LECOURTIER: This is, indeed, a very important issue for a country like France and it’s probably the same in Britain. Roughly 9 to 10% of the population now is Muslim. It’s a very important community but, of course, 96, 97, 98% of them are good people and probably we've not done enough in the past 20 years to bring them fully into the nation. When I look at Australia, I do see that you have been, you know, behaving and working far better than us in the previous 20 years to bring new immigrants into your communities and, in that sense, Australia is a true model. So he we have to work on that and, for instance, if I can make a confidence to you, I have myself adopted a Muslim boy. He was 19 years old at the time and I try to do my best to give him the chance to become a true French citizen, and now what he wants to become? An Australian.

TONY JONES: I'm not going to say whether that's a wise choice or not. Let's go to next question. It’s from Mohammad Al Khafaji.

MOHAMMAD AL-KHAFAJI: Good evening, everyone. Firstly, I would like to send my sympathies and condolences to you, Ambassador, and the people of France and, as a young Australian Muslim, that really means a lot and I'm really sorry about what happened. I came to Australia in 2003 as an Iraqi refugee and, having also lived in Syria myself, I'm very grateful for the opportunities that I've had here in Australia, and I'm determined to give back to the community that welcomed me here. To the rest of the panel: every time there is a terrorist attack, I and my community have been called upon to condemn and explain ourselves as Muslims about why and how this happened. When do people realise that this has nothing to do with any religion and when can we move forward?

TONY JONES: Andrew Macleod, I’ll start with you.

ANDREW MACLEOD: Thank you very much. Thank you for your question, Mohammad. I’m going to pick you up on a little bit. It is all very nice for us to say this is nothing to do with religion, but that's not quite true. Religion is used as a motivator for people and, in fact, you can take parts of the Torah, the New Testament and the Koran and take these provisions and they can be used to inspire all sorts of hatred and, across the centuries, different parts of different religions have done so. What we see in this century, because of the impact of information, technology, a vast spread of communication, is the distorted message of the religious text is passed to a lot more people and a lot faster, so religion is used as a motivator but are these people true Muslims? I don't think so, in the same way that a paedophile priest has done such a heinous act that it takes them outside of the spectrum of Christianity, in my view. I don't care how much a paedophile priest tells me he’s a Christian, his actions prove to me he is not, and I don't care how much a terrorist proclaims “Allahu akbar”, he is not a Muslim by the very actions that he is undertaking, but we need to be aware that religion is being used as a motivator and that is part of what I was talking about earlier, about setting up the world of who is the us and who is the them, and our language and our words now have to be very, very important. If we want us to be all moderates against all radicals, consider this: When the Charlie Hebdo attacks happened back in January, the tragedy in Paris, 12 journalists were killed. In response, we sent - we, the West - a number of world leaders and hundreds of thousands of people protesting up and down the streets in Paris for an objection to the murder but also demanding the right to free speech and demanding the right to offend. Everybody recognised those cartoons were offensive, yet a few weeks earlier 132 children and nine teachers, including a friend of mine, were butchered in a school in Peshawar in Pakistan because the children had committed the sin of being the children of military officers who were fighting the radicals that we, too, are also fighting, yet we said almost nothing. So what is the signal that we’re sending to moderate Islam? We will protest loudly for the right to offend you, but we’ll be silent when your children die. Is this the way that we create a collaborative partnership with moderate Islam? And you want to know something? I really don't like the term “moderate Islam”. I would prefer to say "real Muslims". There are extremists and there are real Muslims. Moderate Islam are just like all of us: normal, everyday people that follow the God of Abraham, like Jews, like Christians, like Muslims, but the terrorists have stepped so far out of that, I don't think it's valid to call them Muslims. I don’t think it’s valid to say they’re religious but we do need to recognise, Mohammad, that religion is used as a motivator.

TONY JONES: Can I just go back to Mohammad? Do you want to - would you like to respond to that analysis?

CONDEMNING TERRORISM00:18:21

MOHAMMAD AL-KHAFAJI: Sure, I mean, we see in the media all the time that people say Muslims in the community haven't come out and haven't denounced this but, yet, they selectively choose what to hear and what not to hear and I'm constantly in a bit of a battle of saying how do we come, as a community, to move forward on this issue? How do we bring people together from all walks of life and actually understand and sit down and talk to each other and learn from each other?

TONY JONES: Thank you very much. I'm going to go to Christopher Pyne here. Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott said yesterday the tragedy for Islam - in a speech that was widely said to be quite moderate, actually, compared to the Team Australia kind of ideas from earlier - the tragedy for Islam is that people who are doing these horrible, evil things claim to be doing it in the name of God, in the name of Islam. Is that something that has to be recognised?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, I think Andrew has dealt with that, to a large extent. I mean people who are claiming to be doing things in the name of religion can do so whether it's Islam, in past, you know, Christianity, whatever particular religion is at that time behaving in an extreme way. It doesn't mean that they’re actually acting like Muslims and, because they use that, we should be very careful not to fall into the trap of them pushing us into the corner that they want us to be in to then turn against them within our own communities. Now, Andrew mentions the massacre in Peshawar, but only in the last week, I think over 40 to 50 people were killed in Beirut, which is a very moderate, sophisticated city in the middle of the Middle East and we didn't say enough about that at the time. I remember thinking at the time we should say something about that but, of course, we didn't know what was going to happen in Paris on the weekend and now, in hindsight, of course, but the point that you make and the point that Mohammad makes, it brings home that we must say things when those things happen. Before I hand the microphone back to you, though, Tony, the Muslim communities do come out and condemn these acts when they occur. They shouldn't be called on to do so because it suggests that they didn't want to do it. I agree with Mohammad. I've never known one of these things to happen where Muslim leaders in Australia didn't come out and condemn them but, by the very act of demanding that they come out, you suggest that they didn't want to and I think that is something we must stop happening in Australia. Whoever is doing that must stop it, because it is pejorative demand. I don't know any Muslims in my community who would think that the acts in Paris or in Lebanon or anywhere else were reasonable and their leadership should react exactly the same way as everyone else's leadership, which is to be horrified and aghast by it.

TONY JONES: Nick Xenophon?

NICK XENOPHON: Christopher, you would agree, though, that when Prime Minister Abbott said, “I wish Islamic leaders, when they condemn terrorism, really meant it”, that wasn't helpful was it?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, I'm not going to be partisan and political, Nick. I mean I think in the...

NICK XENOPHON: No, you’re not. Okay. No, but that hasn't helpful and I think Prime Minister Turnbull's language is much more reasonable. It’s nuanced.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, Malcolm said on the weekend that there needed to be a political solution in Syria. I think that’s a statement of the obvious. We have to have a military solution in order to reach a political solution but, in the light of what happened on the weekend, I am not going to be partisan or political about these events.

NICK XENOPHON: No, but I think it's important to say that I agree with you, we need to embrace real Muslims, moderates or however you want to describe them, because that is a solution to this and that is why the Grand Mufti of Australia, who I know, Professor Ibrahim Abu Mohammed, was unequivocal in his condemnation and expressing his condolences and grief for what occurred in France and that's Australia's Islamic leader and I think that's very encouraging.

TONY JONES: Okay, we’re going to move on to some other questions. Just briefly before we do that, Andrew, you mentioned those schoolchildren slaughtered in Peshawar in the military school and, of course, the Taliban killers justified what they were doing by saying those children went immediately to heaven because the last thing they heard was, "Allahu akbar".

ANDREW MACLEOD: This is something we need to understand. A lot of people say terrorists are crazy, insane, stupid. Actually they’re not. I am going to say something that might offend one or two people and I apologise. I’m going to over-generalise now the Abrahamic religions, and I know it’s an over-generalisation, so please don't tweet the heck out of me.

KATE ELLIS: Good luck with that.

ANDREW MACLEOD: Yeah. If you believe in God and lots of Jews, Christians and Muslims do, and you believe in heaven and lots of Jews, Christians and Muslims do, and you believe there is a certain code of conduct you need to follow that gets you into heaven and lots of Jews, Christians and Muslims do, then it's logical to follow that code of conduct. It's not crazy. It’s logical. So the question now comes is who taught you what code of conduct? What are you following? You learned yours in your schools. People learnt theirs in their schools, which is why the challenge in countries like Syria and the challenge with radical Islam is a multi generational challenge, because there are people in that community who have been taught, in my view wrongly, that the code of conduct to get into heaven is to do this sort of thing. There is a rabbi, Jonathan Sax who has written a book Not In God's Name. And if you want to understand this dynamic, it’s a wonderful, wonderful book, because he talks about a thing called dualism, which is creating the us versus them fight and once you create the us versus them fight, it is very, very easy to be destructive of other human beings and then he says you move from there to a thing called altruistic evil. Because you’re not doing this bad thing for yourself, you are doing what God commands you to do, it’s now not evil. It’s altruistic. It’s following the teachings of God. Altruistic evil and dualism, us vs them, and we’ve got to be very careful. They’re not crazy. They’re following a logical path based on an educational framework that I just happen to think is grossly wrong.

TONY JONES: Christophe, is that something the French Government is going to have to counter in this tiny group of people that we are talking about, and how do you do it?

CHRISTOPHE LECOURTIER: Well, I mean there is a lot that we shall need to do in the coming weeks anyway. There is the risk also of radicalisation of our own political life because, as you know, there is a populist party that is growing in the far right that probably is around 30, 35% now.

TONY JONES: Marine Le Pen.

CHRISTOPHE LECOURTIER: Marine Le Pen. So this is not only something French, it’s also happening in other countries in Europe. So probably it’s evil against evil and that's what the terrorists are looking for, to radicalise the country, to organise a kind of, you know, struggle between different communities of this country. So there’s a lot of work that needs to be done and needs to be done right now.

TONY JONES: Let’s move on to our next question. It’s from Diana Piantedosi.

DIANA PIANTEDOSI: Apparently one of the attackers who carried out the atrocities in Paris posed as a refugee to gain asylum in Greece. While I know circumstances like this are extremely rare, exactly how are we selecting the 12,000 Syrian refugees Australia will be offering permanent protection visas to? The former PM, Tony Abbott, said we wouldn't be offering sorry said we would be offering asylum to those most in need of protection: men - sorry, women, children and families from persecuted minorities. But my understanding is the most executed minority embroiled in this crisis is actually gay men who are actively hunted and meet especially brutal ends. So exactly how are we determining who is in most need of our help and how is the Government making sure no one ill intentioned will slip through the cracks?

TONY JONES: Holly, you’re not here representing the Government but I want to hear you on that question first, because there is obviously going to be, in some parts of the community, and Christophe just alluded to it in France, a kind of backlash now against bringing refugees from Syria into various countries?

HOLLY RANSOM: Yeah, there will be and I think the point was made in Diana's question, though, that this is an extreme minority and I think it's really important then, when we look at this issue, we don't conflate the humanitarian crisis with our response to dealing with an extremist group. I mean, we’ve got to be mindful that the people who are fleeing execution, who are leaving seeking security, seeking refuge, are the same people who are you know, they’re fleeing the same people that perpetrated the attacks on the weekend and so it's really important, I think, first and foremost that we do continue to provide that. Now, if we need to add additional layers to our process, it’s important we keep an eye to national security, without a doubt, in how we go about doing this but I think we shouldn't waiver whatsoever from our commitment that we've made to take 12,000 refugees.

TONY JONES: Kate Ellis.

KATE ELLIS: Well, I think we need to have a look at the extent of the crisis in Syria. We’re talking about, at last count, 11 million displaced Syrians. We, in Australia, are talking about bringing in 12,000. Now, we have and we should, of course, make sure that we do background checks, make sure we have our security arrangements in place, but we can go through a process and find 12,000 people out of 11 million displaced Syrians and we should do that. We should also remember that, when we’re talking about us v them, it was Muslims who were the first victims of Islamic State. It was the people of Syria and the people of northern Iraq and there are now millions of them displaced and Australia is big enough and smart enough to find a way that we can do that safely. And I don't, for a moment, try and discount people's concerns. I absolutely get that there are people that are scared, people that want to know that we have precautions in place. We should make sure that we have our intelligence agencies have the capacity and the resources that they need to do this properly but then we should absolutely do it and we should do more.

TONY JONES: Christopher Pyne, we’ll going back to the core part of the question which was how will the 12,000 going to be chosen and is there any even hint that Muslims will be excluded from that and particularly Muslim men?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, I think I agree with most of what Kate said. I would only add to that that it's 12,000 in addition to the usual about 14,500 plus humanitarian visas that we issue each year. So it’s 26,000 plus this coming 12 months and I agree with Kate that I'm sure it's not beyond our wit to run a very serious filter over everyone coming to Australia. We have been doing that for decades and we are pretty good at it and I'm very confident that we will find the right people. There are no end of minorities in Syria wanting to get out, whether they are gay men, whether they’re Melkites, Antiochians, Maronites, every kind of Christian minority has been horrifically persecuted, Druze, in some parts of Syria, of course, Shiite Muslims and Sunni Muslims are, in some parts of Syria, minorities who are being persecuted by each other as well. So there is no end of people campaigning to be the most persecuted minority in Syria and I'm very confident that we will find 12,000 people and I'm sure the government of Malcolm Turnbull will continue to monitor what we can do and how much more we can do over the course of the coming years, because this will not be a matter that is resolved in the next six to 12 months. The Prime Minister of France was saying today that they expect more attacks, maybe in the next few days, few weeks, or few months, that the French intelligence service has expected attacks to occur. It is a very complex situation and Australia, as a sophisticated, wealthy first-world developed country, has a responsibility to play at least our part, to ensure we do what's necessary to help the people who are in need.

TONY JONES: Okay, we’ll go to a related question. It is from Marziya Mohammadi.

MARZIYA MOHAMMADI: Good evening. First of all, please allow me to express my heartfelt condolence to the people of France and to the ambassador. My name is Marziya Mohammadi. I’m a former refugee from Afghanistan. I was born to the Hazara ethnic minority, who have a long history of persecution and continue to be the prime target of insurgents in Afghanistan. In fact, as we speak of the attacks in France, only three days before that, Hazara men, women and children were beheaded in the worst possible manner by the very same brand of terror, and similar atrocities had my father flee Afghanistan 15 years ago to arrive in Australia by boat. I find it really heartbreaking to realise that the attacks in France are actually translating to active demonisation and opposition of refugees here at home and beyond. So my question is why political mantras like "Close the border" and "Tighten Australia's refugee policy" are being advocated. How do we ensure that the focus is not actually shifted from finding real solutions, solid solutions to tackling global terrorism to that of victimisation of a particular group of people who are vulnerable, desperate, and running for their lives for the same acts of terror and threats?

TONY JONES: I will start with Nick Xenophon.

NICK XENOPHON: That’s a terrific question. Taking 12,000 refugees from Syria is the right thing to do. It’s a good thing to do. We’re a big country with a big heart. There are 12 million displaced people, as Kate said. It highlights the need for a political solution. What we have been doing to date has not been working. We’ve actually seemed to have strengthened ISIS and strengthened the terrorists. We need to have a different approach. I was reading today a 2004 Pentagon report, US Department of Defence, where they actually said that their approach in dealing with the threat of extremists has been, to date, back in 2004, counter productive. They said it has had the opposite of the effect intended. I don't know what Andrew thinks about that, as an expert, whether he thinks it still applies but the issue is this: you know, I think, the definition of insanity, as Einstein said, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. We need to do something different.

TONY JONES: Yep. Christophe, can I bring you in and I’ll take you back to the previous question, as well, which mentioned the passport, the Syrian passport, that was found near the body of one of the suicide bombers and which, of course, has begun a debate about the refugees coming into Europe, flooding into Europe. The “close the borders” thing is going to get bigger in Europe, by the sound of it?

CHRISTOPHE LECOURTIER: Probably, but you he know it's always easy to caricature things and more difficult to analyse precisely what's happening. Since I arrived in this country, I have received a lot of advices from senior ministers - I’m not talking about you Christopher Pyne saying why aren’t you able to stop the boats? But, you know, you just have to look at what is the geography and also the geopolitical of Europe and it's not something you can do like that, first of all. Second this is that Europe has always been a balance between generosity a lot of immigrants have also come to Europe - of course to Australia and did it pretty well - but also to Europe in the past 30 years and, on the other hand, we need to control our borders. So it’s not easy at all to find the right approach to that.

TONY JONES: Can I just interrupt you just for a moment there. You talk about stop the boats thing and, of course, I imagine you’re referring to Tony Abbott's speech in London, the Thatcher Lecture, in which he more or less suggested that Europe should follow the course that he set in train in Australia. Do you think those kind of calls will become more prevalent?

CHRISTOPHE LECOURTIER: I've heard that from many other people than the previous Prime Minister but, probably yes, there will be I mean, some people will be tempted by drafting very, you know, simple solutions. I was talking about the national front. The national front is just about scapegoats. Everything that goes wrong in France is because of immigrants, is because of Europe, is because of euro but, at the end of the day, they have no problem. So, we’ll have to be very careful with that. But it's true that probably among the thousands of refugees, you know, some wolves are hidden amongst the sheeps and that's why we have, of course, to strengthen the controls that we can organise but it's pretty difficult, as it was difficult for the French police or intelligence to prevent people from striking, people that were ready to die, because seven out of eight of these terrorists had decided that they would not survive their attack and when the police came next to them they just blew themselves up. So, you know, everything is quite difficult to understand and, of course, to imagine the right reactions, so we have to be very careful about what we say about that.

TONY JONES: Alright. You’re watching Q&A live from Adelaide's Thebarton Theatre. The next question, and it's one that comes back to the issue raised earlier about military intervention, comes from Peter Goon.

PETER GOON: Thank you, Tony. Australia has some of the finest fighting men and women in the world. They can be innovative, creative, agile, adaptable and extremely effective when they are allowed to get on and do the job. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has called for military defeating the self proclaimed, so called ISIL state, Islamic State, yet last month the American-led coalition forces averaged only a handful of air strikes per day. During the 1991 Desert Storm campaign, the number of air strikes averaged 1,200 per day leading the USAF's retired Lieutenant General Dave Deptula, a veteran of Desert Storm, to refer to the operation in Syria as Desert Drizzle. Coalition air forces are being constrained by untenable and inappropriate rules of engagement enforced upon them by the US administration. Isn't it time our people were allowed to get on and do the job?

TONY JONES: Andrew Macleod, I will start with you.

ANDREW MACLEOD: I would disagree slightly, Peter, with one part of your question. If you remember back, Prime Minister David Cameron wanted the United Kingdom to be much more aggressive in Syria and the Parliamentans in Westminster voted no. I was briefing, in camera, a number of politicians back then and I said the problem that you've got is by the time you make up your mind for a small scale intervention, the time for the effectiveness of a small scale intervention will go and then by the time you make up your mind about a medium scale intervention, the window will be closed with that and then you’re going to be left with an unholy mess that requires a large intervention. That’s where we’re at today and we've now got to look at this war between us and them in a much broader context. There are the home wars that we need to have with home grown second and third generation. There is a tiny, tiny number of people that are coming in as refugees or supposed refugees with terrible effect that we saw in Paris, but then let me link your question with the previous question in an unusual way. Because we always talk about refugees and asylum seekers as a threat, not an asset. Over history, militaries have spent treasure and blood to get spies behind the front lines, to understand the enemies' thinking and where they are and we now have thousands - no, millions - of people who understand ISIS, understand their theology, understand their thinking, who hate them with a passion and we are turning our back on these people. I look at these 12,000 asylum seekers, not just as asylum seekers and refugees, but in there is the potential members of our security and intelligence forces who will tell us more about Islamic State than we've ever known before. They are the greatest assets we can have in this war, if only we start to look at them as assets and that is a critical part of this war that we are missing, the whole intelligence place, human intelligence, that we gave up on a long, long time ago. But we do need to have the discussion, as France, as United Kingdom, as Australia, as United States, what actually we are wanting to do in this war, and if we are going to do it, go back to the lesson from Vietnam, do it properly.

HIS HONOUR: Alright, Kate Ellis, do it properly, upscale the war, if you want to put it in those terms, or, as Peter Goon has just asked, give our armed forces greater latitude to do more bombing?

KATE ELLIS: I think in response to Peter's question, we have to be very careful that we stay within the legal framework that we set out for Australia's involvement and it was very clear that that was at the request of the Iraqi Government to help with their self defence. It means that it is more complicated, our involvement, the parameters around it, and I think it is incredibly important, obviously, that Australia stays within that framework. But the other thing is I mean, Andrew talked about the end game. What does it look like? At the moment if you look at Syria, there is a choice between Islamic State and the Assad regime. So until we actually know what the solution, what the long term plan is, and that needs a political solution, no military solution on its own is going to deliver the peace that we need here. The other thing that I would say that we haven't touched on but is incredibly important if we are talking about long term peace and we are talking about long term stability in Syria, and that is that we also acknowledge the extent of the humanitarian crisis in Syria, and that we make sure that those countries of first asylum are equipped with the shelter and the food that they need for the now millions of people who are fleeing. It strikes me as odd that the very same people that would jump up and down with the stop the boat slogans in our community are the people that say, "Why are you putting my taxpayer dollars into foreign aid?" We need to actually recognise there is no simplistic answer here and it is much more complicated and we need to have an intelligent discussion about how it’s all linked.

TONY JONES: Okay. I’m just going to quickly get Christopher - we’ll come to more of that in a moment, because we’ve got one more question on the subject. We’ll go quickly to Christopher Pyne. Are Australian - the Australian air force being constrained by what the questioner said were unrealistic rules of engagement imposed on the Australian Air Force by the United States?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, nothing has been imposed on the Australian air force by the United States. The Australian involvement contribution is quite significant. It is what we can afford to do. I think Kate is right, Australia operates within the legal parameters that a country like Australia should operate within. We aren't going to
behave like cowboys in the Middle East. We were very effective in the first and second Iraq wars, working with our allies. That's where Australia works best and we are working very well now in Iraq and Syria, and we will continue to do so. If we are asked to increase our involvement, then the National Security Committee of the Cabinet and the Cabinet will discuss that and make a decision. France today showed what can be done when they acted to attack Raqqa in the way that they did, taking out a munitions depot, a headquarters and a training facility of ISIL. I heard somebody today on the radio say that al-Qaeda had warned ISIL that if they pushed the West too far, the West would respond and destroy them, as had happened in Afghanistan to al Qaeda when the United States decided, after September 11, that enough was enough. So I think the next few days, few weeks, few months are very, very important. Cool heads should prevail and Malcolm Turnbull's admonition to, I think, the Australian media in a generous and soft way was don't expect a fire breathing response from the Government, expect a cool headed response, built around, sure, military involvement, but diplomatic involvement, political solutions and a humanitarian solution which Kate also alluded to.

TONY JONES: We just heard about the French bombing in Raqqa and I suppose the obvious question, and I'm afraid I’ll require a brief answer, has France taken the gloves off when it comes to its bombing campaign?

CHRISTOPHE LECOURTIER: I mean, we had to respond because what the terrorists tried to do is make us, you know, retreat from our previous decision, our previous position, so we had to retaliate and probably this will happen again in the coming times. But as you said, I mean, there is no military solution, so we are also working and most of the G20 has been working on that issue, how to find the right political evolution, the right political solution in Syria

TONY JONES: And we have a question on that. It’s from Bassam Daly. It will be the final question on this topic.

BASSAM DALY: The West don't seem to have learnt anything from the last 20 plus years, where the doctrine of democracy export through military intervention seems to have prevailed. The state of affair as a consequence of that is what we see today in Iran - sorry, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Libya, in Yemen, in Syria. Isn't it time that we rethink what we do and that we approach these conflicts through a different doctrine of negotiation, like we did the issue of nuclear Iran?

TONY JONES: Do you mean - can I just interrupt you there, Bassam - do you mean rethink the idea of the concept of regime change, and particularly in Syria?

BASSAM DALY: That's right, on the pretext of national interest, these Western governments give themselves the right to go and interfere militarily, either directly or indirectly, in the affairs of these states and when these states are in fail states, these type of radical groups seem to find safe havens for them to grow and we eventually will suffer from it. I will put that, actually, the way we should approach these things is more in a negotiating tactic to prevent it from happening. After five years in Syria, we are now saying there’s no military solution. Perhaps there was never one from the first place and all the death and destruction...

TONY JONES: Bassam, I’ll have to let the panel engage with that question. So we’ll start with Nick Xenophon, who raised this at the beginning.

NICK XENOPHON: Well, I agree with Christopher Pyne that the first Iraq war that was in response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, that was a necessary response. I disagree with Christopher. I think the second Iraq war was a mistake in terms of our involvement. France actually voted against it, I think. Is that right, Christophe?

CHRISTOPHE LECOURTIER: Yes. Yes, we did.

NICK XENOPHON: They voted against the second...

CHRISTOPHE LECOURTIER: We strongly opposed.

NICK XENOPHON: And you were strongly - France was strongly opposed to it. We are now in a mess. You're right, we need to reconsider. We have to do something differently. It needs to be a political solution. I think what Malcolm Turnbull said is encouraging but the worst thing we can do is to have a massive bombing campaign that leads to civilian casualties because then ISIS will recruit hundreds, if not thousands more recruits. We need to embrace real Muslims and fight it, but we have to do something differently.

TONY JONES: So, Nick Xenophon, does that mean, if regime changes out of order from the way you look at it, should the regime in Syria remain in power, that is the dictator Assad? Is that the best way to deal with this problem of ISIS?

NICK XENOPHON: Sometimes you have to - well, or a political solution where Assad's power is clipped significantly and I think that's what the West is looking at, the G20 is looking at, but what we are doing now, it has not worked. As brutal and as bad as Saddam Hussein was, it seems that we were replaced - it was replaced with almost a greater evil, in terms of the hundreds of thousands of lives that were lost. We need to avoid the same mistakes.

TONY JONES: Holly Ransom, can you imagine the West contemplating basically, and particularly the United States, switching positions and backing President Assad to stay in power as a way of defeating ISIS?

HOLLY RANSOM: Look, I think one of the things we are expecting to see come out of the G20 in the next 24 hours will be not only part of the early stage of the political solution or the military approach, though I'm sure the language will keep it vague as to exactly how that will play out, but also, in part, the global humanitarian response and how everyone will play a role in that. I think the thing is and it’s actually an undertow that’s run through a lot of the questions tonight, there is a need for new leadership. There is a need for new thinking, both in how we empower - you know, to Mohammad's question, how do we bring new advocates out? How do we facilitate a different conversation? - right to what Bassam was talking about there said, around how do we make sure we’re not persisting with an approach that we’ve continued to see fall short and fail to create the outcomes that we’re wanting. So while you don't see an about turn coming overnight by any stretch, you hope that we can come back to the table and rethink the manner in which we are going about engaging, and I wouldn’t say the US will change its foreign policy by any stretch overnight, but that a global solution can start to look at new alternatives.

TONY JONES: Christophe Lecourtier, the US bottom line, for some time, has been that there can be no peace plan for Syria if Assad remains part of it.

CHRISTOPHE LECOURTIER: Yes.

TONY JONES: Does France think that is the wrong approach?

CHRISTOPHE LECOURTIER: Yes, no, we still believe that Assad cannot be part of a final and stable solution. You know...

TONY JONES: An interim solution, which is, I guess, the position Australia has adopted?

CHRISTOPHE LECOURTIER: At least, at that stage what we've seen and that is one of the very few good consequences of the Paris attacks, is direct discussion between President Obama and President Putin for the first time in so many months, and apparently they have been - they’ve agreed on a first round of, you know, to define what could be this political solution and, at the end of it, Assad would have to leave, and France will not be supporting any solution that would leave Assad in its capital, because we do believe that he is part of the problem since the very beginning and that he cannot be part...

TONY JONES: That will put you at loggerheads with Russia automatically and with Iran, who both want to keep Assad in power.

CHRISTOPHE LECOURTIER: Then it’s probably a question of schedule and of being - doing that implementing that step by step and it is a matter of diplomats, as you imagine.

TONY JONES: Andrew, is anyone that diplomatic to get Russia and Iran to agree that Assad must go eventually?

ANDREW MACLEOD: Maybe eventually. I mean, the thing about Foreign Affairs is you are not and leadership in foreign affairs is almost always not a choice between a good option and a bad option. You don't need leadership in a good option and a bad option. You pick the good one. What we see in Syria, as we saw in Iraq - because there are debates on both sides, Nick, about would Iraq have been better with Saddam Hussein in place still butchering hundreds of thousands of people? Now, there are arguments on both sides and what we've got in Syria now is a balance of bad options? Do we leave Assad in power? Do we re empower the Russians in their foreign policy? Do we go in and bomb the heck out of it? I mean, each of those options is a bad option and the challenge for our leaders is to steer the way and find the least bad of bad options. When I said earlier, Tony, that if you are going to do it, do it properly, I didn't mean just militarily, I meant the whole spectrum and the big mistake in Iraq, in my view, isn't they intervened. The big mistake in Iraq was there was no plan for the recovery and the reconstruction and the data is clear, if you don't get economic growth in a failed and fragile state, it will descend back into conflict every time. And strange as it may seem, there was no discussion between military and political planners with the private sector to talk about how do you actually get the economy going again? How do you actually give back to communities something they will lose, i.e. jobs and economic prosperity, if they go back to war? So if we were to do something in Syria and we were to do it properly, properly in my view means reconstruction, recovery, understanding the communities, know how to build civil societies, back in countries post conflict. None of those things were done in Iraq.

TONY JONES: Christopher Pyne, I will bring you in for the final word on this. Julie Bishop warned that getting rid of Assad could leave a power vacuum in Damascus. That means, I presume, that our Government, at least, is considering leaving him in place for a period of time or advocating that he remain in place.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I think Christophe put it very well when he said that it’s all a matter of schedule. All Western governments believe that the Assad regime should be replaced. It is a question of when that might happen. Now, for those people who are calling for the regime to instantly be changed, I would be fascinated what their view was about Saddam Hussein, about Muammar Gaddafi, about Egypt. I mean, the West has to plan, post the regime change, what's going to happen. That is something - Bassam, I think, asked the original question. We have been quite determined to replace appalling regimes, from Saddam Hussein to Muammar Gaddafi. I don't think we've planned the post period well. And, in Iraq, we removed all of the administrators and public servants who had been associated with the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein, the Ba’ath Party. They were the people that could have run the country. They weren't necessarily all mad Saddam Hussein advocates. Most of them would have been fearing for their lives, I assume, and yet they were all removed instantly. It’s a good example of where we got it wrong and that we need to get things right in the future.

TONY JONES: I’m going to move along and we are here in South Australia. The subjects we would have been talking about will come up now, with what little time we’ve got left. We’ve got a question. We actually have had regime change of a kind in Australia quite recently. The next questions relates to that. It comes from Amelia Romaldi

AMELIA ROMALDI: Hi. So our Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, has recently been in Berlin, and that’s a city that’s economy is thriving because of an influx of start-up businesses, like small business. When you consider our State, we have such a high - like the highest unemployment rate in the country and obviously our economy is suffering because of that. What more can our government do to help, like, people undertake these type of small business ventures in our State to improve our economy.

TONY JONES: I’ll start with Holly Ransom.

HOLLY RANSOM: Great question, Amelia, and it’s something that a lot of young South Australians are talking to me about. Unfortunately South Australia has the highest youth unemployment rate at the moment and the want to be able to, not just pursue job opportunities of any kind, but also to take up the opportunity to start your own business, is really important. I think there is a lot of hope coming from young people right around the country in the language shift and the narrative shift in the Turnbull Government, and the fact that we’re talking now about an innovation agenda and that we’re going to see in December, the Minister announced, the plan for how it is nationally that we can take a coordinated approach to really a thriving entrepreneurship and incubate a system that can allow young people and people of all ages right around the country to start up their business. Now, key to that is going to be a couple of things. We’ve got to look at tax reform and a coordinated approach to that. Everything from the IP side of it, through to how do we incentivise more investment in start ups, incubators and accelerators. We also need to look at how we improve the way that we’re educating our young people. You know, it’s really alarming to look at the data on education and see that 60% of what we’re skilling and what young people are studying right now will be subject to enormous disruption within the next two decades. So this skills mismatch that we’ve got going on, we’re not skilling a generation for uncertainty. We’re not skilling young people to be able to take up those sorts of opportunities so, in part, we have got a conversation on how do we set the economic settings to allow business to start up and thrive and, in part, how do we complement that with how we educate young people through the schooling system and better support commercialisation within the tertiary sector.

TONY JONES: I’ll bring the Minister for Innovation in in a moment. I just want to hear quickly from Kate Ellis. Is the Labor Party on board with Malcolm Turnbull's innovation nation?

KATE ELLIS: Well, I think Malcolm Turnbull jumped on board after we had already announced a number of policies in this area, which I'm happy to use this opportunity to outline.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Yes, he needed Labor to be prodding him. He didn't know anything about innovation and IT before.

KATE ELLIS: Well, he stood by and watched as how many billion dollars were ripped out of the R and D budget? Anyway...

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: You know he knows about innovation.

KATE ELLIS: We have announced policy both in terms of the start up package, the innovation investment partnership, so that we can work together for investment, but I’ll actually go to Holly's point. It’s not just about having start up policies, as important as these are. It’s also about making sure that we do have the skills coming out of our schools that we need. Now, we see that 75% of the fastest growing jobs are expected to require science, technology, engineering and maths, yet we don't have our graduates coming through and we have a startling number of teachers in our secondary school who are teaching IT or teaching science without having tertiary qualifications in that area themselves. We have been out on the front foot, Bill Shorten has announced policies in all of these areas.

TONY JONES: You’ve got a Labor Government here. Maybe you should be speaking to them.

KATE ELLIS: Well, and working with the State Labor Government as well. But of course, I mean, we’re talking about the skills that are taught in our schools, under a national curriculum. We also know that it's really important that in the Budget Reply, when Bill Shorten announced every child will have the opportunity to learn coding, there is a lot of people of my age or older that kind of went, "What does that mean? What is all of that about?" But when you have a look at what skills will be required for people that are in school today to gain employment tomorrow and into the future, we know that this will be as important as a number of the basic subjects that we were taught when we were at school. So it is about making sure that we’ve got governments that are prepared now to put the policies in place to match our skills that are coming out of our education system with the jobs of the future, and we don't have much time to spare at all.

TONY JONES: Okay, Christopher Pyne, Minister for Innovation, we’ve just heard a little bit about what's coming. Now it's your turn?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, I'm not sure how much time is left but in the short time that is available, it’s - I'm very positive. I mean it’s been a very sober night on Q&A and you would expect it to be, given the events over the weekend, but I am very optimistic and positive about the innovation agenda. Malcolm Turnbull is instinctively and reflexively fascinated and energised by the possibilities of the new economy to replace jobs of the old economy and to be a powerhouse of Australia. We have the skills and the intelligence and the sophistication as a nation and the universities. So in December we will hand down a national innovation and science agenda. It will address things about the commercialisation of research. It will be address capital raising, talents and skills, governments as an exemplar. I am the minister responsible. I can tell you it is very comprehensive. It is not a savings measure. It will cost money. It’s a very important investment in the future. It has the capacity to be a real game changer for our economy, and I think it will make a big difference. There is no reason at all why Australia can't be talked about in the same vain as Silicon Valley, Israel, Berlin, London, Singapore, Hong Kong, when people talk about high technology, advanced manufacturing, jobs of the new economy and so I think it’s going to be a very exciting time and South Australia with accelerators and incubators and three great universities and the Waite Institute and so much more here can really get on board and not be negative about our future but be incredibly positive about it, because I think the world is our oyster.

TONY JONES: Very quick follow up, Christopher. Are a new generation of submarines part of the new economy or the old economy?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, one of the important - - some of the important things that are handed down well, I hope you enthusiastically applaud for me when the final decisions are being announced in the coming months. But there’ll be...

TONY JONES: De facto Minister for Defence, Christopher Pyne.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I’m a very proud South Australian. My Cabinet colleagues will tell you I'm working very hard to deliver a maximum build and a maximum number of submarines for SA. It is one project amongst many. We already have been awarded the future frigates program, $43 billion. What's vitally important is that where these submarines are built high tech and advanced manufacturing industries follow. So for my great State of South Australia, submarines being built here will lead to jobs and it will lead to growth. There is a defence industry policy statement coming, a defence white paper and the national innovation and science agenda, followed by a budget. I think the next six months are very exciting and I think South Australians will be very pleased with the work (indistinct)...

TONY JONES: Well, it will be particularly exciting if there is an election within them and there’s one last question on that subject...

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: ...you can rest easy on that one.

TONY JONES: ...and it's from Hala Abokamil.

HALA ABOKAMIL: Hi, I'm a constituent from the electorate of Sturt, Mr Pyne. As you are aware, a poll in July of approximately 740 Sturt residents, which was commissioned by the CFMEU found that a majority of people would vote for a candidate backed by Nick Xenophon. Are you worried at all about losing your seat in the upcoming election?

TONY JONES: If you don't deliver the submarines.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I don't put any store by Reachtel polls at all. I think they are basically a waste of the people's money who are paying for them. I think face to face polls are much more meaningful or proper telephone polls conducted by agencies. The environment in July is very different to the environment of today and it will be very different to the environment in 12 months' time when an election is due and I have - I will put myself forward to the electors of Sturt, as I have for the last 22 years and I hope that they’ll re elect me. I have worked very hard as a Cabinet minister and as a local member for them and for you and whether Nick Xenophon's candidate attracts a large number of votes, the important thing to remember is that we've had experiments with personality based political parties: Clive Palmer, Pauline Hanson, Nick Xenophon.

TONY JONES: Nick Xenophon.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Don't risk it. Don't take the risk.

TONY JONES: I’m going to give you the final word here because I think you possibly after that...

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: We don't want any more Clive Palmer parties springing up in the Senate and the House of Representatives.

NICK XENOPHON: Okay. I’ll tell you what I’m worried about. Let me - I’ll tell yo