In my statement I want to explain the motives that have led me to these actions. I work in administration within local government, I am a volunteer fire fighter who has served in the Alpine fires of 2007 and more recently in the aftermath of Black Saturday. For the last five years I have worked at a drop in centre serving marginalised people in Dandenong and have opened my house up to provide a place for people to stay and for some, attempt to get back on their feet. More importantly than all of that, I am a father of two beautiful children. My son Isaiah, 8 and daughter Naomi, who is 5.
I have a wonderful opportunity to watch my two beautiful children grow up. To go from those wonderful helpless infants that I was blessed with 5 and 8 years ago, and be with them through their journey of growing into adults, discovering along the way their unique and wonderful individual identities.
We have taken this opportunity from mothers and fathers in Afghanistan. Parents who are left with only a memory and wonder each year, what would my child have been like now, what would he of she have enjoyed playing, who would their friends have been, who would they have married, where would they have taken their place in society. Parents are now left without children. Children have been left without fathers and mothers. Families have been torn apart.
Some will try to say that we are in Afghanistan to make a better place for those parents, for those children, that somehow we are building a future for them. Have we made their life better by bombing their villages and towns, or by killing many thousands of civilians? Have we made their lives better by bringing their nation under foreign occupying forces that talk of staying for decades? Have we made their lives better by replacing the Taliban with Warlords and Drug Lords? Is record opium production in recent years an indication of this improvement? Or should we take the increasing waves of refugees flooding across the borders to be indicative of some improvement? It is my belief that the unheard voices of average families in Afghanistan just like yours and mine are crying out for us to end the occupation of their nation. The history of Afghanistan in the last 100 years should prove that foreign military intervention can bring nothing but death and destruction to this people.
The best thing that we can do both for the people of Afghanistan and for our own troops is to bring them home. I personally will continue to seek opportunity to voice my opposition to this war and support the voice of others in any way that I can.
