The Illawarra's peak union body, the South Coast Labour Council (SCLC), has called on the Australian government to pull troops out of Afghanistan and pursue an independent foreign policy.
“In recent decades Australia has been dragged into quagmire after quagmire — blindly following the United States into military disasters that have resulted in hundreds of thousands of military and civilian casualties”, Arthur Rorris, SCLC secretary, said on October 22.
“The best thing we can do for our troops right now is to pull them out and to pledge never to send them away again blindly at the behest of a foreign power and the vested interests of global energy corporations.
“The Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns are no longer a war on terror they are a futile assault on human intelligence and decency.”
Rorris sees the federal parliamentary debate on Afghanistan as an opportunity to demand change.
“The debate should not be confined to the federal parliament — it must continue in the broader community and the union movement will play a significant role in this discussion as it has done throughout its history.”