Check against delivery.

This is not how we wanted it to end.

The events in Afghanistan have been devastating for the Afghan people, dangerous for Australians who remain in Afghanistan, traumatic for veterans of the conflict and terrifying for Australians with relatives back in Afghanistan.

It will have implications for the standing of democracy in the world, for global power relationships, for our security and will reverberate through at least this generation.

As Greg Sheridan wrote in the Weekend Australian, “no one has been hurt as much as the 39 million people in Afghanistan, especially women and girls, who will be forced to live under an Islamist theocracy with a history of extravagant and often depraved violence.”

These have been testing times. Times when genuine, sincere leadership matters even more than usual.

While a more dispassionate reflection on Australia’s experience in Afghanistan will need to come, the immediate  focus must be on the current crisis.

Labor strongly supports the work of the Australian inter-agency team on the ground in Kabul.  They must be given every form of support they need.

They have been presented with a very difficult task, one made all the harder because this effort was launched far too late. 

Providing support to those who supported Australians on the ground is more than just a moral obligation, it is a national security imperative.

I do not understand why a team of the kind that we only recently deployed was not in place in Kabul the day the Government announced Australia’s intention to leave.

We have known for a long time that when we finally did leave there would be a range of people, who we would need to look after. And previous experience should have told us that achieving this is complex. 

The confusion over the fate of the 200 embassy security guards who were told on Saturday to “contact a migration agent”, is almost unbelievable in its sheer callous nature.

It contrasts starkly with the leadership being exemplified by veterans who served in Afghanistan, who have rallied behind their Afghan mates.

The very real risk that some will not be able to be reached is something that could and should have been avoided.

This is particularly difficult for the families of the fallen, and those who served alongside them.

Those who are still wondering about the arbitrary lottery that determines which is the wrong place and the wrong time … 

… the twist of fate that has left them here among the living, while their mates now belong to memory.

As the flame burning eternally across the lake reminds us, we cannot forget them.

Let me say this:

The debt we owe to our military men and women who have served in Afghanistan is beyond measure.

We honour those who went. 

Those who never came home. 

Those who never came home the same.

And those who are there now, trying to salvage some good out of the chaos of Kabul airport. 

However, there is no evading the fact that this is an occasion where gratitude and pride must stand alongside sorrow.

As I said, this is not how we hoped it would end.

It was never going to be easy. 

Afghanistan, a country that we have wrongly come to measure by the mistakes of others, has long been a leveller of great powers.

Ambitions have crumbled there. Giants humbled. 

But we saw early success in the mission to prevent Afghanistan being used as base by Al Qaida to launch acts of terrorism. 

But as the mission turned to the long-term task of building an environment where terrorism could not find new opportunities, it was always going to be difficult. 

Government attention was quickly drawn to other events.

As the grim tide of the Taliban floods back in, we must try to draw some solace from the thought that the vast majority of Afghan lives touched by Australians were touched for the better.

As they carried on with this mission, even during those times when they were by dogged by misgivings, the men and women who served in Afghanistan in our name reminded us what courage and honour truly are.

They made a difference in the lives of the Afghan people.

They made a difference for all those women and girls, released from the darkness in which the Taliban had kept them.

We can be proud that Australians created the beginnings of what should have been a brighter future.

And we can only hope that we may have been involved in planting the seeds of what might still become that better time.

While we can honour all those involved in these difficult tasks, that should not mean that Australia’s two decades in Afghanistan are rendered sancrosanct and beyond questioning.

The dead and wounded, and their families, are owed more than unthinking platitudes.

Our veterans are not bronze sculptures at a Cenotaph. They are flesh and blood, human beings left to shoulder superhuman burdens. Let us work to lighten their burdens.

I say to our veterans: No one who has served as you have can pretend to feel what you feel. To know what it is to live back in this world, in this familiar life, but to have a part of yourself that still dwells in that one.

You have our gratitude. But you must also have our ear — always.

And as a nation, we cannot turn our backs on the truth, no matter how hard.

The findings of the Brereton Report must not become yet one more thing that we quietly draw a veil around.

As a nation that sent our military to Afghanistan to help keep the darkness of terrorism at bay, we cannot dim our own light ...

... our precious democracy slowly consumed by a creeping tide of redaction, amnesia, secrecy and silence.

If freedom and democracy were indeed our cause, then a vitally important way to honour those who have fallen in the prosecution of that cause is to attend to these values at home.

And what of those brave Afghans who repaid our soldiers’ courage with their own, putting their lives on the line to help us help their compatriots?

They believed in us and the promise we held of a better future.

We cannot abandon them to the very malevolence we spent so long holding back.

We cannot behold their valour and just shrug our shoulders. We cannot say that they got lost in paperwork and our carelessness. 

That we were granted the gift of foresight, only to squander it in exchange for this pitiful hindsight. 

So many Afghans have risked it all. 

They have struggled and sacrificed to create a better country for themselves. 

Now we are witnessing scenes where for some, clinging to the outside of a departing aircraft somehow represents a greater hope than staying to face the new reality.

There are many Australians today, who are desperate and anxious about their family in Afghanistan … 

… who have been waiting months and in some cases years to get their partner visas or family reunification visas issued, and have their families join them.

MPs have been besieged with hundreds of desperate requests and stories that just break your heart.  

Our hearts break with them, and we will do everything we can to support them in their pleas to have their families evacuated to safety in an orderly way.

The Government must take action commensurate with the gravity of the situation, not hide behind bureaucratic processes designed for very different circumstances.

We need to look beyond the current evacuation to ensure that Australia plays a role in the global and regional humanitarian and refugee response as well as the ongoing political challenge that has become necessary following the Taliban’s return.

The Taliban have said they have changed and will be more respectful of human rights, but the violence and chaos around Kabul Airport does not augur well. 

We must continue to speak up for our values.

Together with the international community, we must pay close attention to ensuring that Afghanistan does not again become a safe haven for terrorism.

As other countries have done, let us step up and do the right thing.

Our international reputation is at stake.

And so is the way we see ourselves as a people, as a nation, as the bearers of values we believe are worth looking up to.

Let us be worthy of the hope that we gave.