re: it's only a matter of time...here's the contex
Anna - maaaate - what a fuss about nothing.
OAKES:
Now, you've been arguing for a new approach to pre-emptive defence, you want the UN to change its charter, I think. Does that mean that you ... if you knew that, say, JI people in another neighbouring country were planning an attack on Australia that you would be prepared to act?
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh yes, I think any Australian Prime Minister would. I mean, it stands to reason that if you believed that somebody was going to launch an attack against your country, either of a conventional kind or of a terrorist kind, and you had a capacity to stop it and there was no alternative other than to use that capacity then of course you would have to use it. Now, that situation hasn't arisen because nobody is specifically threatening to attack Australia and what I was talking about the other day was that when the United Nations Charter was written the idea of attack was defined by the history that had gone before, and that is that of an army rolling across the border of a neighbouring country, or in the case of the Japanese and Pearl Harbour bombing a base. Now, that's different now, you don't get that now. What you're getting is non-state terrorism, which is just as devastating and potentially even more so. And all I'm saying, I think many people are saying, is that maybe the body of international law has to catch up with that new reality, and that stands to reason.
OAKES:
It's fair to say, isn't it, that the SAS is not only perfectly tailored to make that kind of pre-emptive strike in another country but that's really what we've got it for.
PRIME MINISTER:
Laurie, there's no situation that I'm aware of at the moment that raises that issue, and I don't really want to go down that path any further other than to state the obvious that any Prime Minister who had a capacity to prevent an attack against his country would be failing the most basic test of office if he didn't utilise that capacity if there's no other alternative.
