WITH prime minister Tony Abbott committing about 300 Australian troops to a return to Iraq  in September, Fremantle Labor MP Melissa Parke (pictured, right) will tomorrow (Sunday March 8) offer a differing view on how to bring peace to the strife-torn country.

Speaking at a discussion organised by the Medical Association for the Prevention of War at the Fremantle town hall at 2pm, Ms Parke will argue the PM’s decision to help train the Iraqi army is misguided. Her view is not shared by Labor leader Bill Shorten, who backs the government’s move.

“Yesterday’s ally-by-proxy often becomes tomorrow’s enemy, and all those so-called solutions that have involved arming one group to balance the violence of another inevitably prolong the violence and inevitably see the weapons turned against those who supplied them in the first place,” says Ms Parke, who was formerly a human rights lawyer with the UN.

Also speaking at the event will be Carolyn Holbrook, a historian at Monash University who has questioned the Aussie myth the nation was “born” as its troops landed and died on the shores of Gallipoli in 1915.