Matthew Gardiner, the former president of the Northern Territory Labor party who allegedly travelled to the Middle East to help Kurdish YPG fighters in the war against Islamic State, has stood by his actions in his first public comments since returning to Australia.
On Australia Day 2015 news broke that Gardiner had left the country just weeks earlier, allegedly to join the fight against the Isis. Such an act potentially carries penalties of up to 10 years in prison under Australia’s foreign fighters legislation.
Gardiner was detained immediately upon his arrival back in Darwin in April that same year. He was questioned by the Australian federal police, but not charged. The AFP say the investigation is ongoing.
Gardiner never publicly spoke about his time away, but in an extensive interview with SBS the former soldier revealed some details, and maintained he did the right thing.
Gardiner described being angered at a news story about four men in western Sydney wanting to join Isis, and he was inspired to contact a woman linked with Kurdish militia group, the Lions of Rojave, he said. He left Australia on 15 January, traveling through Asia, Dubai, and to Kurdish regions in northwestern Iraq, he said.
“I know what I did was right,” Gardiner said.
“I made a difference but I’m not going to get recognition, not in my lifetime. If you go to Lake Burley Griffin [in Canberra] there’s a memorial for people who fought [for the Republic] in the Spanish Civil War. But the thing is, it took 60 years to get there.”
Gardiner also accused the AFP of “hypocrisy” in focusing their investigation on him instead of seeking the valuable information he could offer about Isis. He claimed he offered to speak with them but was ignored, and that they approached him a year later with a list of questions he believed were only concerned with building a case against him.
“If you do nothing about oppression, you side with the oppressors,” he said.
Gardiner also said he was “disappointed” with the Labor party’s “risk-averse” response, which saw them cut ties with the former party president, stand him down and suspend his membership when the allegations broke.
“I reckon that because of the trade union royal commission, no-one wanted to have their heads above the parapet,” he said.
The interview also revealed Gardiner had spoken with the families of other Australians killed in Syria, Reece Harding and Ashley Johnston, and attended the funeral of Jamie Bright in Perth, who he had known previously.
Gardiner also spoke of the toll his trip took on his family, and on his difficulty in finding employment upon his return to Darwin. He now works as a consultant for the Northern Territory’s Council of Government School Organisations, and as a manager at Woolworths.
