Nationals Leader David Littleproud says the citizenship of Australians mourning the death of slain Iranian leader Ali Khamenei should be probed.
Both sides of the political aisle have sought to condemn plans for events in Sydney and Melbourne mourning the Ayatollah’s death after he was killed in US-Israeli air strikes across Iran over recent days.
In particular, the government has been grilled over whether it would rule out any taxpayer funds being spent on a Melbourne organisation caleed TAHA holding such an event.
Speaking on Sky News, Mr Littleproud said their needed to be “confidence and transparency” in how taxpayer funds were being spent.
“This organisation is celebrating the life of a tyrant,” he said.
“We should look deeply into who’s propagating this, and look deeply about their values and their citizenship.”
Pressed on whether he was urging a probe of their citizenship, Mr Littleproud said: “I think we should look at everything.
“I mean, our country is under siege. I don’t know whether you’ve noticed, since December 14 our country has changed.”
Mr Littleproud would not be drawn on whether he would commit to boots on the ground, but said “what we need to hope for is regime change”.
“If this is protracted and there needs to be a regime change with troops on the ground, we need to learn the lessons of what happened in Iraq in making sure that we find a mechanism for the Iranian people to be empowered to take back control of their country – that’s the most important principle,” he said.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers said during question time the government had “made it very clear, the prime minister and other ministers have made it clear, as do I, that we don’t consider it appropriate to mourn the death of the Ayatollah.”
“Our various agencies, the ATO, the charities commission, and others, have the powers to revoke any of the concessional treatment that applies to organisations.”
He said Multicultural Affairs Minister Anne Aly was “working on this matter”.
Also appearing on Sky News, Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong was asked whether she believed regime change was still achievable.
“I said at the start of my very first press conference on this, regime change historically has been very difficult to impose externally and that ultimately the future of Iran was in the hands of the Iranian people,” she said.
While stating boots on the ground was “certainly not something we would be contemplating”, senator Wong said “what needs to be done” is to reduce Iran’s capacity to gain nuclear weapons and its “capacity to project aggressive power outside of its borders”.
“It has decades of doing this,” she said.
New details on base attack
Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles says Australians stationed at a major Middle East air base are “safe and accounted for” after it was hit in an Iranian drone attack at the weekend.
The Al Minhad air base in the United Arab Emirates has served Australia’s Middle East military headquarters since 2003.
While Australia’s presence has reduced since the withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, up to 80 personnel are at the defence hub at any given time.
Speaking to reporters at Parliament House, Mr Marles refused to say which part of the base was hit but confirmed no Australians were injured.
“On the first night there was a strike at the Al Minhad Air Base, but all the Australians who are there are safe and accounted for,” the Defence Minister said.
“There were no injuries to Australians.
“We’ve got more than 100 personnel, actually, across the Middle East.
“Most of them are in the UAE where we’ve had an operational headquarters at Al Minhad for many, many years now, but they are all safe and accounted for.”
Australia was one of the first countries to expressly support the joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran.
The Trump administration had previously been negotiating with Iran to pressure the country to abandon its nuclear program, scrap its ballistic missile production and withdraw support for Islamist militant proxies, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza and the Houthis in Yemen.
The strikes at the weekend came after the latest round of talks failed and killed the country’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Overnight, US President Donald Trump gave his first address from the White House since attacking Iran and laid out his administration’s justifications for its actions but did not provide a definite timeline.
“Right from the beginning, we projected four to five weeks, but we have capability to go far longer than that,” he said.
The US military had originally predicted four weeks to “terminate the military leadership” of Iran, he said, before adding “that was done in about an hour, so we’re ahead of schedule there, by a lot”.
Mr Trump also did not rule out US military troops on the ground in Iran.
No request for Australian support
Both Anthony Albanese and Mr Marles have poured cold water on the prospect of Australia joining the fray in the Middle East.
Asked on Monday night if Australia would offer support to the US-led action war in Iran, the Prime Minister said Washington had not requested assistance and he did not expect it to.
“It’s a long way from Australia, and … we are not big players in the Middle East,” Mr Albanese told ABC’s 7.30.
Mr Marles echoed the line when asked the same question on Tuesday morning.
“No, we’re not,” he told Nine’s Today, adding that “it’s hard to speculate exactly how long this will go”.
“Obviously, we are monitoring this very closely, but we’ve not been asked to participate.
“This is an action which is being undertaken by the United States and by Israel.
“That said, obviously, we’ve made it clear we support this US‑led action because a core aim of it is to prevent Iran from ever acquiring a deployable nuclear weapon, because … if they ever achieve that, that would be a catastrophe for the world.”
‘Full justification’ for Iran attack
Israel’s new envoy in Canberra says critics of the US-Israeli action against Iran have “lost their moral compass completely”.
While most Western governments have come out in support of the attack, some citizens, including in Australia, have criticised the move as another potential forever war and undermining international rules.
“There’s full justification for this attack,” ambassador Hillel Newman told Sky News.
“Iran, since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, has turned itself into the enemy of the West, of the United States, of Israel, of our values.
“They’ve repeated again and again, Death to America, Death to Israel.
“They’re not only words, not only rhetoric, but also actions.”
He went on to say Iran was “the number one state sponsor of terror” by trying to “destabilise the Middle East and kill as many people as they can in the West, Israel, in the United States” through its network of proxies.
Mr Newman also said there were “many diplomatic efforts … to try and resolve the situation” but that the Iranian government “just enacted delay tactics”.
“There were existential threats coming out of Iran which needed to be removed,” he said.
“All kinds of methods were tried to be implemented in order to resolve this issue in diplomatic means.
“Now we have an armed conflict ongoing, so it is the right and even the obligation of any country to act in self defence, according to international law, to remove the existential threats.”
World ‘governed by power’
Opposition frontbencher Andrew Hastie says the world has declared the rules-based order dead.
“I think the world is governed by power, and I prefer a powerful US re-establishing deterrence, rather than other countries like Russia using might to advance its national interest,” the special forces veteran told reporters at Parliament House.
“It’s nice to talk about … the world that once existed post-World War (II) – the … global rules-based order.
“I don’t think that exists any more, and anyone who says it does is living in a fantasy land.
“This is a new world order.”
Strikes a ‘larger play’
Mr Hastie says he thinks the attacks are part of a “larger play” aimed at China.
Beijing officially adheres to international sanctions against Iran, but third-party tracking data has found China imports up to 80 per cent of the Islamist regime’s oil exports through a vast network of shadow fleets.
Mr Hastie said it made sense for Mr Trump to take out China’s “very cheap supply of oil”.
“I think the larger play here from the United States is to … reorder the state of world affairs at the moment, and to compete with China,” he told Sky News.
“And by knocking out Iran, potentially, they’re knocking out a really critical partner, a very cheap supply of oil for (China’s) industrial base.
“Donald Trump is an apex opportunist. So he hit Nigeria, he’s hit Venezuela, they’ve gone into Iran, or at least they’ve struck Iran.
“I think part of the plan here is also to re-establish deterrence, and the US military is the apex military.”
RBA chief says Iran ‘timely reminder’
The “events in the Middle East are a timely reminder that in this world of geopolitical uncertainty, things can change quickly”, Reserve Bank governor Michele Bullock said amid expectations of another rate hike in May.
“It’s too early to say what the impact will be, events are moving rapidly and there are different ways this can play out,” Ms Bullock told The Australian Financial Review’s Business Summit.
“The staff will take some time to make sense of what it could mean for inflation here.
“A supply shock could, for example, add to inflation pressures, and the potential implications for inflation expectations are something we are very alert to.
“But at the same time, a prolonged impact on energy markets could have adverse effects on global economic activity and result in downward pressure on inflation.
“It is not obvious how this might play out. So as much as I know the public would like more certainty about the direction of interest rates, it would be wrong for us to pretend to have greater certainty than we do.”
Mourning services ‘not appropriate’
Mr Marles says public mourning for Iran’s slain supreme leader is “not appropriate”.
Mr Khamenei was killed along with several members of his family in the first day of the US-Israeli strikes.
While many opponents of Mr Khamenei’s regime have taken to the streets to celebrate, some Australian Muslims have mourned the Islamist cleric.
“I don’t think that’s appropriate,” Mr Marles told ABC’s News Breakfast.
“I mean, the people that we are thinking about, that we are mourning, are the thousands of Iranians who have died at the hands of the supreme leader in just the last few weeks.
“And that’s before you think about the countless numbers of Iranians who have perished over the nearly 40 years that the supreme leader has been at the helm of Iran.
“I mean … the Iranian regime, is an oppressive autocracy. Globally, its behaviour has been outrageous.
“But in terms of the behaviour in respect of its own citizens, it has been absolutely terrible, and so many innocent Iranians have lost their lives at the hands of this regime.
“They are the people who we are thinking about right now.”
Portraits of Mr Khamenei popped up at pro-Palestine rallies in Sydney and Melbourne last year, sparking widespread condemnation.
More to come
