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Why the timeline of the Iranian women’s football team defection makes some people liars
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- [00:01]
A
I'm Jacqueline Maley and you're listening to Inside Politics from the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald. This week we're going to talk about the incredible story of the Iranian women's soccer team, some of whom defected and were given asylum in Australia. It was a wonderful story and it also happened to be a really great public relations coup for the government. Plus, we're going to discuss the legacy of outgoing Nationals leader David Littleproud, and we will examine the somewhat controversial style of the incoming Nationals leader, Matt Canavan. Joining me to discuss, we have chief political correspondent Paul Sakal, as usual, and our national security correspondent, Matthew Nott, both of whom join me from Canberra. Welcome, gents.
- [00:42]
B
Good morning.
- [00:42]
C
Morning.
- [00:44]
A
Notti, you have been reporting on this extraordinary story of the Iranian women's soccer team, some of whom defected from the team this week. Can you just tell us when it became clear to Australian authorities that the women were under duress in some way and they were being policed or sort of maybe menaced by representatives of the Iranian regime?
- [01:03]
B
Well, this has been bubbling along for a few weeks. The difficult thing with it, of course, is that everyone, not just the government but also the media, have been quite limited in what we've been able to say about this because of the notion that to publicise this too much could potentially blow up the whole operation to protect these women, to give them the choice to stay. So it's been a tricky one in the way. You've had some criticism, perhaps along the way, of the government for not doing enough and not saying enough, but they were then making clear behind the scenes there's a lot going on. So that's been a tricky part of this story because there had to be a lot of subterfuge with it, because these players have had minders with them with clear connections to the regime. And the fact that during a war between the United States and Israel and Iran, to have players from the national team defecting is a huge propaganda loss for Iran in the middle of this war. So just the fact this tournament is happening at this time is remarkable. Tony Burke, the Home Affairs Minister, has said he's been across this for weeks. So, say when the players arrived a few weeks ago, he had had ASIO do preliminary security checks on them, so that the moment any of them decided they wanted to defect and seek asylum in Australia, you could basically do the paperwork straight away. But the. What I call the rescue operation itself really only ramped up towards the end of last week. And over the weekend, the deadline pressure came on because it was the last game was happening that they were playing and they were leaving the country any second. So it really ramped up and there was a lot of behind the scenes action over the weekend and then. And then on Monday.
- [03:05]
A
I mean, this is sort of a bit of an aside, but is there's been reporting that some of the minders might have been members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, which is now deemed a terrorist organisation in Australia because, well, it attempted to convene a terrorist attack last year on our soil. How is it that these people were even allowed in to our country?
- [03:29]
B
Well, the government says that. They say that none of the people who came were IRGC officials or even don't have close connections to them. They say several people who tried to come were knocked back, that they rejected visa applications of some of the officials who wanted to come. They say essentially that the minders who were here with them were kind of quote, unquote, bad people, not the type of people we like, but they're not IRGC officials who would be rejected. You obviously have the scenario in which if no one came, everyone would still be in Iran. So you had to. It's worked out quite well for some of them that they came in the first place. The Iranian diaspora throughout has had big concerns about this, specifically about the minders who were there. They've been kind of naming and shaming some of these individuals. They wanted the government to detain the minders who were with them, to really investigate them. The government thought that was a step too far and they really wanted them out of the country basically at the end of the tournament. So that's been a lively debate throughout this about what to do with these handlers who were clearly, you know, influencing some of the players. And many have said they were feeding them misinformation about what would happen to them if they stayed in Australia. The women were supposedly being told that they'd be sent to a remote island like Nauru if they tried to stay. You can imagine how, given the coverage of Australia's asylum seeker policies internationally, how they. They could believe that. So it's been a process to clear up a lot of that dodgy information.
- [05:17]
C
I imagine it's very hard for the government to try and differentiate between the officials who are attached to this sporting. I mean, in the same way as other kind of paranoid authoritarian nations like North Korea, Iran is a country where the state apparatus extends across banking, sport, all elements of the society. So I mean, unless the government wanted to block the whole team coming, it was, you're bound to have some loyalists in the, in the show here.
- [05:42]
A
Yeah, absolutely. What was interesting, I suppose, as these discussions were unfolding and as you say, so Tony Burke was kind of onto it, or, you know, he says he was onto it for weeks, the issue of the security of these women and whether or not some of them might want to stay in Australia if they were allowed to. So that's going on for weeks. And then the actual operation itself, I think, sort of started unfolding. I think he went up to. He went up to the Gold coast where the women were over the weekend last weekend. Meanwhile, you've got Donald Trump who gets sort of personally involved in this story. And, Paul, this is sort of more the political implications of it. President Donald Trump, I think, on Tuesday, early hours of Tuesday morning, tweeted his criticism of the Albanese government for not doing enough to help the women. And, you know, it was quite pointed criticism. And he accused the Prime Minister of making a terrible humanitarian mistake by allowing the Iran national women's soccer team to be forced back to Iran where they'll most likely be killed. So all this is happening under, like behind closed doors. It doesn't occur to the President of the United States that there might be things afoot that he doesn't know about, that the Australian government might be across this situation, dealing with it delicately. What happens next, Paul?
- [06:55]
C
Well, I've asked some questions about how this played out this week and it seems just as chaotic as it looked. So Donald Trump puts up this truth social Post Quarter past 1 Australian on Tuesday morning. Tuesday morning, the Prime Minister's preparing for a Canberra sitting week. He's also dealing with US and UAE requests for help in the Gulf. So the National Security Committee is meeting all the time. It's a busy moment for him. He's asleep at the lodge. There was a suggestion the day after that he might have been alerted by an Australian official who had heard from someone in the Trump administration that the President would like to have a call with Albanese. That wasn't the case. He was asleep at the lodge. Receives the call sometime between quarter past one and about an hour and a half later when he puts up the subsequent post and the Prime Minister's phone rings. So he's clearly not a person who goes on silent overnight, which maybe speaks to his political animals.
- [07:45]
A
Well, I should hope not. He's the Prime Minister.
- [07:47]
C
He's always on. And he looks at the call and it says Donald Trump. And he takes it. And they speak for quite a while, apparently mostly on this issue, but also about World events and the situation in the Gulf. And the Prime Minister explains to him, according to people on the Australian side, that we are already taking action here. It's all in train. I don't know what the President's response was or if he believed it, but a short time later he went back on Truth Social and in typical Trump fashion, took a little bit of credit and said, albanese's on it. My guy in Australia is going to get this done. And another really intriguing element to this is what sparked Trump's interest in this issue was a post from the Australian online activist Drew Pavlo, who's a well known figure in Australia for many years. Part of the kind of. It's difficult to describe segments of the online world these days, but I think I'd fit Drew Pavlou into the Save Western Civilization genre of online posters.
- [08:47]
A
Yeah, so a lot of our listeners won't be familiar with him, but basically. And Noddy can tell us about him because Noddy wrote a really great feature about him a while ago. But this sort of rabble rousing social media identity. Drew Pavlou, who is an Australian, tweeted something about the Iranian women, basically saying Albanese wasn't doing enough. And it seems that Trump, who is scrolling the Internet or scrolling Truth Social, has seen this post and he retweeted it and that's how it's come to the attention of President Trump. Is that what we understand?
- [09:17]
B
Noddy having written about this as it was happening, it was all pretty bizarre because we heard that five of the women, you know, were being granted asylum around nine o'clock on Monday night. That's when it happened. And words started filtering out pretty quickly and we had to wait just a little bit for when we could publish it, you know, so to make sure they weren't being put at any risk by it being publicized. That was a bit before 11pm so it had all been reported by then. So that's several hours before Trump became activated on the issue. So I went to bed and knew that five had been granted asylum, then woke up and to see that Trump was claiming credit was all a bit strange. So, yeah, this was an outdated tweet by Drew Pavlou, who really came to attention as a young university student in Brisbane because of his activism against the Chinese Communist Party. And he did many high profile actions, some of which were controversial, you know, some of his stunts. He really pushed the limits of activism to try and raise the profile of what China was doing in Xinjiang and, you know, its approach to human rights. That was his big passion. He's since come to focus on other issues, as Paul said, about a Western civilization. He's very engaged with the Middle east conflict. He talks a lot about immigration to Australia. So he would have a following now in the. In the MAGA universe.
- [10:50]
A
Well, clearly he does because he came across President Trump's social media feed. I just sort of. I mean, I think that's a bit of backstory that maybe listeners won't know, but I just think it's fascinating to observe once again how diplomacy and is fashioned in the Trump White House and how these things come about and how quickly, you know, our premier ally sort of jumps into a situation about which he knows nothing and sort of takes a crack at our Prime Minister. It's sort of interesting and slightly spine stiffening, I would say. Noddy. It has been a wonderful PR coup for the government. We've got, you know, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke sort of talking about it quite openly. Now that the women are here and they're safe, he's posted on his social media plenty of photographs of himself with the women all smiling happily now that they're free, is it sort of a good way for the government to distract a little bit from the fact that we're getting embroiled in what many people say is an illegal war?
- [11:48]
B
Look, there's been a lot of publicity around this. There's been a lot of work behind the scenes, including by, say, the federal police and officials from the Department of Home affairs who've been putting in a lot of hours and emotional labour into this issue. And Tony Burke has been all across that. I would say he has certainly been photographed with these women, you know, that they've let it been known that he's been there on the scene, signing these papers. I became a bit worried about it when one of the players changed her mind and is now seems to have decided to go back to Iran. So it's been publicised that she was staying photographed. Her name's out there, she's got photos with Tony Burke celebrating the fact she's defected and now she's going back home to this authoritarian state. That's a bit of a worry. The government certainly wanted credit for this after being attacked for not doing enough. And then, as you say, yeah, the war issues going at. At the same time, it's all happening together.
- [12:57]
A
And not to be churlish about it, because it is a really good news story and I think we're all hungry for a good news story. But, Paul, I want to bring you in on this, what do you think? Obviously, the government has involved us. You know, our personnel and our military assets are now deployed, or are going to be deployed to the Middle east for defensive purposes to Gulf allies. Inflation from oil and fertiliser shortages is going to hit us imminently. We're already hearing reports of shortages of petrol and, you know, this is our premier ally. We're tied to them strategically into the nether. Never really because of Orcas. Is this going to. Are we involved or are we not involved? What's the message from the government, in your view?
- [13:37]
C
We are involved, but to use a term that's probably used too much these days, there are clear guardrails around our involvement. The government has put itself in the war, but it's been very keen to emphasise the limited defensive nature of the posture. We're sending missiles that will help strike Iranian drones and missiles out of the sky. There'll be no direct attacks into Iran. There are no boots on the ground. I mean, the US doesn't appear to be contemplating boots on the ground.
- [14:04]
A
Well, Trump. Trump has raised that possibility.
- [14:07]
C
So, yeah, in one of them, many possibilities is raised and then went back on, and Marco Rubio's had to come in and clean up. But it doesn't look like that's the likeliest course of action or even close to the likeliest. And I don't think the government. The government apparently has made clear to both the US and other allies in the region that this is as far as it will go. But because of the. Because of the previous history around regime change, operations in the Middle east, even a limited posture, raises up this debate about whether Australia should be tied as closely as it is to the us. The government would come back to that and say, look, we are protecting Australian assets in the UAE. There are 25,000 Australians there, we have a key airbase there. And if Australia's strategic and economic interest is to bring this war to an end as quickly as possible, it makes sense to be there to try and stabilise this, to keep it in check, to put as much. To balance as strongly against the Iranian missile barrage as possible to try and get Iran to stop what it's doing, to support the Gulf and not allow the Gulf to be overwhelmed in a way that might precipitate an elongation of this war, which would increase the likelihood of an inflation outbreak.
- [15:21]
B
I think the government's aware all this has to be communicated very carefully and clearly about what they are and aren't doing, but I don't think it's something they're trying to hide or cover up. I think they're just as aware of the idea that they're sitting back and not doing anything, not contributing. Australians are in the Gulf facing missile attacks. They want Australians to undertake, understand the limits of what they're doing, but they want it to be known that they are contributing, that they're sending some of our assets there. So they're aware of both sides of this debate. So it's not something they're trying to hide. They just don't want it to be seen as, you know, we're all the way with Trump.
- [16:04]
A
No, I wouldn't say they're trying to hide it. I would say cynically that they're trying to spin it in a very particular way because they know that this is such a, such a delicate line that they have to walk with Donald Trump in the White House. One of, strangely enough, one of the only people to sort of express some reservations about us getting into this war or any kind of forever war is the new Nationals leader, Matt Canavan. So I just want to kind of pivot to that because that was the other big political news of the week. Abruptly, we saw the resignation or the abrupt resignation of Nationals leader David Littleproud. Paul, you interviewed him at length for this podcast just a few weeks ago, and there was nary a whisper of him not totally committed to the job. What happened?
- [16:48]
C
No, he was totally defiant. When I asked if he would contemplate a handover to Matt Canavan or Bridget McKenzie if he failed at the upcoming Farah by election. He didn't give a moment's thought to that question, but in the same breath, his words of defiance. And he is a pretty skilled public performer, David Littlepred. He's got a line for most questions, but in the same interview, he did kind of speak to the trouble ahead, where he predicted that his party would probably finish last in that Farabai election. This is the one that's been created by the resignation of Susan Lee. It'll be held in May. This is a regional New South Wales seat where the National Party, which the national party held for 17 years before Susan Lee entered Parliament. David Littlepratt had been saying privately to his colleagues for months that the surge in support for one nation was coming at the expense largely of liberals in the outer suburbs, and that the Nationals were retaining their base, or at least performing solidly in its seats. The Farah by election was going to be a clear display of the struggles that even the nationals are having with their base. And if they were totally wiped out by one nation, that would have been a moment of humiliation for Little Proud. He's also been mentally anguished in the last few months dealing with the coalition split that he chiefly precipitated. He had another coalition split just after the May election, and I think there was a growing sense in the Nationals party room that he wasn't the leader for the long run. He wasn't under immediate danger, which is why this week really surprised his colleagues and has sparked some chatter, as always in politics, that it might have been a more salacious reason for the switch. I'm not suggesting that's true at all, but that's what some of his colleagues are speculating. And now we move on to the Matt Canavan experiment.
- [18:29]
A
Yeah. Yeah. So that's really, really an interesting. He's an interesting sort of presence. I think we're told that he was overwhelmingly supported in the Nationals party room as the new leader. The Nationals don't tell us how many votes he got. He gave a speech straight afterwards and was a sort of very nativist sort of speech. We've got to have more Australian. Everything manifest to hyper Australia. More Australian babies, more Australian humour, more Australian jokes, more Australian barbecues, sometimes often fuelled by fossil fuels, which gave me the sort of. This unwelcome image of Matt Canavan trying to serve to his guests sausages that were cooked on coal. But then I realized that gas is also a fossil fuel, so I'll pass that one. But, I mean, it was. Look, I wouldn't say it was a piece of great oratory, but what do you think he was sort of trying to say there, Noddy? What was the message he was trying to convey?
- [19:20]
B
I guess the thing is also that he hasn't, as he's been making very clear, he hasn't had much time to prepare for this moment and his debut as leader. This all happens so rapidly and he's now got to make the case for this job he wasn't necessarily seeking right now. There's obviously been a lot of talk about how he's basically been the de facto leader and he's been thought leader, not just in the Nationals, but, you know, within the broader Conservative part of the Parliament. He's been extremely influential, including recently on the hate speech laws. He was the one who convinced the party to really turn against that and bust up the coalition. I think that's pretty safe space in general for the Nationals leader to be, considering they're up against one nation, which is running such a Nationalistic campaign, you know, to just be pro Australia. We're proud of this country. The fossil. The fossil fuel line goes at the. Gets at the kind of trolling aspect of Matt Canavan's Persona. You know, that if it gets people in, in a city, Sydney and Melbourne annoyed, then that's even better. That's, of course got problems for the Liberal Party and the broader coalition, but that's very much his mo.
- [20:39]
A
Yeah. I mean, which kind of clashes or is in conflict or tension with, you know, the other side of his personality, which is a very sort of serious policy brain. He was very high up as an economist at the Productivity Commission. This is a guy who knows his stuff and he's actually learned and, you know, something of an intellectual. I read the description that he was the best policy brain in the Nationals party room, which I saw as sort of faint praise. But it's actually. But he is actually a serious policy brain and he's, you know, recognised as such. Paul, he was very pointed about in his criticisms of One Nation. That was interesting.
- [21:13]
C
Yeah. And he's. He's for months been the most assertive, really, coalition figure, not just national figure, in taking on Pauline Hanson. He had been for months speaking to Barnaby Joyce in private, begging him to stay in the National Party. He used to work as Barnaby Joyce's chief of staff. He describes Joyce as kind of his political father. And so once Canavan got wind that Joyce was considering defecting, Joyce, who felt on the outer in the National Party, didn't think he could lead it again, wanted to be relevant, wanted to put his energy into something else. Canavan had long, long conversations with him over weeks and months, telling him, this is your home. You'll do us great damage if you leave us. But then once the flick switched and Canavan determined in his mind that Joyce was gone, and this was pre Joyce actually making the announcement, you started to see Canavan as the first national to step out of the party line, which was, we love Barnaby. Please stay. To start attacking his character and to start chipping away at Hansen. He's been doing this since November or December, but without as much cut through as this week, obviously, because he's now leader and he's developed this two track argument in countering One Nation. One is to say that they're a protest party who have never delivered anything and feed off grievance, and the other is to say that their brand of race politics is damaging to the Australian social fabric. These are brave stances for him to Take particularly on race, because his online community, and he's a heavily online character, he plays online video games, he's big on X, he really follows his online crowd and listens to them. They are extremely animated by the immigration issue. It's the most salient issue in their minds at the moment. So to take that principal position he has has been difficult for him in his base. But he knows what Barnaby, Joyce's key fear is in One Nation. And Joyce talks to people about this, it's that over time, if Hanson's views are exposed as racist, if she is not able to moderate her language and she's not the most articulate person, and he knows that One Nation will not appear as the legitimate new mainstream Conservative force which can come into government or become an opposition, but they'll be cast as a kind of backward, provincial, racist party, which Joyce knows will not command significant support in the Australian community. And Canavan is chipping at that relentlessly.
- [23:34]
A
Yeah, so you say that it's a principal position that he's taken. And I mean, it does show strength of character that he is the only, really the only person I've seen on the coalition side who's very, very strongly called Colleen Hansen out for those comments that she made about Muslim people recently. But what you also seem to be saying is it's actually quite a good strategic position for him as well, because he differentiates himself from One Nation and he paints One Nation as an extremist party that might possibly be racist and xenophobic, unlike the nationals who are, you know, sensible, grown up people. I don't know. I'm just putting that out there. I just want to talk quickly. Nadia, I'll go to you on this about. He's going to be viewed by the moderates and the Liberals and people who might want to go back to voting Liberal in the inner metropolitan seats, having voted Teals. What's your view on that? How's he going to sort of fit within the broader coalition?
- [24:22]
B
Obviously, very early, there's a risk. But there's also a chance that this will allow the Liberal Party to get back a sense of their own identity, perhaps, particularly if the leaders can have a productive relationship and get along. And perhaps divide and conquer would be the absolute best outcome here because the Liberal Party really needs to build back what its brand is and what it represents to its traditional voters. Ultimately, they're going to be voting for a Liberal candidate. Obviously it all gets mixed up together in people's minds. And we've seen this with the Barnaby Joyce factor. But there is a scenario in which Angus Taylor can, you know, carve out some space as the leader of the Liberal Party, let Matt Canavan shore up support on the right and take on one nation and do a lot of that, quote, unquote, you know, dirty work of doing that, and he can be a bit more of a prime ministerial figure. That's the best case scenario. There are many ways in which it can go wrong. And if Matt Canavan says something that's a bit out there for many voters in the city's more moderate voters, they're not going to like that.
- [25:36]
A
Certainly his strident support for fossil fuels would have to be a real turn off to a lot of the voters in the inner metropolitans.
- [25:43]
B
Yes, yes, that's a big risk, but that's certainly the path the coalition is going pretty clearly down.
- [25:50]
A
Yeah, that ship ain't turning around anytime soon.
- [25:53]
C
I'll read the Tim Wilson quote, if helpful, on this question of whether Matt Canavan will make it more difficult for him in the inner suburban state of Goldstein. Tim Wilson's quote is, Matt Canavan is the embodiment of a national and the nationals should be nationals. So his elevation gives us permission to be the Liberals we need for urban Australia, because retake in Australia requires Liberals to be Liberals. So there is a hope in the moderates that there is a period of before you actually need to develop a policy agenda for government over the next 18 months or so, the nationals can go and win support back and Liberals can cleave back towards their base. That might be Pollyanna ish, but that's the hope.
- [26:30]
B
I feel very in sync with Tim Wilson.
- [26:32]
A
Do you? Oh, that's, that's.
- [26:34]
B
That's great. I have to reflect on it.
- [26:35]
A
Tim Wilson is. Is a favourite of this podcast. He's a good talker. We like him. Thanks, gentlemen. That was very, very interesting and illuminating. I'm really interested to see how Matt Canavan does and what he does as Nationals leader. It's gonna be an interesting ride. Thanks, fellas. See you soon.
- [26:50]
C
Thanks, Carol.
- [26:51]
B
Thank you.
- [26:54]
A
You can read all of our political news on our websites, theage.com au or smh.com au Today's episode was produced by Chee Wong. Our executive producer is Tammy Mills and our podcasts are overseen by Lisa Muxworthy and Tom McKendrick. Before you go, follow Inside Politics and leave a review for us on Apple or Spotify. I'm Jacqueline Maley. Thank you for listening.