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The Morning Edition
The politics of war, and why Peter Dutton was so upset over leaked Liberal Party review
00:26:06
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- [00:02]
A
I'm Jacqueline Maley, and you're listening to Inside Politics from the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald. Israel and the United States are at war with Iran in a rapidly escalating conflict that Australia seems to be trying to keep out of as much as possible. But today we're going to talk about how viable it is to be neutral these days and whether Australia is doing its duty as a middle power. And we're also going to discuss the Liberal Party review. Opposition leader Angus Taylor and others have tried to keep it secret, only to have it leaked by none other than the prime Minister himself this week, which kind of ended up reinforcing the main point of the review about the party's competency. Joining me to chat, we have our foreign affairs correspondent, Matthew Nott and our chief political correspondent, Paul Sakal, as usual, and both are joining me from Canberra. Welcome, gentlemen.
- [00:50]
B
Morning.
- [00:50]
A
Hello, Matthew Nott, Last Saturday, Israel and the United States launched joint missile attacks on Iran in an operation that the Trump administration called Operation Epic Fury. And since then, over the course of the week, the. The war has very much escalated, with Iran striking US Targets in the Middle East. There's a very uncertain timeline for the war, as well as very uncertain strategic objectives, I would say. Oil supplies are disrupted. Aircraft travel has been disrupted. What has been the response of the Australian government at an official level about this war?
- [01:25]
C
Well, the Australian government was out incredibly quickly supporting the US And Israel's action. And intriguingly, given who's been visiting Sydney and Canberra this week, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. Canada and Australia have used basically identical language, particularly in those early hours since the attack. You know, that they supported the US And Israel strikes.
- [01:50]
A
Australia stands with the brave people of Iran in their struggle against what is an oppressive regime.
- [01:59]
C
They supported the efforts to ensure that Iran cannot get a nuclear weapon and that Iran cannot continue supporting a terror throughout the region in the Middle East. I think one thing to note with the Prime Minister here is that he feels this quite strongly on Iran.
- [02:19]
A
We have not been immune from the impacts of the regime's actions right here
- [02:25]
C
in Australia because of what we've seen in Australia.
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A
At least two attacks orchestrated by the IRGC on Australian soil in 2024, including the firebombing of the Ada Synagogue in Melbourne, aimed at creating fear amongst Jewish Australians, but also aimed at dividing our nation.
- [02:52]
C
This has had a big effect on the Prime Minister, and I think that helps explain not just our traditional support for the US or being afraid of annoying Donald Trump, but that anger he has towards the regime in Iran. Explains why he was out very strongly supporting this action even if we obviously have concerns about where it's going to lead.
- [03:15]
A
Yeah. And that state backed terror by Iran led to basically a severing of diplomatic relations and obviously we kicked out the Iranian ambassador and they pled innocence at all times. Just to be clear, is there any Australian involvement in the war? The Foreign Minister Penny Wong has said that we had no heads up, we had no advance notice of the strikes. Was Australia involved at all?
- [03:39]
C
The Government's insisting absolutely not. It's saying these two things really as strongly as each other. The first, that we support the initial action here. Secondly, we had absolutely nothing to do with it. Defence Minister Richard Marles even went so far during the week to say that the US Australia facilities at Pine Gap, for example, were not used to provide intelligence on this. And that's a pretty extraordinary thing because ministers usually would not talk about what goes on at Pine Gap. It's incredibly secretive. It's basically a US facility more than our own. I don't think even the Defence Minister would know everything that's going on there. But that just showed how strongly the government wanted to make clear we're not providing active support for these strikes. You know, Australia does have troops stationed in the Middle east and at bases, but we are not playing an active role.
- [04:37]
A
It seems like it's very much an Israel and United States joint operation with no one else involved, at least in the. And most legal experts and other commentators, international law experts, are saying that the war is illegal under the precepts of international law. Paul, what has the Albanese government had to say about the legality or otherwise of the war?
- [04:57]
B
Well, firstly, on their justification for the support for the war, they are careful in their language to justify their support on the basis that these strikes could degrade Iran's nuclear capacity. They don't say explicitly that they supported the war to topple the regime. There are members of the cabinet who were members of the labor party in 2000, in the early 2000s, when the Labor Party under Simon Crean famously opposed the Iraq War, which is a famous example of the challenges or near impossibility of clean regime change in the Middle East. So they've been careful to say that they support the war because Australia, as a country that sees Iran as a destabilising destructive force around the globe, does not believe Iran should build up towards a nuclear weapon on the point of legality. Penny Wong and the Prime Minister have said repeatedly that it's on the US and Israel effectively to explain how International law was adhered to here. There's an obvious discomfort on the part of Mahkani and Anthony Albanese and many European leaders in terms of how they viewed the U.S. s consultation on these strikes. There was no heads up given to Canada or Australia or European allies. There was no attempt, as you saw with George Bush back in the early 2000s to go to a UN body to build up the case for war. There were public statement months about the prospect of action given Iran's reluctance to give in to the full extent of Trump's demands on their nuclear program. But in terms of bringing allies into the tent to justify this, that didn't exist. And so you have this line from the government to say, yes, we support the broader intent of this war. We may be uncomfortable with the tactics, but certainly on the legality, we leave that to the US And Israel to. To answer for.
- [06:42]
A
Yeah, it's sort of a very concerted attempt to have no opinion on something which is. Which is quite glaring. There has been some dissent from within the labor ranks, hasn't there, Noddy? From former Foreign Minister Bob Carr, who's not. Not no one, and some of the labor caucus members.
- [06:57]
C
Yes. I think a lot of this is happening underneath the surface, really. And I spoke to Bob Carr this week to just try and bring some of that to light. Cause I think he does speak for a substantial portion of the Labor Party, the labor movement, that has a lot of disquiet about the fact this is happening. A, but B, that Australia came out so strongly in support of it. I think what Paul was speaking about there with Penny Wong in particular, having to stand up every day and be asked, you know, are these strikes legal or illegal under international law? And she has to act, really. That's for someone else to deal with.
- [07:38]
B
That is that question about the legal basis of the action is a matter for the countries participating in the action, which is the US And Israel. What we have said is that there's a few points. One is, we know over many years that Iran.
- [07:53]
C
It's very awkward because you won't find any respectable international law expert basically anywhere who would say these strikes are legal. Australia's always talking about the illegal invasion of Ukraine. You know, we make judgments all the time about what's illegal or not under international law. But she's just in this position where she can't say one way or the other.
- [08:17]
A
Yeah.
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C
Which makes her look pretty ineffectual on.
- [08:21]
A
Makes her look a bit silly. It makes them all look a bit silly because we all know what the truth is. Yeah.
- [08:25]
B
Well, could I just make one more point on international law? I think it's worth pointing out that even though the government is clearly not trying to not weigh into that question, they are seeking to build up the case, the moral case, for why this strike was justified without fully making specific claims that they support the way the US went about it. They've made the point repeatedly that this is a regime that's killed tens of thousands of people in recent months and has no legal standing as a legitimate government. They've talked about the terror attacks on Australian soil in an attempt to build up Australian public support for it. And you had Raf Giaconi, the kind of hawkish labor senator on Wednesday in Parliament stand up and say, this is a moment of moral clarity and this moment is for moral clarity. We stand against the brutal regime, we stand against nuclear proliferation and we stand with the Iranian people. The Greens. And some journalists in the ABC need to understand that the Iranian diaspora, this is Rafchoni's point, the Iranian diaspora in Australia supports these strikes. So without going close to making the point that this does adhere to international law, they are in a way trying to say that there is a higher justice here.
- [09:36]
A
As you say, there's a moral case and a legal case. And I suppose they're two quite separate things. Interestingly, Matt, the eruption of this conflict has coincided with the visit of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, which Paul mentioned before. He's a very honoured guest in Australia. He spoke to Parliament on Thursday. On Wednesday in Sydney, he gave a talk to the Lowy Institute. And you know, just to give this as a bit of context, he gave a barnstorming speec months ago at the Davos Economic Summit where he said, basically he said the quiet part out loud. And he said, you know, there has been a rupture in the world order. He called upon middle at powers to work together to counter the hard power of hegemony. He said the rules based order is fading and we're moving to more of a the strong can do what they do and the weak must suffer what they must. Which is a Thucydides quote, he really sort of called it. And a lot of people saw this speech as quite striking and as the first sort of middle power or, you know, Trump ally or American ally to really call out what is happening with the expression of US Power. What's he had to say this week in Sydney and Canberra? Has he been reiterating those themes?
- [10:45]
C
He definitely has. But I think what we're seeing on this trip. And it's also worth noting the Australia trip is in between a visit to India and a visit to Japan. So you can see these countries that he's visiting in the Indo Pacific, you know, three very important democracies. Democracies. But he's trying to spread Canada's message, you know, far away from North America. I think he's trying to put some meat onto the bones of this idea of what he was talking about and what he got headlines for. And the question today for middle powers like us is whether we establish the conventions and help write the new rules that will determine our security and prosperity or let the hegemons dictate outcomes. Which was essentially saying that the old rules based order is dead. We shouldn't mourn it for too long. We're living in a new world. You could describe it in a way as quite analytical, you know, quite academic. He was diagnosing a problem. What we're seeing on this trip is, well, what's the solution? You know, it's easy to say that we're not living in this world, this pretty pleasant world we were living in before. So how do you actually go about that beyond just talking about middle powers doing more together? So what we heard several times in his speech was this idea of variable geometry. Canada is choosing to create a dense web of connections to build our resilience. We've adopted a new framework for engaging the world variable geometry, creating different coalitions for different issues based on common values and interests for those issues. Which I think explains what Mark Carney is trying to do here. It's pretty catchy.
- [12:35]
A
I don't know, I was about to say it's a very unsexy headline, but maybe we have different tastes in that area.
- [12:40]
C
It's pretty wonky productivity. That's the thing. Mark Carney is a former central banker in the UK and Canada. You know, they're not always known as being the most exciting people. No offense to central bankers, but he comes from a wonky world and this is his approach. So what is getting at there with this idea of variable geometry is of course we have a multilateral system with the UN and other big organizations. We have our traditional alliances with countries like the U.S. but what middle powers like Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea, you can keep going. They need to be doing a lot more together without the superpowers of China and the U.S. for example, doing a lot more together in particular groupings that make sense for particular initiatives. So you can have, we have three countries working on critical minerals, four countries working on Defence cooperation, social media, ban social media, ban climate change, that we need. All these countries looking a lot less to Washington in particular is the subtext. You know, you can think about this in terms of the amount of visits that Australian leaders and Canadian leaders have made to Washington over the years versus how rare it is to have a Canadian leader here. That's just symbolic of we tend to take it for granted. You know, we get along, we have like minded values. He's really saying we need to put some structure around this and we need to be looking at a very practical level of what we can do together.
- [14:14]
A
He sort of talked about it in terms of a financier again. He talked about hedging against risk and basically said that's what will happen when you have these major powers, including the US who are basically all fighting for status with each other and using that power to exploit lesser powers like Canada and Australia. Paul, I wonder, I mean, you know, in contrast to Prime Minister Carney, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been very cautious, very polite, some would say. He would probably say he's been very pragmatic in his dealings with the Trump administration. He's done deals where he could, particularly on critical minerals. We've got, you know, a fairly, relatively good deal on tariffs compared to other countries in the world. So he would say, you know, his pragmatic approach is paying off. He certainly hasn't done a Mark Carney and made a bunch speech about, you know, how middle power should rise up. Where does Australia sort of sit in terms of its middle power status and are we pulling out weight?
- [15:13]
B
Well, I think we've got to acknowledge that there are different circumstances in Australia and Canada. I mean, the tyranny of distance benefits us here in some ways. Carney came into power at an election around the same time as our election. I think it was in April last year, the Canadian one. And the months leading up to the Canadian election were characterised by this huge rupture between Canada and the US where Trump started talking about Canada as the 51st, 52nd state, whichever the number is, he was on track to lose that election. Mark Carney, the Conservatives about to win. And Carney kind of took hold of this populist nationalist instinct to have a fight with the US for the first time in really modern history. And that was hugely successful. Australia has been largely left alone by the Trump administration and there have been some small bouts, but the strategy here has been to not poke the bear, to remind the U.S. administration of the huge security benefit of having Australia in its toe in the Asia Pacific, particularly in relation to the contest in the Indo Pacific and with China. And people in the Albanese government argue that they have been making similar speeches to the one Carney delivered at Davos for months and years. I think that's a little bit facile because, yes, they have been talking about the multipolar world, they have been talking about re engaging with Asia and that's been demonstrated in its actions. But there's not been one standout speech from the prime minister which really capped captures the attention in the same way Carney has.
- [16:42]
A
Noddy, you speak to foreign policy wonks within the government. You speak to national security experts and advisers within the government all the time. What is your sense of the strategy that the Albanese government is bringing to its dealings with the Trump administration, particularly on sort of global affairs matters as opposed to trade and economic stuff?
- [17:02]
C
I think there's more doing and less telling than, say, what Canada and Mark Carney is doing. Like, it's noticeable that after that speech, Albanese invited him to give an address to Parliament, which is very rare. There's only been five in the last decade. So that shows he's aboard the Mark Carney train. He's, you know, putting on quite a show for him this week. They're pursuing a lot of initiatives together, but Albanese will not use all the grand rhetorical language that Carney's going to use. So I think Albanese wants to absolutely have it both ways. He wants to pursue all these options where he can with middle powers. He's trying to stay very close to the Trump administration to get everything he can out of them. Something like Aukus would be exactly what Mark Carney would be saying you don't want to get involved in because it does put us in a.
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A
And the Canadians have indeed been very, very skeptical and very cautious about Orcas. Yeah.
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C
Yes. Because it is something that puts us in a subordinate position to the US we're waiting years down the track to see whether they will actually give us these nuclear powered submarines that we're going to be reliant on by then. So there are clear contradictions here. And what Albanese would say is that he's trying to balance them all against each other. There's no point in annoying our biggest security partner. Quite amazingly, he's still just left his offer to join the Board of Peace. He's just left him on read, really, and not given an answer, even though the whole thing is already holding meetings and it's all the trains. But we're just saying, oh, we're giving it a think so that shows exactly how he views it. He'll avoid conflict for as long as humanly possible with the Trump administration.
- [18:50]
A
He can comfortably rely on the shortness of Trump's attention span and he's a very evident distraction at the moment from the Board of Peace. Paul, let's just segue very quickly to the Liberal Party internal review, just for listeners who aren't caught up. After every election, the Liberal Party does a major internal review to determine what went wrong or what went right. A lot went wrong, I think we can say at the 2025 election for the Liberal Party, the review's been done for months now, but the party's been sitting on it, refusing to make it public. Peter Dutton, former opposition leader, has been threatening to sue over it. And the decision was kind of taken out of their hands this week because Prime Minister Albanese gleefully tabled it in Parliament. I think everybody and their dog had a copy of this review. If it got to the Prime Minister, what did the review say and why did they want to suppress it so much?
- [19:40]
B
The review didn't say that much. That hasn't already been traversed in the public either, in our reporting, in Niki Sava's book Earthquake. In so much of the public naval gazing the Liberal Party is engaged in for however many months it's been now. So in some ways, this, this document wasn't quite as, you know, earth shattering as it was made out to be in the, in the, in the public discussion. But what occurred here was that that as the report was finalised late last year, Peter Dutton was given a copy only as the party's Federal Executive was reading it for the first time. So there was a meeting in mid December, just before the Bondi massacre, where the Federal Executive got the documents printed out. They weren't allowed digital copies, so they couldn't leak it. And at the exact moment the meeting started, Peter Dutton got it in his inbox and got a call or a text or some from someone saying, you have the report now. He was offended that he got it only at the same time as the Federal Executive because he believed that he didn't have time to respond. And he actually sent a message to John Olson, the president of the Federal Executive, who read out Dutton's message in the meeting. And the message said, I've just had a look through this thing. There are factual errors, there are defamatory comments about me. If this thing sees the light of day, I will engage lawyers. I have already started the process of engaging lawyers to stop this thing being made public. So from that moment on, it was tainted. And he took issue to the kind of florid and in some ways really brazenly honest way he was described. It referenced Candace.
- [21:10]
A
Well, I was florid about it. I thought it was. It was pretty standard. I read it and it said that he was not attractive to women, which he took.
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C
Which he's taken offense to and seems to have taken very literally. But I could imagine reading it as women did not want to vote for you.
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A
Yeah.
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C
Rather than a physical sense.
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B
I read it that way as well.
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A
I mean, I don't know what business two sort of political party reviewers would have had making comments about his personal appearance. I mean, what's the sort of upshot from it? Just quickly. Peter Dutton was upset, but it's all out in the open now. Will they just quickly move on? Is it just sort of, you know, have the recommendations of the review actually been adopted?
- [21:50]
B
Just to circle back quickly on the Dutton offence. It was. It was. Wasn't just him who had the feeling after reading it that it was far too descriptive and honest. These reports are usually written in a very sober way so as to set a person to sleep. This is the first review anyone can recall that just kind of included the observations of a candidate or the observations of the reviewers themselves in a very open and honest manner. It wasn't written in the kind of short, concise, black and white, legally sound way as these reports usually are. So that. That got people's backups even. It backs up even the people who are not Peter Dutton fans thought the report could have been written in a way that spared Dutton and many others embarrassment. But anyway, putting that to one side
- [22:37]
A
could have been whitewashed a bit more.
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B
Yeah, well, but I mean, it's not. It's not the party's. Why would a political party write some scathing review of itself and put that into the.
- [22:47]
A
Because the result was so bad that, you know, maybe something different has had to happen. I mean, Jane Hume, sort of getting off track here, but Jane Hume, who's now obviously the deputy leader, famously did the last election review. Didn't work very well. None of the recommendations were taken up and they got a huge, you know, bashing at the next election, which has almost put them out of business as a political party.
- [23:09]
B
Totally. But it's pretty abnormal practice for a political party to be scathing of individuals and have that report be public. Like that's not an obligation. They have no obligation to the public. They have an obligation to their members to make Change, but not to release donors, I guess.
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A
But yeah, so it was. I mean, it's been controversial and I suppose the upshot is that it's just sowed more bad blood in the Liberal
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B
Party and the fact that they've been able to stuff up what is meant to be a process of positive change in such an extraordinarily public and humiliating manner. And to have tried to suppress this thing, which led to the obvious next step of it being leaked and poured over in more detail than it would have been if they just released it publicly, just goes to show the malaise in the organisation, the lack of trust between key individuals, the just moribund nature of the party's professional staff, they're in a world of pain.
- [24:03]
A
Yeah. Noddy, anything to add there? What did you think of the Liberal Party election review?
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C
I agree that I was surprised reading it. It's of course great to have these things leaked and to be able to read it for ourselves. But everything I've read of it isn't that surprising. Besides some of the florid descriptions, the effort to keep it secret probably just generated even more interest in it than there would already be. I was just interested in asking Paul, you know, whether. Does it have any persuasive answers, not just backward looking about? To be honest, it is a bit out of date now in terms of how different the world is. We have such a different leader. Does it actually have persuasive recommendations for how they could get back on track?
- [24:44]
B
Yeah, it has some critical recommendations that have already been adopted. That's another paradox here, is that the Federal Executive in December actually agreed, you know, in full, to adopt the recommendations. So nobody suggested, hasn't suggested, positive change. And they're largely organisational changes around codifying the role of the Federal director, who's the campaign chief, because there was this contest between Dutton's office and the campaign professional staff as to who actually had control. So there's some very practical, not very sexy suggestions that were put forward that have been adopted, but they're not the
- [25:17]
A
ones grabbing the headlines, unfortunately for Peter Dutton. Fellas, that's been a very illuminating chat and I really appreciate you both coming on. We'll see you next week, Paul and Noddy. I hope I'll see you very, very soon.
- [25:30]
C
Anytime. Just give me a call.
- [25:32]
B
Thanks, guys.
- [25:38]
A
You can read all of our political news on our website, ch.comau or smh.comau Today's episode was produced by Chee Wong with help from Debbie Harrington. 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 us a review on Apple or Spotify. I'm Jacqueline Malin. Thank you for listening.