From Schwartz Media. I'm Daniel James. This is seven AM. When Donald Trump ordered strikes on Iranian nucleosides, the world watched for a response, but in Australia there was silence. It took a day before the Prime Minister or Foreign Minister addressed the media. When they did, they backed the US cautiously while calling for khm for Anthony Alberanezi wants a vocal opponent of the Iraq war. His position shows how far labor has shifted on foreign policy and how
little pushed back there is within his own party. But while Labor falls in line, the coalition are thrashing their way to a new identity. Today calumnists for the Monthly and Inside Story Karen Middleton on war politics and the calculations driving both major parties. It's Friday, June twenty seven. Karen, thanks for joining us. On Sunday, Donald Trump announced that
the US had bombed three nuclear sites in Iran. This was a significant moment, a dramatic escalation in the war in the Middle East, and yet we didn't actually hear directly from our government about this until the following day.
What was that the world has long agreed that Iran cannot be allowed to get a nuclear weapon and we support action to prevent that.
That is what this is. Well, it's hard to know exactly because the government isn't really willing to say, but what we have gleaned from what the government said on Monday was that it seems that they weren't alerted to this and that that may have been part of the reason that they didn't want to come out to definitively on the Sunday until they fully understood what was going on. Just a follow up, so.
It was your government's leaved prior to the at table.
This is unilateral action taken by the United States.
PM Human Breath, This.
Was unilateral action taken by the United States.
They issued a written statement that was just attributed to
a government spokesperson. So that was interesting in itself on the Sunday because they didn't even attribute it to a spokesperson for the Prime Minister or the Defense Minister, and that had noted that Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile program had been a threat to international peace and security, noted the US President's statement that now is the time for peace, called the security situation in the region highly volatile and called for de escalation, dialogue and diplomacy.
Had Iran complied with the very reasonable requests that were made, including by the IAEA, then circumstances would have been different.
It was seen very much as not being a specific endorsement of the app and I think the only answer I can give to that question is that they really weren't kept in the loop and they wanted to make sure they had all the information before they spoke out on Monday.
There have been many in the security community who have alleged that Trump breaks the international law in ordering these strokes on Iran, and yet the governments decided to intensively support those strokes. If you put this in the context of Albany's's political history he stands on the Iraq War, for example, how do you think at all squares well?
He certainly was a strong opponent of Australia's engagement in the war in Iraq.
In two thousand and three.
He gave a speech in the Parliament on the twentieth of March two thousand and three opposing that engagement.
He called it an unjust war.
He said we shouldn't be revisiting crusades, because that's how this war was being perceived in the international community, was worried about Australia's reputation, and he noted that it had the conflict of the invasion, had no UN backing. So it was a pretty strong speech at the time, and he particularly singled out the fact that there was a preemptive strike. He said, Iraq doesn't represent a threat to Australia.
We are with this decision supporting a preemptive strike, which changes forever the way that international politics works, and he referred to it as an outrage that Australia should not be part of. So there was no mincing words back then.
Now people change their views over time. He's now the Prime Minister, which puts him in a completely different position and this is a different conflict, some would argue, but there are parallels being drawn to that situation in Iraq in terms of the intelligence, whether in fact there was an imminent threat to Israel and whether it was justified onto international law on that basis.
Are there people inside the Federal Labor Party who would be pushing back against Albani's he's approaching this moment.
Well, yes, there are certainly people on the parties left, certainly outside the Parliamentary Party.
That are pushing back.
We've heard the lights of Doub Cameron, who's a former left wing Labor senator. He has been critical of the government's willingness to endorse the US stripe.
And we've also heard from Ed Hughestt.
He is well known as a prominent Muslim in the federal government and he has spoken out with concerns, particularly about Israel's strike against Iran and whether that was appropriate and justifiable, and then the subsequent role of.
The United States.
So there are voices both inside the government and inside the Labor Party more broadly that are starting to.
Caution against this.
But it's also important to remember that Anthony Albinezi, after that election victory in May, has got huge authority in the Labor Party now, so he is very much calling the shots in terms of policy positions.
After the break Susan Lee's energy crisis.
Today will be my first address as federal leader of the Liberal Party to the National Press Club, and it will not be my last.
Karen. This week, the opposition leader Susan Lee gave her first address to the Press Club as leader of the coalition. What sort of tone did she strike?
Well?
She made it very clear that she's a different leader to Peter Dutton, and that was the underlying message of the whole speech.
Really, I'm not Peter Dutton.
This is a new Liberal leadership and I have different priorities. She for example, started with an acknowledgment of traditional owners when she spoke at the National Press Club, effectively making a statement that she doesn't agree with the position that was taken before.
As leader of the federal Liberal Party, I will always be honest, upfront with the Australian people. So let's be honest and upfront about last month's election. We didn't just lose, we got smashed, totally smashed.
She was very honest about what happened to the Liberal Party at the election.
She talked about respect for the community.
Reflecting it and representing it in a more modern way.
What we as the Liberal Party presented to the Australian people was comprehensively rejected.
And she particularly singled out women and the collision's failure to appeal to female voters.
And she has advocated for a greater number.
Of female Liberal candidates, particularly in winnable seats, even if that involves quotas. But she made the point that it's the state divisions in the Liberal Party, because of the way it is structured, that have the power to do that.
The Liberal Party operates as a federated model, meaning that each state division determines its own pre selection rules. If some state divisions choose to implement quotas.
That's fine.
If others don't, that's also fine. But what is not fine is not having enough women.
So she's putting the onus on the state divisions to make a choice about that. She also spoke about women and children in the context of family violence and violence against women.
More broadly and interestingly, she.
Raised the issue of coercive control, and she suggested she had some experience of that herself.
I understand the pain that comes with coercion and control because I have felt that pain too. I understand what it's like when you blame yourself for the actions of others, because I have blamed myself too.
But when she was actually asked about that during the question period at the press club, she didn't want to say any more about it, and she was introducing herself to the public as leader and her own personal history, her background, which is a very interesting background, and I think we'll hear a lot more about that, because people don't really know her very well.
And her speech came ahead of the Liberal Party Room, Shadow Ministry and Shadow Cabinet meeting to discuss the party's reviews that have been established to try and grapple with the election loss. What do we know about the scope of these reviews and how the party is expecting to use them to shape their future direction.
Well, we've got two reviews now.
She had previously announced what is a standard procedure really after an election, which was a sort of rapid review of what happened, and that will be conducted by former Senator Nick Minshein and New South Wales Liberal minister and in fact journalist prue Gaward. So they will produce a report for the party in reasonably quick time, which she says will be made public about what happened and what needs to change.
And then there'll be a second review which she's it's going to look.
More deeply at some of the challenges facing the Liberal
Party along the lines. I think of the kind of thing she was raising about the need to appeal to modern Australia, so its capabilities with technology, it's understanding of the needs and wants of sections of the community that perhaps if it's become disconnected from So that's a deeper and wider review and will that will take longer and we'll be interested to hear what that finds and what that means for the future direction of the Liberal Party.
So perhaps the biggest sticking point though for the coalition as it tries to dust itself off, is the question of energy policy. We know nuclear policy hurt the Liberal Party at the last election in yet it was also a major issue in the recent dissolution of the coalition between the Nationals and the Liberals. So were they up to when it comes to resolving their approach to energy.
Well, this is the really big challenge in a policy sense for the Liberal Party and the whole coalition. Obviously, through the election period they were advocating for nuclear energy and that policy had been devised really as a mechanism to get the Nationals to agree to a target of net zero emissions by twenty fifty. The Nationals were very reluctant to agree to that because of what they feared
was the impact on the fossil fuel industry. They agreed, but they got their nuclear policy sort of in place, and that allowed the coalition to argue that it was going to extend the use of fossil fuels, but by twenty fifty or twenty forty nine they could have nuclear power in place and then emissions would immediately go to zero. Of course, that wasn't acknowledging that the net zero target is about the process. It's about phasing out fossil fuels starting now.
So that is still a live debate.
We know that there are some prominent people in the Nationals in particular, and a number in the Liberal Party who don't support.
Net zero and want to jettison that policy.
Susan Lee has set up a working group, which she spoke about at the Press Club. Interestingly, it's looking at what she described as energy and emissions reduction, So she is putting there on the table that emission's reduction has to be part of the policy discussion.
They will report to herself.
And to the National's leader, David little Proud, So that's the immediate mechanism she will use to start this difficult conversation in the party about where its policy should go and how to manage the challenge of climate change.
A lazy question. The finished off with Karen, where do you think coalition will land on that issue?
That is an excellent question.
I think it depends really how much authority Susan Lee retains. We know she won the leadership very narrowly against Angus Taylor, who's a more conservative Liberal from New South Wales. She's lost a couple of her own votes in the party room. With the changeover of the Senate that occurs on July one, she's got not much of a majority. Now.
Nobody is saying they want to revisit the.
Leadership vote, but that is going to be in her mind as she deals with this thorny.
Issue right up front.
She clearly wants to embrace an energy policy that involves emissions reduction, but she needs to make sure she has the whole breadth of the party and indeed the Coalition behind her.
It wasn't something that was easy to resolve in.
The last parliament and I don't reckon it's going to be easy for her this time.
So I wish her the very best of love.
Karen, always great to speak with you. Thank you for your time.
Thanks Daniel.
Also in the news today, the mother of murdered Nunga yamage boy Cassius Turvey has told the Western Australian Supreme Court that the killing has torn at the fabric or society. Two men aged twenty four and twenty nine have been convicted of Cassius Turvey's murder, with a third found guilty of manslaughter after arming themselves with metal poles and heading
out to go quote hunting for kids. During the two day sentencing, Michelle Turvey also said the community now lives in fear and uncertainty and that if anyone thinks their actions were not racially motivated, many Austrains would be left scratching their heads. And senior Liberal Front bencher Angus Taylor has declared he isn't in favor of gender quotas, saying
he doesn't think they're necessary. It follows Opposition leader Susan Lee, who on Wednesday described herself as quote a xalat when it comes to recruiting women to the party, but agnostic when it came to quotas. Women make up less than thirty percent of the Liberal Party compared to fifty six percent of the Labor Party, who introduced a gender quota three decades ago. Seven AM's Daily show from Schwartz Media
in the Saturday paper. Is made by Attigus Base, Shane Anderson, Chris Danngate, Eric Jensen, Ruby Jones, Sarah mcvee, Travis Evans, zoltanfet Joe and Me, Daniel James. Our theme music is by Ned Beckley and Josh Hogan of Envelope Audio. I's been seven AM for this week. Thanks for listening and have a great weekend.