Topics: Labor’s trashed Australia’s bipartisan position; Aussies in Lebanon who ignored warnings should pay for ticket home; Election speculation;
09:25AM AEST
11 October 2024
Laura Jayes: The former Queensland premier says in The Australian this morning “a two-state solution in the Middle East is a daydream. Unless all parties accept Israel’s right to exist as the first step. A peace plan will fail unless it is led by Arab nations and Israel, with all parties accepting Israel’s right to exist.” He also believes the public debate on the Middle East has been hijacked by extremists from both sides of politics. The Prime Minister is pushing for a multinational consensus statement on the Gaza conflict at the ASEAN summit in Laos. Joining me now is the Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister, Simon Birmingham. What do you think of Peter Beattie’s comments? He’s from the other side of politics. He’s criticising his own side here.
Simon Birmingham: Well, Peter Beattie is making a lot of sense in that he is showing consistency with what, frankly, has been a decades-long bipartisan position in Australian politics, which has only been trashed in the last year by the Albanese Government, and that is that a two-state solution requires it to be a negotiated two-state solution if it is to be successful, and those negotiations have to resolve some of the really difficult issues. Security guarantees to both parties, negotiations around agreed borders, rights of return for those who have claims in terms of citizenship or residency. These are big, significant issues and if they are all just brushed aside as Penny Wong’s arbitrary timeline process seems to suggest in favour of having a quick recognition of a Palestinian state without the difficult questions being addressed, then all you are doing is embedding in the region decades more of conflict and division because the hard questions haven’t been resolved. Peter Beattie’s spot on to call out the need for strength and leadership in difficult times to actually say you’ve got to have the resolve to stick by these processes to address the hard questions. Otherwise, you simply setting the system up for failure.
Laura Jayes: Well, yeah, I mean, it’s been intractable for decades, though the alternative hasn’t worked either. Do you accept that?
Simon Birmingham: Well, we certainly haven’t seen the type of progress that anybody would wish to see in getting a genuine, peaceful outcome. There have been areas of progress and we shouldn’t dismiss those. If you look at the way in which the Abraham Accords have seen Israel manage to normalise relations with a number of other Arab states, and I think those steps should provide heart and give momentum that if indeed the current conflict can see Hamas and Hezbollah weakened to a point where they don’t have the influence in Palestinian territories or indeed in Lebanon that they have had, well, then that might give scope, actually, for there to be the type of steps towards security, stability and ultimately negotiated peaceful outcomes towards a two-state solution that have eluded us for so long. And of course, have been undermined in many ways by that continual threat of terrorism from those regions.
Laura Jayes: You wrote in The Nightly as well that if Australians don’t leave Lebanon in a timely fashion, perhaps that they should be footing the bill for their evacuation from here on in. This would be a dangerous precedent to set, wouldn’t it be?
Simon Birmingham: Well, I don’t think it’s dangerous at all. I think it’s a very sensible step to be taken. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s Lebanon or Israel or anywhere else around the world, we should be making sure that Australians understand when the Australian government gives out travel warnings and says, you shouldn’t go to a country, and if you are there, you should leave that country, and then you ignore those travel warnings day after day, week after week, month after month. Then don’t expect to get a free ride home at the end of thumbing your nose on that. Now, of course, there need to be considerations for compassionate circumstances. That’s to be taken as a given. But for the bulk of people who are overseas, who are outside of Australia, and who would in any other circumstance have to pay their way back to Australia, it’s not unreasonable to expect that they make a contribution equivalent of a commercial airfare or the like to come back under whatever repatriation arrangements are put in place. And the key point there is it’s about trying to incentivise better behaviour from-
Laura Jayes: So, Senator, do you think Australians in Lebanon from here on in that want to come home now, should they be paying their own way from now? Because those warnings have been in place in Lebanon for many months, as you point out.
Simon Birmingham: Ideally, yes. You know, ideally they would have been charged till now. Ideally, those who were taken out of Israel last year would have been charged, although a difference, of course, is that there were no advance warnings prior to October 7th. Whereas the Albanese Government has been clear and consistent, and Peter Dutton and I and the Coalition have been strong in backing the travel advisories to say, get out of Lebanon, you shouldn’t be there. Now, around 15,000 Australians have chosen to ignore those warnings. Many will probably choose to stay in Lebanon regardless, but many also, as soon as the missiles started firing, picked the phone up to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and said, get us out now, please. They had ignored the warnings up till then, and now they expect Australian government officials to put themselves in harm’s way to get them out, and other Australian taxpayers to subsidise them in getting out and being brought back to Australia. Well, I don’t think that is fair or reasonable. As I said, individual circumstances that warrant genuine compassion, of course, but in the main, people shouldn’t be getting a free ride out of a situation that when they should have heeded the warnings and bought themselves an airfare to leave weeks and months ago.
Laura Jayes: All right, one final question about election timing, because we now have the sitting calendar for next year. And, you know, we can all read between the lines of that calendar as well. We know when the RBA meetings will be. What’s your best guess of when Anthony Albanese will call the election? March? May?
Simon Birmingham: Look, I’m not going to sort of run the guesswork. What I think we did see during this parliamentary sitting week was an awful lot of games played by the government. You know, they kind of rolled out of complete left field this wedge legislation around NBN privatisation that not a single soul had been talking about. But suddenly it was the most important issue they had to address. It was so farcical. Now, we’ve seen them establish an inquiry into nuclear energy, um, which again, completely out of left field from the government. We welcome it. Shine a spotlight on it. We are happy to talk about the Coalition’s policies when the Albanese Government is so void of them. And yes, now they’ve wanted to to put the sitting calendar out, seemingly to ignite or to settle speculation around the election or whatever it is. When it comes to an election. Bring it on. We’ve been doing the policy work.
Laura Jayes: It usually comes out at this time. Come on, Senator, you know that it usually comes out at this time every year-
Simon Birmingham: Actually, it’s probably a month earlier than it usually is.
Laura Jayes: Okay. There’s some within your ranks that are adamant that this means that a December election will be called. Do you really think that’s a possibility? Do you really think Australians want to go and vote just before Christmas?
Simon Birmingham: I think anything’s a possibility under this government. I’m not going to put my house on any of the possible election dates. I mean, what worries me about those who speculate that this means, you know, there will definitely be a pre-election budget is I don’t trust Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers not to blow the bank further in a pre-election budget. They’ve already baked billions of dollars of extra spending into the forward estimates and beyond. If they do a budget right on the eve of an election heaven help what that means for the finances beyond that.
Laura Jayes: I’m not convinced there will be a budget either. Simon Birmingham, thanks so much for your time. I will see you soon. See you next week, in fact.
Simon Birmingham: Thanks, LJ.
[ENDS]