Opposition industry spokesman Andrew Hastie has declared the global rules-based order is dead and that force is now the dominant authority in geopolitics, as he questioned whether devastating military strikes on Iran from the United States and Israel could bring about regime change.
The comments come as the opposition demanded the federal government do more to support Australian travellers stranded in the Middle East, as Defence Minister Richard Marles flagged “contingency arrangements” were being considered to help evacuate stranded Australians.
“I think the world is governed by power, and I prefer a powerful US reestablishing deterrence, rather than other countries like Russia, you know, using might to advance its national interest,” Hastie told journalists at Parliament House in Canberra on Tuesday morning.
“It’s nice to talk about, you know, the world that once existed post-world war. The, what do we call it, 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.”
The war in the Middle East has rapidly escalated over the course of the three-day assault from the US and Israel on Iran, with the battered nation launching strikes against Israel, Lebanon, the UAE and Kuwait. US President Donald Trump has said the conflict could last “far longer” than his previously implied four or five week operation, warning that a “big wave of strikes” was imminent.
Questions over the legality of the strikes – which many international lawmakers argue contravene international law – have largely been brushed aside by Labor. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Monday night that any determination on legality was “a matter for the United States” and would rely on intelligence that Australian authorities did not have.
In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Keir Starmer suggested the US and Israeli strikes contravened international law and questioned the viability of Trump’s plan for the conflict.
Starmer’s comments to the UK House of Commons came shortly after Trump said he was “very disappointed” at the prime minister’s decision to withhold access by the American military to British air bases during the initial attack. Starmer has since granted access to British bases.
In a rare diversion from the typically unified UK-Australian foreign policies, Marles said the government was supporting the American position.
“Iran walking down the path of acquiring a nuclear capability flies in the face of the rules-based order, and flies in the face of the [nuclear] non-proliferation treaty and all the regimes that we have in around the world which are about limiting the spread of nuclear weapons,” Marles told Seven’s Sunrise.
Labor ministers have repeatedly brushed off the suggestion of Australian military involvement in the conflict. Hastie, a former SAS commander who served in Afghanistan, said all options for Australian involvement should remain open, but questioned the conflict’s timeline and whether regime change was a reliable expectation.
“President Trump said the end state is we’re going to strike Iran and then leave it up to the Iranian people to do regime change in four and five weeks time. What’s going to be left of a functioning government? At least in Iraq and Afghanistan, you had coalition troops there to establish some sort of law and order,” Hastie said.
“It’s going to be very messy, and you can just see the rise of another Islamist regime that continues oppressing the Iranian people. So I’m just very circumspect about war as a blunt instrument for regime change. It’s very, very difficult, and having done nation building at gun point myself, that’s why I’m very circumspect about this whole thing.”
As key air travel corridors over the Middle East remain closed, Marles flagged the government was looking into unspecified “contingency arrangements” to support heir return, while reiterating the fastest way for citizens to return was if commercial flights returned.
“There’s 115,000 Australians in the region, and to give you a sense, about 11,000 Australians on any given normal day go on a flight which transits through either Dubai, Abu Dhabi or Doha, and so there are a significant number of Australians there. We are obviously working through all of this as quickly as possible,” Marles told Nine’s Today.
“There’s been some reports of marginal airspace being opened up in a limited way, but really that’s the issue that we’re monitoring closely. We are going through some contingency arrangements right now – which I won’t speak about publicly – looking forward over the coming days and weeks.”
Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter.
Nick Newling is a federal politics reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via email.