Speaker 1: From the Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
Speaker 1: It's Tuesday, June twenty four, twenty twenty five. Iran's promised
Speaker 1: retaliation against the US has begun with missile strikes on
Speaker 1: a US military base in Qatar.
Speaker 2: But Iran gave.
Speaker 1: Advance warning of the strikes and there are no reports
Speaker 1: of casualties. Were Australia's super secret spy bases involved in
Speaker 1: America's strike on Iran?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 2: Probably so.
Speaker 1: Why is Australia throwing a diplomatic wet blanket over President
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's moment of military might?
Speaker 2: Today?
Speaker 1: Our foreign affairs and defense experts on what really goes
Speaker 1: on between the US and Australia and what they expect
Speaker 1: from US next. This is a joint facility of the
Speaker 1: highest importance, not only to the safety of both the
Speaker 1: United States and Australia, but also to the alliance between US.
Speaker 1: I got out tack amid the ghost gums and red sands.
Speaker 2: On the fringe of.
Speaker 1: The Simpson Desert, there's a US space surveillance station that
Speaker 1: has sparked a million conspiracy theories.
Speaker 2: Pine Gap.
Speaker 1: That audio you just heard was the trailer from a
Speaker 1: Netflix series called Pine Gap Full of Spies and Lies,
Speaker 1: and the real base, jointly operated by Australia and the US,
Speaker 1: does well a whole lot of secret stuff. It provides
Speaker 1: early warning of ballistic missile attacks as well as gathering
Speaker 1: intelligence from satellite communications. It's been reported in the past
Speaker 1: to be assisting the US and its allies in guiding
Speaker 1: missile attacks, but the government won't say if Pine Gap
Speaker 1: or our other joint US base at Northwest Cape, which
Speaker 1: is used to communicate with US nuclear submarines, aided in
Speaker 1: the weekends monster US attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, but
Speaker 1: you could probably guess yes, US subs did launch Tomahawk
Speaker 1: missiles at Iran, and the US's globe spanning stealth bomber
Speaker 1: attack relied on precision guiding systems that rely on obviously satellites.
Speaker 2: Assemble.
Speaker 4: We have to know what really happened and why the game.
Speaker 3: The trouble and the Australians. Then this air of mystery
Speaker 3: around what these facilities do is necessary.
Speaker 1: Ben Packham is the Australian's Foreign Affairs and Defense correspondent.
Speaker 3: You know, it does allow the imagination to run wild,
Speaker 3: but that's just the way it is we need these facilities.
Speaker 3: It's you know, we're very lucky that we have the
Speaker 3: benefit of US intelligence and we should not do anything
Speaker 3: to undermine that.
Speaker 1: The Greens and others spent Monday demanding to know exactly
Speaker 1: what Australia's facilities did to assist.
Speaker 5: Well, we don't talk about intelligence matters, but we confirm,
Speaker 5: of course that this was a unilateral action by the
Speaker 5: United States.
Speaker 2: So was your government briefed prior to the attack?
Speaker 5: This was unilateral action taken by the United States. This
Speaker 5: was unilateral action taken by the United States.
Speaker 3: He spoken to President Donald Trump since the.
Speaker 1: Seventh Summit No On Sunday, as news broke of these strikes,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump was very, very proud of what the US
Speaker 1: military had achieved. His Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth came out
Speaker 1: on Sunday evening Australian time echoing that pride. And yet
Speaker 1: the Australian government really wasn't saying anything except for a
Speaker 1: statement calling for dscal and dialogue and diplomacy. How do
Speaker 1: those two things line up? Ben On one hand, we
Speaker 1: are increasingly involved and increasingly interoperable with the US military,
Speaker 1: and on the other hand, the Australian government's response to
Speaker 1: this triumph of American military might, as they see it,
Speaker 1: was to put a wet blanket over the whole thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, look, this was quite an interesting move and I
Speaker 3: think it does reflect where things are at between Australia
Speaker 3: and the US at the moment. You know, this is really,
Speaker 3: I think a reflection of the very cautious approach that
Speaker 3: we've seen from the government in its response to what's
Speaker 3: been going on in the Middle East of late but
Speaker 3: also to the Trump administration, and I think it's very
Speaker 3: deeply rooted in domestic politics. Labor really got a big
Speaker 3: boost at the election from its sort of implicit linking
Speaker 3: of Donald Trump and the Coalition. You know, it didn't
Speaker 3: really see inter many words, but the message was clear
Speaker 3: that we don't want American style healthcare and trying to
Speaker 3: really pin Peter Dutton as a sort of all the
Speaker 3: way with Donald Trump kind of guy. Now, Anthony Ebenezi
Speaker 3: has been sort of boxed in by this approach in
Speaker 3: many ways. He's yet to have a meeting with Donald Trump,
Speaker 3: and the longer that goes on, that is really sort
Speaker 3: of becoming a problem because those leader level ties really matter.
Speaker 3: Anthony Ebenezi did not rush to Washington as some other
Speaker 3: leaders did following Donald Trump's inauguration. He really sort of
Speaker 3: held back, reaped the rewards of that really at the election,
Speaker 3: and now finds himself in a position where he's really
Speaker 3: got to meet with Trump, who skipped a meeting with
Speaker 3: him at the G seven without so much as a
Speaker 3: phone call. Others including Lourendra Modi and Mexico's president got
Speaker 3: that phone call to say sorry, I couldn't meet you.
Speaker 3: You know, let's do it another time. You know, he's
Speaker 3: really kind of on the outer at the moment, and
Speaker 3: the sort of response that the government gave initially to
Speaker 3: the Iran strikes really isn't helping now. The government came
Speaker 3: out on Monday morning and it appeared through gritted teeth,
Speaker 3: expressed support for what had happened, but it was a
Speaker 3: very sort of cranky, terse press conference. We are not
Speaker 3: in the tent in the US and this is a
Speaker 3: growing problem. I mean in the past. You know, if
Speaker 3: you think of Scott Morrison, I mean Scott Morrison would
Speaker 3: have been out immediately. You would have thought we didn't
Speaker 3: get a heads up about what was going to happen
Speaker 3: on Sunday morning. But Keirs Dahmer did, for example, Britain's
Speaker 3: Prime minister. Did you know, It's really hard to think
Speaker 3: of an Australian Prime minister in the past that would
Speaker 3: not have received that sort of a full warning of
Speaker 3: that kind of military action, you know, going back to
Speaker 3: like as far back as Whitlam, you know, with the
Speaker 3: dark days of the Alliance under the Whitlam and Nixon governments,
Speaker 3: where there was quite a degree of mistrust on the
Speaker 3: US's behalf in Australia.
Speaker 1: So why so grumpy Ben? You couldn't argue that Australia
Speaker 1: was on the side of the Ayatolas in Iran?
Speaker 2: Why so hesitant and so groucy.
Speaker 3: It's emblematic of the caution. The government is a very
Speaker 3: left wing government. It's taken a pretty hardline stance on
Speaker 3: the war in Gaza, but really what happened in Iran
Speaker 3: it's a lot different. No one wants Iran to get
Speaker 3: nuclear weapons, certainly not in Australia, and the Uranian diaspra
Speaker 3: vehemently opposed to the regime. So you know, it's not
Speaker 3: like there's this base for the Mulas in Australia, like
Speaker 3: there is for the Palestinians in Gaza, for example.
Speaker 1: Coming up, Anthony Albanezi wants a meeting with Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: Is that a good idea?
Speaker 1: Anthony Albanezi says he wants a meeting with Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: but there's a risk that could spiral out of control,
Speaker 1: as we've seen with previous Oval Office meetings.
Speaker 2: He's been I.
Speaker 3: Mean, the longer it goes that, the more risky it becomes.
Speaker 3: And you know, all of this is happening against the
Speaker 3: backdrop of the defense funding debate. The US has issued
Speaker 3: a clear call for Australia to lift its defense bending
Speaker 3: to three point five percent. I mean, I think they'd
Speaker 3: probably be happy with three percent, but at the moment
Speaker 3: we are two percent, and the government's been quite cranky
Speaker 3: again about these calls to lift that. At the same time,
Speaker 3: we are asking the US to give us their crown
Speaker 3: jewels in the US Virginia class submarines and the nuclear
Speaker 3: propulsion technology that's going to need to go into the future,
Speaker 3: Orchest class submarines. So that's sort of very hard to
Speaker 3: sustain if we are not coming to the party and
Speaker 3: at least trying to show them that we are willing
Speaker 3: to do what they want.
Speaker 1: The France Christian Amiot asked the Australians famously blunt foreign
Speaker 1: editor Greek Sheridan for his take, Trump is quite right.
Speaker 4: To ask us to do better. We need to do
Speaker 4: better in our own interests. As every single expert commentator,
Speaker 4: everybody the Albanezi government has commissioned to give them advice
Speaker 4: on defense, they've all said the same thing. Our defense
Speaker 4: budget is grossly inadequate, and Albanesi is going to somehow
Speaker 4: or other try to slide through an appointment with Trump
Speaker 4: winge about tariffs, beg him to keep going with orcus
Speaker 4: and also promise not to do anything more in our
Speaker 4: own behalf on defense. I think the gods have smiled
Speaker 4: on Albanesi and not arranging an appointment with Trump. It's
Speaker 4: embarrassing because it shows that Trump has no regard for him,
Speaker 4: but it's probably beneficial because I don't see how Alberze
Speaker 4: could get through that appointment without dealing with some of
Speaker 4: these contradictions. And now the Middle East would make that
Speaker 4: even worse because if he was at a joint press conference,
Speaker 4: the journalists would say, mister Trump, do you think Australian
Speaker 4: defense spending is adequate? And then they'd say, mister Alberenesi,
Speaker 4: do you think America did the right thing by bombing Iran?
Speaker 4: Those two questions alone could cause Alberesi more grief than
Speaker 4: he's had in the last four years from the opposition.
Speaker 4: So as I say, I think he's lucky to be
Speaker 4: a small target, but I don't think it's the stable
Speaker 4: for Australia's strategic position to be that the Prime Minister
Speaker 4: adopts the fetal position and hopes the American President doesn't
Speaker 4: notice he's alive.
Speaker 1: Greek Sheridan is The Australian's Foreign editor and Ben Packham
Speaker 1: is our Foreign affairs and Defense correspondent. We've got reporters
Speaker 1: around the world and experts analyzing every move in this
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