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DANIEL:

From Schwartz Media. I’m Daniel James, this is 7am.

When Donald Trump ordered strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, 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 calm. For Anthony Albanese, once a vocal opponent of the Iraq war, it shows how far Labor has shifted on foreign policy; and how little pushback there is within his party.

But while Labor falls in line, the Coalition are thrashing their way to a new identity.

Today, columnist for The Monthly and Inside Story Karen Middleton on war, politics and the calculations driving both major parties.

It’s Friday, June 27.

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DANIEL:

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. Why was that?

Audio excerpt – Anthony Albanese:

“The world has long agreed that Iran cannot be allowed to get a nuclear weapon and we support action to prevent that and that is what this is.”

KAREN:

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 too definitively on the Sunday until they fully understood what was going on.

Audio excerpt – Journalist 1:

“Just to follow up, so was your government briefed prior to the attack?”

Audio excerpt – Anthony Albanese:

“This was unilateral action taken by the United States.”

Audio excerpt – Journalist 2:

“PM, you weren't briefed? Is that the…”

Audio excerpt – Anthony Albanese:

“This was unilateral action taken by the United States.”

KAREN:

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 Defence Minister. And that had noted that Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile programme 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.

Audio excerpt – Anthony Albanese:

“Had Iran complied with the very reasonable requests that were made, including by the IAEA, then circumstances would have been different.”

KAREN:

So it was seen very much as not being a specific endorsement of the action 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 information before they spoke out on Monday.

DANIEL:

There have been many in the security community who have alleged that Trump breached international law in ordering these strikes on Iran, and yet the government has decided to tentatively support those strikes. If you put this in the context of Albanese's political history, his stance on the Iraq war, for example, how do you think it all squares?

KAREN:

Well, he certainly was a strong opponent of Australia's engagement in the war in Iraq in 2003. He gave a speech in the parliament on the 20th of March, 2003, opposing that engagement. He called it an unjust war. He said we shouldn't be revisiting the Crusades. Because that's how this war was being perceived in the international community. He was worried about Australia's reputation and he noted that the conflict or 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 pre-emptive strike which changes forever the way that international politics work. 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 under international law on that basis.

DANIEL:

Are there people inside the Federal Labor Party who would be pushing back against the Albanese's approach in this moment?

KAREN:

Well, yes, there are certainly people on the party's left, certainly outside the parliamentary party that are pushing back. We've heard the likes of Doug Cameron, who's a former left-wing Labour senator. He has been critical of the government's willingness to endorse the US strike. And we've also heard from Ed Husic. 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 Albanese, 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.

DANIEL:

After the break, Sussan Ley’s energy crisis

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Audio excerpt – Sussan Ley:

“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.”

DANIEL:

Karen, this week the opposition leader Sussan Ley gave her first address to the press club as leader of the coalition. What sort of tone did she strike?

KAREN:

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 acknowledgement 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.

Audio excerpt – Sussan Ley:

“As leader of the Federal Liberal I will always be honest and upfront with the Australian people. So let's be honest and upfront about last month's selection: We didn't just lose, we got smashed. Totally smashed.”

KAREN:

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.

Audio excerpt – Sussan Ley:

“What we as the Liberal Party presented to the Australian people was comprehensively rejected.”

KAREN:

And she particularly singled out women and the coalition'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.

Audio excerpt – Sussan Ley:

“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 is also fine. But what is not fine is not having enough women.”

KAREN:

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.

Audio excerpt – Sussan Ley:

“I understand the pain that comes with coercion and control because I had 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.”

KAREN:

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.

DANIEL:

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?

KAREN:

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 Minchin and former New South Wales Liberal Minister and in fact journalist Prue Goward. 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 is 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 it's 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 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.

DANIEL:

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 and yet it was also a major issue in the recent dissolution of the coalition between the Nationals and the Liberals. So where are they up to when it comes to resolving their approach to energy?

KAREN:

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 2050. 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 2050 or 2049, 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 Ley 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 emissions reduction has to be part of the policy discussion. They will report to herself and to the nationals leader David Littleproud. 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.

DANIEL:

And an easy question to finish off with, Karen: where do you think the Coalition will land on that issue?

KAREN:

That is an excellent question. I think it depends, really, on 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 1. So 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 luck.

DANIEL:

Karen, always great to speak with you. Thank you for your time.

KAREN:

Thanks, Daniel.

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DANIEL:

Also in the news today…

The mother of murdered Noongar Yamatji boy Cassius Turvey has told the West Australian Supreme Court that the killing has torn at the fabric of society.

Two men aged 24 and 29 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, Mechelle Turvey also said the community now lives in fear and uncertainty and that ‘if anyone thinks their actions were not racially motivated many Australians would be left scratching their heads’

And

Senior Liberal frontbencher Angus Taylor has declared he isn’t in favour of gender quotas saying he doesn’t think they’re necessary.

It follows Opposition leader Sussan Ley who on Wednesday described herself as a quote ‘zealot’ when it comes to recruiting women to the party - but ‘agnostic’ when it came to quotas.

Women make up less than 30% of the Liberal Party, compared to 56% of the Labor party - who introduced a gender quota three decades ago.

7am is a daily show from Schwartz Media and The Saturday Paper. It's made by Atticus Bastow, Cheyne Anderson, Chris Dengate, Erik Jensen, Ruby Jones, Sarah McVeigh, Travis Evans, Zoltan Fecso and me, Daniel James. Our theme music is by Ned Beckley and Josh Hogan of Envelope Audio.

That's been 7am for this week. Thanks for listening and have a great weekend.

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