Tuesday, 17 June 2025

Topics: Trump meeting, AUKUS, Israel-Iran conflict.

E&OE………

CHRIS KENNY: Let's bring it back to Australia now and catch up with Australia's former Ambassador to Israel, Dave Sharma, of course now the Liberal Senator for New South Wales. He joins us live from Sydney. Dave, first up, let's look at the domestic angle here and Anthony Albanese missing out on his meeting with Donald Trump. Donald Trump's priorities here are understandable but it just shows how I suppose, irrelevant, Anthony Albanese has made himself.

DAVE SHARMA: I think this has been an abject failure of Australian diplomacy, Chris. I mean, yes, it's understandable. President Trump has had to leave this meeting early and go back. He had a number of meetings, bilateral meetings with world leaders before he'd done so. But unlike every other world leader or nearly every other world leader who's made their way to Washington over the past six months, whether it's the German Chancellor, the French President, the UK Prime Minister, the Japanese Prime Minister, the Jordanian king, any number of people, Anthony Albanese has not gone. He put everything, betting everything on this meeting to try and get us out of punitive tariffs to try and secure the AUKUS agreement and now it hasn't happened and we're left flat footed. You know this is, this is terrible.

CHRIS KENNY: Yeah. The point I made at the top of the programme though is if you just looked at the issue of the moment, the Middle east crisis and sure the American-Australian relationship is going to thrive long term. We've got deep people to people, economic defence links, of course. But if Trump's looking at this issue where he needs friends, where he and Israel need friends and support, he'll be very well aware that Anthony Albanese and this government have signed up the sanctions against Israeli ministers that we've refused to repudiate the ICC ruling against Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defence Minister and, we haven't even come out now strongly in support of Iran taking out, uh, of Israel taking out Iran's nuclear facilities. So in international diplomacy at the moment, Australia is of zero value to him.

DAVE SHARMA: Look, we've made ourselves relevant, Chris, under Penny Wong and Anthony Albanese, when it comes to the Middle east, we've made ourselves irrelevant. You know the first person that Penny Wong spoke to after this Israel-Iran conflict broke was the Iranian Foreign Minister, not the Israeli Prime Minister, not other allies, as far as I'm aware, the Iranian Foreign Minister. I mean what sort of a situation are we in? This is part of the Labor Party's obsession with process over outcome. If you like the outcome here, an Iran that is, has its nuclear ambitions severely curtailed, that can no longer pose an existential threat, not only to Israel but to other countries in the region, that is no longer providing support to armed terrorist groups in the region. That is an outcome that we should be supporting here in Australia.

CHRIS KENNY: Well, this is the point, right? This is ongoing. A lot's going to unfold, unfold in coming days. But, Australia, all hope is not lost. Now, of course, we don't have to do anything physically. This is the beauty here. It's just about our diplomacy and our positioning. We do actually have an embassy in Tehran. But surely Anthony Albanese has to place on the record Australia's clear support for Israel in attacking these nuclear facilities and demand that Iran repudiate them, dismantle them and abandon those aspirations. Surely that statement could be made today. It's not too late.

DAVE SHARMA: I don't think it should be difficult or controversial. And a number of Western countries have done this to recognise Israel's right to defend itself, recognise Israel's right to deal with an existential threat clearly targeted towards that. And if you want to encourage diplomacy in negotiation, encourage the Iranians to, you know, abide by numerous UN Security Council resolutions, abandon their nuclear weapon and enrichment programmes, you know, forswear continued support to armed terrorist groups. These are all the things that the US had asked for in negotiations with Iran, bilateral negotiations that Iran was simply unwilling to give up. So if you want to focus on diplomacy and dialogue, and there's nothing wrong with that, focus on where the problem and where the obstacle has been here.

CHRIS KENNY: All right, so back to Anthony Albanese and Donald Trump. When does he next get a chance to meet with the President? Does he offer to fly back through Washington or does he just have to look at something further down the track?

DAVE SHARMA: Well, look, I think this is what the embassy and our ambassador needs to be scrambling to figure out now. I mean, as I said, they sort of bet the house on a bilateral meeting happening at a multilateral meeting in a poolside. That's always a risky endeavour. I mean, you never want to have the first substantive interaction in a close relationship like this in the margins of a multilateral meeting. That's just bad bad practise. And you know how this would have gone. Trump would have said, I need to get back to Washington. He consults his staff, he says, what else have we got on? I say, the Australian Prime Minister, and they all say, well, look, we can probably skip that one. It's not that important compared to the issues we're dealing with right now because we've made ourselves irrelevant on the Middle East. So I think Anthony Albanese needs to find and book in a time to be visiting the White House as soon as possible.

CHRIS KENNY: Thanks for joining us, Dave. Appreciate it. Dave Sharma there, liberal senator for New South Wales, joining us live from the Sydney CBD.

[ENDS]

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