Author:
Michelle Grattan
(MENAFN- The Conversation) Scott Morrison has flagged the government is working with the United States and Britain on details for an Australian role in helping safeguard shipping passages in the Middle East.
Morrison told a news conference in Townsville on Thursday he had spoken to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Wednesday night and 'indicated to him that we were looking very carefully at our participation in this initiative'.
Morrison stressed it would be a multinational operation.
He said the government had not 'made any decisions on this yet. We want to be fully satisfied about the operational arrangements that are in place'. It was very early days and it would be a while before things came together.
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In practice though, the government has obviously agreed in principle, subject to satisfactory arrangements being worked out. Its role is somewhat complicated, however, by the fact it does not have a ship in the region.
The US's request for Australian assistance was discussed at the weekend AUSMIN talks.
Morrison said there were other countries which were in a similar position to Australia - 'engaging before making any full decisions'.
He stressed the maritime issue 'should be clearly divorced from the broader issues that relate to Iran and the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – the nuclear deal that the US pulled out of last year].
"That's a separate issue. This is about safe shipping lanes and ensuring that we can restore at least some stability to what is a very unstable part of the world at the moment,' Morrison said.
'There has been a very disturbing series of events that we've seen in the Straits of Hormuz, and freedom of navigation and safe shipping lanes is very important to the global economy and that is a matter that is as important in that part of the world as it is in many other parts of the world.'
China hits back at Liberal chair of security committee
Lukas Coch/AAP
The Chinese authorities have accused Liberal MP Andrew Hastie of 'Cold-War mentality and ideological bias', after he drew on the example of countries' 'catastrophic failure' to deal with the threat of a rising Nazi Germany in an article warning about the dangers from a rising China.
Hastie, chair of the powerful parliamentary joint committee on intelligence and security,wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald :
Hastie referred to action Australia had taken such as foreign espionage legislation and more closely monitoring infrastructure.
But 'right now our greatest vulnerability lies not in our infrastructure, but in our thinking. That intellectual failure makes us institutionally weak. If we don't understand the challenge ahead for our civil society, in our parliaments, in our universities, in our private enterprises, in our charities — our little platoons — then choices will be made for us. Our sovereignty, our freedoms, will be diminished.'
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A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy said in a statement:
Morrison played down the Hastie comments, noting he was a backbencher not a minister.
China
AUSMIN
Andrew Hastie
JCPOA
Strait of Hormuz
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