Comment

Paul Bongiorno
Addressing hatred and division in our community

Drama, often confected, is never far from the theatre of democratic politics, but there was nothing synthetic about the sombre mood that gripped the suddenly called news conference in the prime minister’s courtyard on Tuesday.

The gathered media knew something very serious was about to be unveiled as Anthony Albanese came to the podium flanked by Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke, the nation’s top spy, ASIO chief Mike Burgess, and Australian Federal Police chief Reece Kershaw.

Albanese opened proceedings, expressing concern and solidarity with Victoria Police after early reports of a fatal ambush that killed two officers in Porepunkah in the state’s north-east.

The prime minister quickly moved on to the reason for the press conference – the revelation that Iran had orchestrated the firebombing of a synagogue in Melbourne and a Jewish bakery in Sydney last year.

Burke said the attacks were not only on the Jewish community but also on Australia itself: “Australia was attacked, and Australia was harmed.”

Albanese said the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), identified by ASIO as the mastermind of the attacks, “sought to harm and terrify Jewish Australians and to sow hatred and division in our community”.

On a much smaller scale but importantly, much the same can be said about the alleged Porepunkah gunman, Dezi Freeman. He apparently lay in wait for police coming to serve him with an arrest warrant.

Freeman was known to style himself as a “sovereign citizen”, not beholden to the laws of any state or nation. Albanese said Burgess had issued warnings about the rise of “far-right extremism” as well as about foreign actors seeking to disrupt social cohesion in Australia.

The shadow home affairs minister, Andrew Hastie, says there is a breakdown in the trust of governments due to “misinformation and disinformation” everywhere. Much of it is fuelled by authoritarian states such as Russia and Iran, which are keen to disrupt Western democracies.

Burgess says Australia is facing a complex and changing security environment, one that is becoming more dynamic, diverse and degraded. He explains this in terms of nation states using criminal proxies for espionage and politically motivated violence. It is degraded because authoritarian regimes are more willing to engage in reckless, high-harm activities.

According to Albanese, Iran has succeeded in bringing its conflict with the Jewish state of Israel to Australia. Its activities are without doubt a significant contributor to the rise of anti-Semitic activity investigated by police and intelligence agencies since October 7, 2023. Ongoing investigations are sure to reveal how significant.

Director-General Burgess says these attacks have proliferated in the past 10 months. He says that after an almost year-long investigation and analysis of the firebombings, he informed the government on Monday of the agency’s conclusion pinpointing the IRGC, a parallel military force created after the Islamic Revolution that is directly responsible to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The thoroughness and complexity of the investigation, which also drew on foreign agencies, explains the delay in arresting the actual perpetrators of last December’s Adass Israel Synagogue attack.

The culprits were low-level arsonists-for-hire who, according to a government source, were allegedly used by a fugitive Melbourne crime figure in attacks on illegal tobacco outlets. The government’s response on being informed was swift and consequential, with cabinet agreeing to a drastic diplomatic response.

On Tuesday, it was announced that the Iranian ambassador was being expelled, the first time any ambassador had been kicked out of the country since World War II. Our ambassador and diplomats have been withdrawn from Iran for their safety. The IRGC will now be listed as a terrorist organisation, a complicated process given its status as an arm of a country Australia recognises.

Penny Wong says while there are consequences for Australians in Iran – who will now receive no consular assistance – and for our capacity to directly assert Australia’s position, Iran had crossed the line. The government, Wong says, could not accept a foreign country “organising violent acts on our soil”.

The opposition strongly backed the government’s response but said it took too long on both the expulsion and the terrorist listing. Sussan Ley reminded Albanese the Coalition had been calling for the ambassador’s expulsion last year and for the IRGC to be proscribed two years ago.

Ley asked why Albanese hadn’t acted sooner “when the warnings were so clear and the risks so grave”. Shadow minister for foreign affairs Michaelia Cash said the government has “some serious explaining to do”.

Albanese said Tuesday’s ASIO revelation was a time “when the nation should ... come together”. Wong said Cash’s first response was “always to get very angry and point the finger”. She reminded people that at the time of the firebombings Cash said they were a consequence of the government changing its vote at the United Nations “in relation to a ceasefire and the observance of international law”.

The foreign affairs minister said the government had imposed 200 sanctions on Iran and the IRGC, while Cash as attorney-general had added not one.

Cash’s pointscoring took an even greater hit from friendly fire. Andrew Hastie on RN Breakfast said that when he chaired the influential parliamentary intelligence committee during the term of the last Coalition government the committee members favoured listing the IRGC as a terrorist organisation and it was “a good question” as to why they hadn’t.

Albanese quoted Hastie favourably from another interview, saying that in contrast to Ley and Cash he understood “our intelligence agencies had to stack it all up and do so in a forensic manner”.

Apart from being useful in rebutting the opposition’s criticism, Albanese’s quoting of Hastie also gave profile to the MP who has unashamedly acknowledged his leadership ambitions – something the prime minister also did, on another issue, the day before.

Ley can be grateful for the giant distraction Iran’s egregious foreign interference provided on the day her struggle over a commitment to a net zero emissions policy by 2050 was threatening to dominate the headlines again.

Various versions of what happened in the Coalition party room were quickly leaked to the media, even before the meeting ended. There is no doubt that several MPs opposed to net zero and even a couple supporting it were of the view that the issue should be resolved more quickly than the leader’s review timetable allows.

An inkling that the Coalition has many unhappy campers on the policy is the emergence of a new protocol ditching a formal briefing on what happened at the meeting in favour of the leader holding a news conference.

Even though these briefings from Labor and the Coalition are sanitised, they still alert journalists to the number of MPs that raised questions on a topic or the tenor of points made about it. The idea is to make the briefings as anodyne as possible, to discourage journalists from pursuing further unwelcome inquiries.

Ley has decided the best way to put her side of things is to do it herself, which at least shows she is not afraid to confront the Canberra press gallery, unlike her predecessor Peter Dutton.

At the press conference, media directly asked her questions about the splits in the Liberal and National parties over critical energy policy and her leadership viability. She assured one inquisitor she “absolutely ... will” be at the helm of the party at the next election because she “know[s] the party room” she leads.

If perceptions are reality in politics, as the wisdom insists, the party she leads is heading in another direction. The Liberal National Party conference in Queensland at the weekend voted overwhelmingly in favour of ditching net zero. Even her fellow Coalition leader, the Nationals’ David Littleproud, voted to dump the target.

Littleproud, as one of his interstate colleagues noted, is running very fast to stay one step ahead of Barnaby Joyce and his allies, who would love to replace him as leader.

Joyce’s contribution to the disarray is progressing nicely. On Monday, the government gave his private member’s bill priority. It not only seeks to ditch the net zero target but also to dismantle much of the infrastructure supporting the transition to renewable energy.

In a piquant piece of politics, Labor’s second speaker on the bill was Ali France, who defeated Peter Dutton at the election.

France described the bill as “bizarre”, going against the will of the people at the election and ignoring big businesses, who have shifted to net zero practices and are looking for clean energy opportunities.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on August 29, 2025 as "The very serious business of holding it together".

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