Labor's Veteran Affairs Minister Matt Keogh's 'strategically incoherent' naivety on the Middle East war is cause for concern

Sky News AU

2 days ago

Neville Shute's haunting Cold War parable On the Beach imagines Australia as the final, fading refuge from a nuclear apocalypse. 'The world will go on just the same,' says naval officer Peter Holmes, 'only we shan't be in it. I dare say it will get along all right without us.'
The line captures a persistent illusion in Australian foreign policy: that we can remain untouched by conflicts beyond our shores.
This delusion has become dangerously entrenched, reflected most recently in the Albanese government's hesitant response to war in the Middle East.
On Wednesday, Veterans Affairs Minister Matt Keogh provided the standard government response to a question on ABC Perth about potential involvement in the Middle East. "It's not our primary focus area," he replied. "We are very much focused on our region."
Yet only two days earlier, a Qantas Boeing 787 from Perth to Paris was forced to turn back more than seven hours into its flight, prevented from reaching its destination by the closure of air space over the Gulf.
The geographical reality for an open trading nation like ours is that Australia has had a stake in peace in the Middle East since 1869, when the opening of the Suez Canal reduced the journey to Europe by weeks.
Australian troops fought and died in the Middle East in two world wars, not just out of imperial loyalty but because it was in our interests.
Our trading links have diversified, and freight handling is more sophisticated.
Yet, Dubai, Doha, and Abu Dhabi are the first or last ports of call for nearly 400,000 passengers a month arriving or departing from Australia. Last year, more than 100,000 tonnes of air freight came by that route.
As Australians, we should understand better than most that the threat to aircraft flying 30,000 feet over a war zone is not merely theoretical.
Malaysian Airlines flight MH 17 Is one of three commercial airliners confirmed to have been brought down by surface-to-air missiles.
Among the 298 people who died when the plane came down over eastern Ukraine were 38 Australians.
What is unfolding in the Middle East is not an isolated conflict - it is part of a broader confrontation between liberal democracies and revisionist regimes.
Iran, through its proxies, joins Russia and China in challenging the rules-based order that underpins global security.
Australia's security and prosperity depend on that order.
We are a trading nation that relies on open sea lanes, established legal norms, and stable regions. The notion that we can "focus on our region" while ignoring wider threats is strategically incoherent.
In short, trade routes, military engagements, and energy security irrevocably bind Australia to the region.
Far from being a distant or irrelevant conflict zone, the Middle East is - and always has been - part of Australia's geopolitical backyard.
The Middle Eastern diaspora in Australia provides a human link to countries across the region and a profound interest in maintaining their sovereignty.
Add to that Australia's historic resistance to nuclear proliferation and naivety of the Albanese government's attempts to distance itself from events in the Middle East becomes screamingly clear.
Australia was drawn irreversibly into the geopolitics of the Middle East and, more broadly, the global system that binds the liberal democratic world together.
The idea that we can stand aside from today's conflicts - whether in Gaza, the Red Sea, or the broader confrontation between open societies and authoritarian powers - is not just naïve. It is dangerous.
Yet there is more to Albanese's foreign policy error than cartographic illiteracy and topographical detachment.
The insistence of the intellectual Left to view every conflict through a colonial lens has created uncertainty about which side to support.
The framing of Israel as a Western colonising force is no longer a fringe position on the Left.
The resale to acknowledge the Jewish people's ancient historical ties to the Middle East and brush aside the significance of international involvement in Israel's creation has become mainstream thinking in Labor.
Counter-evidence is dismissed through the selective use of colonial framing.
The October 7, 2023, atrocities have not tarnished Hamas' reputation as freedom fighters.
Open calls for the destruction of Israel, a genocidal objective incompatible with any liberation narrative, are discounted or justified.
The narrative ignores genuine colonial regimes like China in Tibet or Russia in Ukraine, where national cultures are actively suppressed.
Nick Cater is a senior fellow at Menzies Research Centre and a regular contributor to Sky News Australia