Danby welcomes FM’s Iranian consulate position
Labor Member for Melbourne Ports Michael Danby has welcomed Foreign Minister’s Julie Bishop’s comments about Iranian consulates in Sydney and Melbourne as a step in the right direction, but has called on her to rule out approving such consulates.
Michael Danby and the St Kilda Junction billboard
In comments attributed to her by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, Ms Bishop said: “There is no specific plan to establish consulates in Sydney and Melbourne at this time.”
Mr Danby said, “While I note that Ms Bishop did not rule out Iranian consulates in Melbourne or Sydney, her statement is a step in the right direction.”
The possibility of an Iranian consulate in Melbourne or Sydney was first reported by the West Australian in June. Later, a Radio National reporter asked her directly whether consulates would be established, and Ms Bishop evaded the question.
Mr Danby said, “Her refusal to rule out the possibility of Iranian consulates in Australia was part of the shift in Ms Bishop’s Iran policy that I have been speaking and writing about since April.”
Other elements of that shift is a mooted increase in Iranian visas to Australia, negotiations over an intelligence sharing agreement, her narrowcasting the benefits of relaxed sanctions against Iran to an Australian rural audience, and her encourage – quickly dismissed by her interlocutors – of Iran to be included in the military coalition regarding fighting Daesh in Iraq.
Mr Danby continued, “Iran has used its diplomatic network to facilitate acts of terrorism against its ideological enemies. It was incredibly important that the Iranian diplomatic footprint not be expanded in Australia. I do not want Iranian-sponsored terrorism to reach Australia because of Ms Bishop’s short-sightedness.”
In 1994, Iran and Hezbollah cooperated to bomb the AMIA cultural centre in Buenos Aires, in which 85 people were killed. Interpol has release red notices for senior Iranian officials involved in the planning of that attack, and most recently widely seen as responsible for the suspicious death of Argentinian Federal Prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who had further evidence of Iranian involvement.
Iran and Hezbollah have also cooperated with planned attacks in Singapore, Thailand, Bulgaria and elsewhere, usually against America, Israeli or Jewish targets.
Julie Bishop doesn’t have the depth or intellectual curiosity to know what to do with more informed knowledge of the Middle East. She’s an intelligent, ambitious ex-lawyer with a penchant for her own image, whether swathed in a scarf that doesn’t cover the top of her head for her no doubt ‘romantic’ vision of herself visiting those lovely people in Iran, or her bright red sequinned tight-fitting top for addressing the UN. I’m all for lovely clothes, but let them not be the full measure of a person, distracting from the core essence of things.
Her idea of being Foreign Minister is tainted by her own idea of its meaning (hence her great excitement at having received the portfolio,coveted by her for a long time), which is informed to an extent by her idea of herself, her fashion sense and her pseudo toughness explicated by her ‘death stare’. What a farce. She will do any job given her in politics well to a point, given her capacity for hard work and her intelligence, but until her vanity moves aside, there won’t be much room for more.
To staunch believers in the the Libs., who can bear no criticism or home truth of any of them, before you descend upon me in full cry, let me say that I neither like norr dislike Julie Bishop. She is responsible for the impressions she leaves, and these are my observations based on those impressions.
Yes, well done, but it does not expiate the ALP’s announced plan to act in violation of a host of provisions of international law, among them the 1922 Mandate for Palestine, the 1949 Armistice Agreements, UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, the Geneva Convention on occupied territory and the Montevideo Convention on recognition of states.
A shameful performance.
Well done, Mr Danby. You need to be three steps ahead of her PA, Spinners and Secretaries. Sitting here, I’m hoping someone is showing her GateStone Institute, more of J-Wire and Honest Reporting. I always wonder whether ministers are reading the right things. It’s no use being Foreign Minister if you have a narrow, skewed view of the situation in the Middle East. Bishop and her spinners need to be reading the right literature.