The Labor government is falling over itself to celebrate the brave escape of members of the Iranian women’s soccer team. Anthony Albanese would have us believe he was “moved by the plight of these brave women”. Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke did a photo op with the soccer players, promising, “They are welcome to stay in Australia, to be safe and have a home here”.
As Labor joins America and Israel’s war on Iran, they want to paint themselves as allies of the women and ordinary people of Iran against the repressive Islamic regime. Bullshit doesn’t begin to capture it.
The Labor Party doesn’t care about refugees fleeing war and authoritarianism. It cares even less about the women of the Middle East. It is cynically exploiting the Iranian soccer team story to whip up more propaganda justifying the war.
Our government has the gall to pretend that it cares about the plight of women in Iran while it joins a war that has already killed hundreds of Iranian women, including 165 people at a girls’ school bombed by the US.
The Labor Party is happy to pose for photo shoots with the Iranian team, but is willing to ignore the endless images of the women and girls who have been murdered in the Gaza genocide. Labor has backed Israel to the hilt in its ongoing war.
The government’s welcome of the Iranian soccer players fleeing persecution is in stark contrast to the way it treats other refugees—and, increasingly, migrants.
Just hours after meeting with the Iranian team, Tony Burke announced new laws aimed at banning temporary visa holders from the Middle East from coming to Australia, in a further move towards Trumpian immigration politics.
In February, Albanese ran a Pauline Hanson-inspired campaign to stop the so-called ISIS brides—Australian women and their children languishing in Syrian refugee camps, many who were trafficked by their husbands—from returning to Australia.
The Australian Federal Police carried out a secretive operation to get in contact with and help the Iranian players escape from their state minders. The Immigration Department kicked into gear, processing their visa requests in four and a half hours in the middle of the night.
For most refugees fleeing war and persecution, their experience with the Australian government could not be more different. For decades, Labor and the Liberals have weaponised the repressive and bureaucratic machinery of the state against refugees trying to come to Australia.
Border Force, for years, turned back boats trying to reach Australia. Those who did make it were sent to offshore detention camps where they languished indefinitely. There are still more than 100 people detained in Papua New Guinea and Nauru.
Many Iranian refugees have suffered at the hands of the Labor-designed immigration system. Earlier this year, the UN Committee Against Torture found that the Australian government failed to protect an Iranian man from torture while in detention, including having his throat slit by a security guard. In 2024, a queer Iranian man who has been detained for over a decade had his appeal for freedom denied, meaning he faces deportation to Iran, where he would suffer persecution.
The Labor Party is trying to sell a feel-good story: that the Australian government stands with the people of Iran against the oppressive regime.
The real headline is that our rulers don’t care about ordinary people. At best, you’ll be cynically supported if it helps the government sell a war, like the women of the Iranian soccer team. At worst, you’re disposable, like the thousands of women and ordinary people who will die at the hands of Western governments in their latest murderous war.
