The great Australian silence

The world is stuck in a system that was designed for the real politik at the end of World War II, and not for the realities of the 21st century.

Sometimes, it’s the words that are not made that make the biggest impression, and Australia’s great silence after the United States bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities with stealth bombers last week gave the biggest indication of where the Australia–US diplomatic relationship stands: it’s subservient and guided by a lack of principles. When Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong finally emerged from their 24-hour silence, their words just repeated Washington’s talking points, framing the strike as unfortunate – but necessary – and an extension of obligations of the alliance. This pantomime felt familiar: in 1966 Harold Holt promised to go “all the way with LBJ”, and in 1999, when John Howard first boasted that Australia would act as America’s “deputy sheriff” in the region. Half a century on, the deference from Canberra remains: different players and different words, but the sentiment remains the same.

What makes this particularly offensive is the contrast with Australia’s post-war record as a multilateral player and a force for positive change, being one of key voices in the creation of the United Nations, the Genocide Convention and the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the frameworks that were designed to prevent the types of military adventurism that we often see from the United States. And by supporting this US bombing, Albanese has sided with a unilateral action, rather than the “rules-based international order” that his government frequently talks about.

The official justification – that the attack stopped an imminent Iranian breakout of nuclear weapons – sits uncomfortably with the flood of facts coming out of Vienna and The Hague. International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors have not found fresh evidence of weaponisation, and Tehran’s foreign ministry insists enrichment remained within thresholds of the Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA) – even though Wong is now claiming the opposite. Where did these alternative facts come from?

Meanwhile, US officials privately concede that this operation was hastened by domestic politics: the survival strategy of Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Donald Trump’s mid-term election politics, and lucrative deals and contracts in the arms industry. Australia’s endorsement risks entangling it in a conflict driven more by American primaries and Israeli politics than by any genuine threat to regional security, so why do it?

Domestically, the episode has also reignited the long-simmering debate over autonomous defence policy. Polling since the AUKUS deal was created in 2021 already shows a majority of Australians favour a more independent foreign strategy, and Labor’s progressive base is openly asking why the government condemns violations of international law in Moscow or North Korea yet stays silent when they originate in Washington. Albanese’s reluctance to criticise the United States has also undermined his own narrative of pursuing a “middle-power diplomacy” that should be placing human rights at heart of its actions.

For now, a fragile Iran–Israel ceasefire is holding, but Israeli defence spokespeople are already claiming a “broken truce” – without providing evidence – and hinting at the need fresh attacks on Tehran. The real question is whether Australia can still draw on the moral imagination it displayed in San Francisco in 1945 – when H. V. Evatt insisted even great powers needed to be bound by law – or whether it will just settle for the quiet comfort of US subservience.

The ABC of manufacturing consent

In the aftermath of the United States’ bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities, Western media coverage quickly fell into its well-worn cliches and talking points: Israel and the US were cast as defenders of peace and democracy; Iran was framed as the unpredictable villain and rogue. Of course, these tropes are not new, but their repetition in the wake of such a serious escalation reveals a Western information ecosystem that’s more invested in narrative control than independent scrutiny. While many non-Western media outlets reported the strike as a violation of international norms and gave airtime to Iranian officials articulating the legal basis for self-defence, most of the Australian and US mainstream media doubled down on their binary worldview, just like in a Hollywood action movie, where American power is always legitimate and on the side of right, and its enemies always irrational and on the side of wrong.

Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araqchi, in a sober and legally grounded statement, condemned the attack and invoked the UN Charter’s provisions on self-defence. He was one of the few adult voices in a room increasingly dominated by partisan Western war rhetoric and military fanfare. Yet voices like his were almost entirely absent from Australian media coverage, replaced instead by recycled commentary from embedded Western correspondents and a handful of dubious “expert” guests – most of them with longstanding ties to the political establishment or the arms industry.

The ABC, Australia’s national broadcaster, did itself no favours by inviting former Prime Minister Scott Morrison to offer his perspective on the bombing – without disclosing that he now has advisory roles with American Global Strategies and DYNE Maritime, major players in the arms manufacturing and defence industries. Morrison offered a predictable defence of the US strike, painting it as reluctantly necessary, restrained, and justified. His commentary was more like a press release than real analysis, and while as a former Prime Minister, he’s entitled to speak in public, the ABC’s decision to platform him without even a passing reference to his role in the arms industry undermined its duty of transparency.

But it wasn’t only Morrison: ABC viewers were also regaled through a lengthy interview with Mike Pezzullo, the former Home Affairs Secretary removed by the Labor government for political interference and leaking. That the ABC would prioritise a disgraced bureaucrat – as well as a disgraced former Prime Minister – over any number of available legal experts or seasoned foreign policy analysts is bewildering at best, and absolutely cynical at worst.

Australia is not short of foreign policy experts – international lawyers, retired diplomats, experienced journalists, and even former ministers could have offered context, insight, and critique. But these people were all bypassed in favour of Morrison and Pezzullo – two players with reputational baggage and clear conflicts of interest. This isn’t a call to ban figures like this from public debate, but it is about presenting their words appropriately and offering audiences the disclosures they need to evaluate opinions critically.

Of course, the ABC is a complex institution. While it continues to produce standout investigative journalism and informed commentary in some areas, the rot of managerial confusion and political appeasement is quite obvious, and evident whenever issues do arise from the Middle East, and within Israel and Palestine. It’s a 1980s-style broadcasting strategy, compromised by political obedience, that is ill-suited to the complex media landscape of 2025. The result is an uneven output: excellent at times, but increasingly riddled with soft propaganda and unexamined privilege.

Scott Morrison may eventually attempt to rewrite his legacy – as many failed leaders do – but the historical record is already very unkind. Robodebt alone should have sealed his fate as one of the least respected prime ministers in Australia’s modern era, and attempts to resurrect his authority through appearances on the national broadcaster serve no one, least of all the Australian public.

During times of conflict, facts matter, and so do the voices that are coming out to discuss these conflicts. And right now, Australia’s national conversation is being warped by the reappearance of discredited men in suits, whose past failures should disqualify them from setting the agenda of such difficult international discussions.

The broken world order

In 1945, “Doc” Evatt didn’t just represent Australia at that San Francisco Conference – he fought to ensure that smaller nations had a voice equal in principle, if not power, as a counterbalance to the giants of the postwar world structure. Australia also played a founding role in shaping the International Monetary Fund and the Bretton Woods system – tools meant to rebuild and stabilise a devastated global economy and prevent future wars through economic interdependence and rules-based diplomacy.

Australia’s legacy now lies in ruins.

Australia today is no longer provides a pathway for cooperative multilateralism. Instead, it has become a muted appendage to a crumbling hegemon in the US. With each American airstrike justified in the name of “self-defence” and each Israeli bombardment reframed as necessary “retaliation”, Canberra justs nods along. Penny Wong and Defence Minister Richard Marles just offer the words from a pre-packaged statement of alliance with the US, while Albanese seems to look the other way. The legacy of 1945 has given way to the politics of acquiescence.

Since October 2023, in the shadow of Israel’s campaign in Gaza and now the US strikes on Iran, Australia has failed to raise even the mildest public criticism of Israel or the US. Instead, its silence is often coupled with an authoritarian response: protestors in the Australia are silenced and police are mobilised – as shown in the recent incident where former Australian Greens candidate Hannah Thomas suffered graphic injuries from police during a pro-Palestine protest in Sydney – cultural figures are hounded by Israeli lobby groups and forced into cancellation and submission.

The government that once championed the idea of a rules-based international order is now too timid – or too cynical – to defend its founding principles. When asked if the US bombing of Iranian nuclear sites violated international conventions, Australia had no comment, perhaps because to comment would reveal an inconvenient truth: that the so-called rules-based order no longer exists, or at least not in any coherent or enforceable form.

The heart of the problem lies in the global system’s cancerous and sclerotic structure. The UN Security Council, designed in 1945 by the victors of a global war, has remained virtually untouched in the 80 years since. The world it was meant to manage just doesn’t exist anymore. The United States is no longer the unchallenged superpower; the United Kingdom is now diminished in its post-Brexit shell; Russia is a declining, disruptive force locked in Cold War nostalgia; France does wield some cultural and diplomatic capital but has a limited strategic reach; and China has emerged as the only power with the capacity – and intent – to reshape global norms and, in the absence of true leadership provided by the US, probably will take on that role on international leadership. The Security Council today is like a diplomatic museum, and the permanent members are a snapshot of an era that ended decades ago.

Any proposal to modernise the Security Council – by bringing in countries such as Germany, India, Brazil, Nigeria, Japan and Indonesia – would be opposed by these entrenched interests, as the existing permanent members would never voluntarily surrender their veto rights or their prestige. And yet the logic for change is overwhelming.

A more relevant structure wouldn’t just reflect the demographic and economic weight of many countries around the world, but provide for a new legitimate global structure. And while it might not resolve everything, it would at least reflect the times that we are living in.

Until this type of change takes place, the world just seems to be stuck in a system that was designed for the real politik at the end of World War II, and not for the realities of the 21st century. And it’s not a system that offers justice on the world stage, provides no guarantees for action against abuse of power and, as we have just seen with the US, has nothing in place to stop a rogue superpower.

This is how major wars begin: through old alliances, outdated treaties, and institutional paralysis. World War I was launched under the weight of decaying empires acting on long-expired commitments – a century-old promise to protect Belgium from Napoleon provided the catalyst for Britain to enter the war. World War II followed less than three decades later, fueled by the failures of a League of Nations which was unable to hold fascist powers to account.

We’re repeating the pattern. An outdated international system that has once again lost control of the moment, and Australia – once a leader in building a new global order – now appears too frightened to say so. If catastrophic war is to be avoided – in the Middle East or anywhere else – the world must not only confront the many failures of US imperial overreach but also find the courage to reimagine the institutions that were meant to prevent exactly this kind of spiral. Australia can’t afford to sit silent while history repeats itself.