Luke Simpkins (Cowan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have spoken on Iran in the past and, now more than ever, it is relevant to do so again. In 2009, US intelligence determined that, if Iran were in pursuit of nuclear weapons, they would be unlikely to achieve this capability before 2013. It is now 2013. It is a terrifying thought that a country as dangerous as Iran may have nuclear capabilities in just a matter of months. Many throw about the question of if Iran will obtain a nuclear weapon, but to my mind it is more a question of when.

Iran's actions have raised undoubted suspicions that it has plans to become armed with nuclear weapons regardless of what authorities have actually stated. It has never been shy in showing off its military capabilities, in a subtle attempt to threaten its opposition. We must remember that Iran already has systems in place which can easily target long-distance enemies. All that is needed is for a nuclear warhead to be attached for it to be truly deadly on a massive scale. Perhaps it will soon be time for the US to pre-empt that threat with a strike against those facilities.

In 2012, Iran boasted of a new long-range missile, Meshkat, with a 2,000-kilometre range. It has also announced plans to produce a missile-launching system, the Bavar 373. Even more recently, Iran has claimed that dozens of its drone aircraft have managed to penetrate Israeli airspace without detection, and they plan to produce more.

Iran has not allowed the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors full access to its facilities, with only selective access granted to locations usually dealing with energy or raw materials. I note that the agency are refused access to sites such as Parchin, which is a suspected military explosives testing site where weapons relating to research may be found. Due to the secretiveness of Iran's programs, there is a strong possibility that, even if it does not have a ready-to-go nuclear weapon, it would be likely to be in a position where it could assemble one on short notice. If Iran did acquire nuclear weapons, there would be devastating reciprocal effects across the region. Nations who are enemies of Iran, especially those who have been repeatedly threatened, such as Israel or Saudi Arabia, may be targeted, resulting in horrific consequences. Power plays would destabilise the Middle East. Some will form closer alliances with Iran to seek protection, while some may even take action to defend themselves against Iran and attempt to level the playing field by acquiring their own nuclear weapons. This will make pre-existing problems in the region even more difficult to resolve.

The contradicting claims by Iranian authorities create uncertainty. Repeatedly, they claim to want to lead the Islamic world and to wipe their enemies—namely, Israel—off the face of the earth. Yet the Supreme Leader of Iran has officially stated that Iran is not seeking to obtain nuclear weapons capabilities, stating that the possession of them is a great sin from an intellectual and religious point of view. I do not believe him, as Shiah Islam has used a form of religious dissembling known as taqiyya throughout history. As Shiah Islam is the minority, they have in the past justified lying in order to protect the Shiah population and ideologies. Regardless of what has been said by authorities, actions speak far louder than words.

If there truly is nothing to hide, why don't they just make the nuclear program accessible? This is unlikely. Iran has ignored international demands and sanctions for years. Their lust for power over their own people and their enemies outweighs their desire to comply. Iran has a sense of entitlement as the dominator in the region, which leads to fears that they are willing to go to extreme measures in acquiring this domination.

For too long, Iran has positioned itself as the victim and continues to claim ancient conflicts between Shiah and Sunni denominations and even between Persian and Arabic ethnicities as justification for violence and hatred. Shiah belief portrays itself as being the little fish in the Arabic Sunni pond. Iran believes it is its responsibility to return to Persian dominance, as before the Arabisation of the region between the seventh and 14th centuries. So they view it as their right to spread the Shiah theocracy and to suppress the Sunni majority.

This desire for control is not just for control over others. Within Iran, people are suppressed and they do not have basic human rights. This is a serious concern, especially as Iran claims to be a free and fair democratic nation. With Iranian elections due to occur in June, many are doubtful about how legitimate these will be. We only have to look back to 2009 to see how little honesty there is within the Iranian government and their elections. Despite there being strong support for the opposition, President Ahmadinejad's shocking win, with a two-thirds majority, points this out.

The lack of true democracy in Iran prevents the nation from moving forward. Elections do not achieve real change in Iran, as it is not the President who acts as head of state; it is the Supreme Leader. He is Iran's highest political and religious figure, though he is not elected. He is instead appointed by a closed assembly of experts. While the President is elected in a popular vote, he is only one of a number of selected candidates approved by the guardian council, and that guardian council consists of six clerics appointed by the Supreme Leader, including him.

It is no surprise, therefore, that the Supreme Leader holds that sort of control, showing that he holds almost a dictator-like power, and that the President is merely a puppet preapproved by the leader. Currently, 15 potential candidates have already been approved to stand for election. It is expected that the President will be even more compliant with the Supreme Leader's ideologies following the fallout between the leader and Ahmadinejad. This is not how a successful democracy should be run. This is not a democracy. These elections are not fair or legitimate. Opposition leaders are often denied approval to run as candidates and are often imprisoned for attempting to do so.

Dozens of political activists and those supporting the opposition have been arrested. They are charged with exaggerated claims of espionage, propaganda or treason, amongst other things. Many are never formally charged and few receive a fair trial. There are even cases of those who are subject to abuse, torture and death at the hands of officials. There have also been human rights violations against those in the media, students, lawyers and civil and human rights activists. As of October 2011, there have been claims of at least 49 journalists and bloggers being held in prisons, for questioning the acts of the government. Attacks have been carried out on those who openly criticise the Iranian government, and authorities prevent people from partaking in peaceful demonstrations.

There is no freedom of speech or expression in Iran, two things crucial to the running of a true and successful democracy. Extreme censorship measures are in place, with countless political news, analysis and blogging websites blocked within Iran—not to mention all social media sites, despite the irony of the Supreme Leader having both an Instagram and a Twitter account. Newspapers, blogs and independent journalists have routinely been shut down or been forced to endorse government bias and ideology.

Iran goes to incredible lengths to suppress those attempting to hold them accountable. Authorities continue to deny the freedom of assembly and association in Iran. Activists and students are targeted for acting against national security and arrested for propaganda against the state. Students known, or even suspected, to be politically active may be denied access to graduate programs at state universities.

There have also been numerous cases in which protesters have been killed, regardless of whether their protests were peaceful or not. Even the UN Secretary-General has called for an end to Iran's human rights violations. He has urged for the release of political prisoners in the lead-up to June in order for a fair and legitimate election. If political freedom is not established there will never be a true democracy. The UN continues to encourage nations to enforce and to strengthen sanctions against Iran, to put an end to the numerous human rights violations and to prevent their acquisition of nuclear weapons.

These are steps that Australia needs to take. Yes, we do implement some UN Security Council resolutions which impose sanctions upon Iran and we have established our own autonomous sanctions, yet there is more to be done. In order to strengthen Australia's opposition to Iran and its government, everything needs to be done to show Australia's position. Sending envoys to the Non-Aligned Movement in August 2012 was a step in the wrong direction. The supreme leader claimed the success of the Non-Alignment Movement proves that the forced isolation and sanctions imposed on Iran have been unsuccessful. Simply by attending, Australia, who is not even a member of the Non-Aligned Movement, has reaffirmed those statements.

It is my view that maintaining embassies in Australia for Iran and for Australia in Iran shows that Australia is still willing on some levels to communicate and work with Iran. This shows to Iran that Australia is not as serious as some in the isolation of that country. Israel has complete bans on travel and business with Iran, while the US has an almost entire economic ban. The United Kingdom has closed its embassy in Iran, as well as forcing the closure of Iran's embassy in the UK. Even more recently, Canada announced that it had severed all ties—mainly trade, political and economic—with Iran.

These are the measures that the government needs to take to ensure Iran complies with sanctions. Putting pressure on Iran will be the only way to end human rights violations, to conduct free and legitimate elections and, most importantly, to prevent Iran from ever acquiring a nuclear weapon. We can only hope that the presidential elections will have more optimistic results than in 2009, but this cannot occur without the commitment by the international community encouraging Iran to do so.

There are no easy or immediate solutions, but we cannot allow the attendance at the NAM to occur again. Iran cannot become a legitimate and functioning democracy overnight. It requires a commitment and the dedication of Australia and other nations around the world. (Time expired)

Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome this opportunity to speak about the grave threat that Iran's nuclear ambitions pose to the peace and security of the Middle East and of the world. In the past eight years under President Ahmadinejad and supreme spiritual guide, Khamenei, Iran has progressed steadily towards building deployable nuclear weapons. Iranian leaders, including the supreme religious leader Khamanei, repeatedly have called for the destruction of a member state of the United Nations: specifically, Israel. According to all of the international experts, including the International Atomic Energy Agency, they are moving towards acquiring nuclear weapons that would give them the capacity to carry out that threat.

Of course, the member for Cowan is to be commended on this resolution. He has been speaking about their ballistic missile capacities which, together with the nuclear weapons acquisition, make it a truly frightening prospect for all people who are players in that part of the world.

No rational statesman would talk about such an atrocity as wiping out a state of the United Nations, but I would suggest that the leader of Iran is not a rational statesman. In fact, he is a religious Shi'ite fanatic, and his rhetoric should be taken seriously. The New York Times on 7 February this year quoted him as saying, 'I am not a diplomat. I am a revolutionary, and speak frankly and directly. If anyone wants a return to the US dominance here'—and he was talking about the prospects of direct negotiations with the United States—'the people'—and he was talking about the Iranian people—'will grab his throat.' These are not the sentiments of a man who seeks to achieve peace for his country through negotiations with the democracy that is still the major superpower in the world, the United States.

Both the US and the European Union have warned Iran that they will not allow such a threat to develop, and they have imposed severe economic sanctions on Iran. As chairman of the foreign affairs committee, in every European capital where I have had an opportunity to speak I have commended their foreign ministers, foreign ministries and foreign affairs committees on imposing those sanctions midyear. In fact, that was the key factor in the change in the severity of the economic sanctions in Iran, and the one that is making them pay attention. Iran now lacks even the capacity to refine petrol; the third largest oil producer has lost the technical capabilities and the access to rebuild their refineries.

Let us just look at the effect of the sanctions: Iran's exports of oil had declined to about 1.25 million barrels as of December 2012, down from an average of 2.5 million the previous year. Considering that oil exports historically provided about 70 per cent of government revenue, this has had an astonishing effect on the Iranian economy. Iran's oil exports declined to about 940,000 barrels in July 2012, the month the EU's oil embargo came into effect. If you calculate the decline in oil exports at about $85 a barrel, this means a loss of $50 billion in hard currency in one year to the Iranian regime. So sanctions have certainly been very effective. The question is: are they working?

As the member for Cowan pointed out, the current Iranian president's second term expires soon, and there will be elections in June. Iran's last elections in 2009 were shamelessly stolen—rigged—by Ahmadinejad and his street thugs in the Basij. It was very ominous for the Iranian people, who have never had this happen before, that suddenly all of the ballot boxes were seized by the interior ministry. Afterwards we saw the bloodbath as the people of Iran realised that the election was stolen from them and this theocratic regime had been kept in office. The prospects do not seem much better for this year's elections.

The Economist reported recently that Iran's unelected supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is determined to get a new president who is completely compliant with his will. We do not know who that candidate will be. Ali Larijani, who has been one of the hardline negotiators on the nuclear matter, may be close enough to Khamenei to get his support.

Khamenei and Ahmadinejad have fallen out in recent years. Ahmadinejad may run his own candidate against the ayatollah's nominee. There is one ray of hope: a reformist candidate, Mostafa Kavakebian, a professor of political science at Tehran university. He must be a very courageous man. After what happened in 2009 to the opposition forces in Iran, I am not optimistic about his chances. If the people of Iran peacefully brought about regime change, this would be the best way of halting Iran's march towards nuclear weapons and its aggressive policy to countries in the region.

There are reports that Khamenei is concerned, however, about the damage the economic sanctions are doing to the Iranian economy, fearing it will weaken the Islamic republic's grip on power. We must approach this peacefully with strong diplomacy and the aggressive sanctions that are taking place. I note that the United States introduced new sanctions which will block countries that have exemptions to receive Iranian oil exports remitting those finances back to Iran. Iran can only buy goods from those countries, such as China. That is a further tightening of the sanctions that has happened only in the last few days.

US President Obama has been very clear that the United States will not tolerate a nuclear Iran and he seems to have the full support of Europe on this. Remember, he declared in 2012:

Iran's leaders should understand that I do not have a policy of containment; I have a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

There has been a lot of talk at the same time about the unilateral action by Israel against Iran's nuclear program. Perhaps we will learn more about that after the President of the United States visit to Israel in March, a development I certainly welcome.

Israel has a clear right to defend itself against such profound, repeated and verbal as well as existential threats such as Iran's weapons program and ballistic missiles, but I hope it will not come to that. I hope the combination of diplomacy, including the fearless work of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and sanctions will eventually persuade the regime in Iran, whether it is Khamenei or the next president, that developing a nuclear weapon is not worth the risk.

Australia understands that Iran's ambitions do not just threaten Israel; they threaten the whole region, particularly the West's allies—Saudi Arabia and Turkey. They are a threat to the Gulf States such as Kuwait and Bahrain, which Iran sees as part of its sphere of influence. In fact, Iran is a threat to the whole Sunni Arab world, where it seeks to establish a regional Shia hegemony, with allies in Syria and Iraq, and through its political robots, Hezbollah, in Lebanon. They are also a threat, obviously, to Europe and Japan and all of our friends in Asia, who rely heavily on Middle East oil.

People who claim Realpolitik is a sort of muscular foreign policy ignore the Iranian regime's treatment of the Baha'i in Iran—the terrible persecution of that peaceful religion—the hanging of gay people in public squares, the judicial murder of children under 18, the kidnapping of foreign tourists as well as Iran's own intellectual elite. This all says something about the nature of the regime. Dealing with Iran as Dr Kissinger would have us deal with China, which is simply in terms of Realpolitik and ignoring the nature of the government of the country, is actually an effete foreign policy. It is an effete foreign policy because it does not take into account the intent of the regime, the nature of the regime or why a country like Iran will act in a non-rational way.

Do we believe that the Soviet Union under Brezhnev or any of the people in the high communist period would have used nuclear weapons? Most people, even their enemies, regarded the Soviets as rational actors. That is why the Western world was able to deal with them. That is why, in the end, we did not face nuclear conflagration. With these people in Iran, there is a desire for a millenarian period in which Iran will dominate the world. It is important that there be a firm international stand against them; it is important that we all stand together. I hope that economic sanctions and firm diplomacy do work. I know that the President of the United States means what he says, and I hope they get that in Iran.

There is one last point I would make to the member for Cowan: Australia does perform a very important role for the Western alliance in Tehran, and you need to consider that when you make comments or judgements about this matter. I am not referring to your understandable references to the NAM conference. Australia's diplomatic representation in Teheran is very important— (Time expired)

Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the motion put forward by the member for Cowan on the situation in Iran and the dire threat that Iran is to the international community. Let it be said that my friend and colleague the member for Cowan was a major in the Australian Army. He knows what the military repercussions are of Iran's threat to international peace and stability. I would also like to thank my colleague the member for Mitchell for speaking on this important motion.

On 29 January 2002 George W Bush, the then President of the United States, said in his State of the Union address that there was an axis of evil. He was referring here to three countries: North Korea, Iraq and Iran. We know what transpired in Iraq, we know the threat that North Korea is to the world with its proliferation of WMD, and today we talk about the clear and present danger that Iran poses to the world.

Let us remember: Iran is a terrorist state; it imprisons journalists; it has political prisoners; it supports Hezbollah; it has links to al-Qaeda and Hamas; and it continues to support the despotic regime in Damascus led by Assad, which has led to the deaths of more than 60,000 innocent people. Iran continues with its clandestine nuclear weapons program, and its President calls publicly for the destruction of another UN member state, namely, Israel.

It does not matter what happens at these elections on 14 June this year in Iran; Iran will continue to pursue policies which are antithetical to the best interests of the world. We have a responsibility to speak out. We have a responsibility to use our chairmanship of the United Nations sanctions committee to do more to stop Iran—financial sanctions and sanctions about dual-use technology on both individuals and entities are critical. The facts that Iran's economy is in shambles, its rial has fallen to one-fifth of what it was and its oil and exports have been cut by half are good things.

On Iran's human rights record, a tribunal at The Hague found that the Ayatollah and his co-conspirators in the early eighties were responsible for the death of 20,000 political prisoners. More than 500 people of the Baha'i Faith have been arrested and some have been incarcerated for more than 10,000 days. There is no free speech; there is no free press—in fact, bloggers have been imprisoned.

When it comes to terrorism, we have only learnt in recent days from Bulgaria that Hezbollah has been linked to the killing of five Israelis and a Bulgarian bus driver during an attack on Bulgarian soil on 18 July last year. There was an arrest in Cyprus of a Hezbollah operative. There has been a bombing of the Israeli defence envoy's car in India. Attacks have been thwarted in Thailand, Azerbaijan, Georgia and elsewhere, and all have links back to Iran. And, as I said, in Syria more than 60,000 people are dead.

What concerns me most is the weapons of mass destruction program that Iran is undertaking. There is its sophisticated ballistic missile program; its serial non-compliance with successive UN resolutions, and its space program, which seems to be moving ahead in leaps and bounds. The danger if Iran gets a nuclear weapon is that it can carry through its threats to destroy another country. What is more, this will led to proliferation in the region, in Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, all of whom will seek to get weapons of mass destruction—not to mention the instability in the Gulf states and the Straits of Hormuz, through which so much of the world's shipping and oil exports go.

There is a way forward. The P5 plus 1, which involves Germany, is one method, but know what is said—that a military solution is not off the table. It is time for Iran to come to the negotiation table, come clean with its nuclear weapons program and be a proper citizen of the world.

Gai Brodtmann (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In the late nineties, I worked on the Middle East desk in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. One of the professional highlights of that time was being involved in the normalisation of Australia's relationship with Iran. As a result of the Mykonos affair in the early nineties, our relationship had been relatively cool. We had a mission in Tehran, but the level of significant engagement and dialogue was limited. That all changed with the election of the reformist and liberalising President Khatami in 1997, with 70 per cent of the vote. Despite concern from some of our allies, the then Minister for Trade, Tim Fischer, led the first ministerial delegation to Iran in 1999, and I was part of that delegation. The delegation comprised a cross-section of the business community and we negotiated a number of agreements, including a banking and finance agreement, in which I took part.

The Iran under President Khatami is very different from the Iran under President Ahmadinejad. While I am not in any way suggesting that we did not have any concerns with President Khatami's Iran—we did, particularly with regard to human rights—President Khatami's Iran was seeking to engage with the world. President Ahmadinejad's Iran is seeking to antagonise. The Iran of today is hawkish, to say the least, with its nuclear ambitions and human rights abuses, where journalists and political activists are being arbitrarily jailed, including President Ahmadinejad's media adviser recently, and public executions continue. Australia continues to raise concerns with Iran directly on these issues, here in Canberra and in Tehran.

I also lament the fate of Iran's people, who are not just repressed by the Iranian political system but disenfranchised from it. These people—many of them bravely demonstrated after the 2009 election—live in fear of speaking out against the regime. Earlier this year, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told a gathering that politicians should not make claims or insinuate that previous Iranian elections were not free or fair. I presume he said this because there is an overwhelming belief that Iran does not hold free and fair elections. The Iranian leadership will not harbour any criticism of its electoral system, even though both the opposition candidates in the 2009 presidential race boldly stood up and said the vote was rigged. And what happened when these opposition candidates questioned the fairness of the elections? They were put under house arrest.

Less than a month ago it was reported that Ayatollah Sobhani was calling for the general elections to be scrapped and the next president to be hand-picked. As analysts noted, this is probably a result of the fear within the Iranian leadership that the national protests and uprising that followed the far from free 2009 election will happen again. My heart goes out to the millions of Iranians who want to see fair elections with opposition parties able to robustly and openly campaign without intimidation, arrest or worse.

Unfortunately, I cannot support the member’s motion, because he has rejected an offer by the government to agree to stronger text condemning the Iranian government and our concerns about its nuclear ambitions and human rights record. This seems to boil down to one reference—the reference in the member’s draft to Australia’s participation at the NAM summit. Australian officials participate in this summit for good reason: to prosecute a broad range of Australian foreign policy interests with the international community. It is called dialogue. Officials did not participate in the NAM meetings themselves, were not present during any speeches by members of the Iranian government and met only with ministers and officials in the margins of this meeting.

Australia’s position on Iran has been clear and strong over several years and there is no basis for any claim that our efforts to isolate Iran have been compromised. Our robust sanctions measures, our public commentary and our role in the UN Security Council speak for themselves. We wanted to support this motion and could easily have achieved a bipartisan motion that represented our collective interests and concerns on this important issue. This is simply another example of the opposition compromising a very important foreign policy matter, a matter on which Australia has a strong record, in a vain attempt to score political points.

Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to commend the member for Cowan for this excellent and timely motion and also the member for Kooyong on some fine remarks in relation to this matter. Taking up from the member for Canberra, and a little bit from the member for Melbourne Ports, I would say that there is a point of divergence in relation to this motion. However, it depends on your view of what you believe about the solutions to this terrorist state that is Iran. Do we believe that there will be a diplomatic solution that provides a solution to the Iranian question? Of course, the answer is, in my view, no, there will be no diplomatic solution to the question of this state. I think that is evident from the many, many years in Iran since the fall of the Shah.

It is timely that this motion appear today, 11 February, because it is the 34th anniversary of the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran. We know that in that 34 years we have seen repression and we have seen terror. We have seen external threats to other nations and states and we have seen the treatment of their own people. The 2009 election of Ahmadinejad for the second time is perhaps the best example of this. That defeat of Mir Hossein Mousavi gave rise to the Green Movement, calling for democratic electoral reform. As a younger member here, it was inspiring to see the hundreds of thousands of people jumping onto social media, an invention of the West, in a desperate plea to do something about their own government repressing them. At the height of it, there were 100,000 tweets per hour on June 16, just after the election, climbing to 220,000 per hour, with the hashtag '#iranelection' being the most tweeted of the entire world in 2009. That should say that the Iranian people themselves are crying out for change, and it is the responsibility of the international community and free nations such as Australia to do whatever we can to help with this situation.

On 20 June we saw the young Iranian woman, identified as Neda Agha-Soltan, shot by the Basij and dying in front of the cameras on Kargar Avenue in Tehran. In today's world that footage alone reached many billions of people and did more for the cause of freedom than we could ever do speaking in this chamber. However, if we are to solve the problem of Iran, we need to be supporting the Iranian people and movements like the Green Movement. We need to be standing up for people like Neda. It is not the case that there will be a diplomatic or UN mandated solution to Iran. When you listen to the words of Ahmadinejad, who travels around the world threatening freedom—threatening Israel and calling for the complete obliteration of Israel; denying the Holocaust; attacking homosexuals; attacking free people all around the world—you can hear from his own mouth the state that Iran is in under Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Khamenei.

Iran is perhaps the biggest security question of our age. Its attempt to acquire nuclear weapons and the nuclear proliferation of such a state ought to strike fear into any free nation. Not just the internal repression of regimes that we see around the world but this attempt to acquire nuclear capability for the purposes of executing a philosophy that is spouted by Ahmadinejad should strike fear into every member in this place. It is the coalition's view, of course, that the world community needs to continue to apply significant actual pressure onto states like Iran. That is why on 10 January this year, when Minister Bob Carr announced a new round of Australian autonomous sanctions against Iran, we welcomed them: the financial and travel sanctions on additional individuals and entities active in the oil, gas and financial sectors; anything related to Iran's weapons of mass destruction—things that every member of this place supports. We supported those calls from Senator Carr. We support any call from the Australian government to do those things.

It is contrary to these initiatives that we saw in the second half of last year the Gillard government sending our Ambassador to the UN and the Prime Minister's special envoy to Iran to attend a meeting of the Non-aligned Movement. We do have a point of divergence on this. The member of Canberra said we are playing politics with this, but it is not the case. We have a legitimate view that engagement on that level with such a state that is attempting to acquire nuclear weapons for the purposes of executing its evil agenda is not helpful. We do not think it will work. The participation by some countries was used by the supreme leader to claim legitimacy and to affirm the failure of sanctions. That should be a signal to members opposite and everyone here that we ought to be doing everything we can to impose sanctions to support the very people of Iran—the Green Movement and people like Neda who have thrown their lives on the altar of freedom—to help find a free Iran in any way that we can.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Mitchell was talking about the Non-aligned Movement. We have sent officials to the Non-aligned Movement as guests for some time, so there is nothing new in that. Senior officials have attended the last three Non-aligned Movement ministerial meetings: Special Envoy Joanna Hewitt at the meeting in Egypt in May 2012; the special envoy and the former Deputy Prime Minister Tim Fischer in Indonesia in May 2011 and Belgrade in September 2011; and former foreign minister Stephen Smith at the last Non-aligned Movement summit in Egypt in 2009. The Non-aligned Movement has 120 members and is the largest regular gathering of countries outside the UN General Assembly. So it is important not to reduce the Non-aligned Movement down to the question of Iran. This is a broad movement, a broad body, and it is important for Australia to attend. It is in our national interest and in the interests of diplomacy.

Nobody supports Iran's current nuclear ambitions. Nobody supports its current position on foreign policy—its support of terrorists around the world, particularly in the Middle East—and nobody supports the reign of terror that the current government of Iran imposes on its own people. We should be cognisant of not just the use of sanctions to prevent Iran's ambition to obtain a nuclear weapon but also the use of sanctions to improve Iran's human rights record. Of course, the two are inextricably linked. I think we will not remove the threat of Iran's nuclear weapon ambitions unless there is significant domestic reform in Iran—in particular, a movement to respect human rights and comply with international obligations, and starting a pathway to democracy.

Iran has had a troubled history. It suffered under the Shah of Iran and suffered from foreign intervention during that period, and that led to the Islamic revolution. It is not often you see the people of a country swap one tyranny for another, but it does happen. We would hope that it never happen, but in this case they simply swapped the Shah of Iran and his secret police for a theocracy. Although it allows voting, and votes with some regularity, it is of course only for candidates that the theocracy approves of. There is a secret police and there is a revolutionary guard. People are regularly hauled off to jail, their human rights are violated, their personal freedoms are violated and crimes are committed upon them both by the state and its agents.

In my mind, the announcement of Iran's nuclear ambitions are linked completely to its progress on the domestic front, and we should do everything—as the previous speaker said—to encourage the green revolution which began the movement to democracy in the Middle East but which sadly remains unfinished. I think the sooner that process can begin and continue the better.

Debate adjourned.