Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for his question. At the request of the United Arab Emirates, today the government has announced that we will be deploying an E-7A Wedgetail aircraft to the gulf to help in the defence of the UAE and the other countries of the gulf against attacks from Iran.

From the very beginning of this conflict, the UAE and 10 other countries in the region have been under sustained attack by Iran, without ever having been protagonists against Iran themselves. Indeed, from the very outset, Iran has sought to widen this conflict and attack its neighbours simply because it can, and Australia condemns this in the strongest possible terms.

Over the course of the weekend, I was able to speak to a number of my counterparts in the region, including Prince Khalid bin Salman, the defence minister of Saudi Arabia, Dr Jafar Hassan, the Prime Minister and defence minister of Jordan, and, of course, Mohamed Al Mazrouei, the defence minister of the UAE. I was very pleased to be able to make this offer to Minister Al Mazrouei. He, in turn, was deeply grateful on behalf of the UAE. Today, the UAE is really one of our closest friends. It is home to 24,000 Australians, one of the largest expat communities that we have anywhere in the world. For many, many years now it has hosted an operational headquarters of the ADF at the Al Minhad Air Base near Dubai, and for this we are deeply thankful. As soon as there was a call for assistance, we were very keen to do all that we could.

The E-7 has one of the most exquisite airborne command and long-range reconnaissance capabilities in the world, and we are one of the leading E-7 operators in the world. As such, our capability has been in high demand. Over the last couple of years it has deployed twice to Europe in support of Ukraine, first in Germany and last year in Poland. The job that it will be doing in the gulf is very similar. This will be for an initial deployment of four weeks, involving 85 personnel. The aircraft will leave Australia today and we are hopeful that it will be operational by the end of the week.

In addition to this, and again at the request of the UAE, we are providing a number of advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles. I want to stress that these are defensive weapons by their nature. Indeed, the strategic intent in all the assistance that we are giving is to provide for the defence of the countries of the gulf, countries which are home to thousands of Australians and countries with whom we enjoy a deep, close and enduring friendship.

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