by Andrew Brown

Amid Trump’s delusional speech today and Albanese’s denial of responsibility last night, the Iran war continues at the huge cost of lives and livelihoods. Andrew Brown on the price of Australia’s complicity, first in a series.

Australians know when something is wrong. They feel it every time they pull up at the bowser and watch the numbers run like a poker machine rigged against them.

They feel it at the supermarket, where a bag of groceries now lands with the weight of a small insult. They feel it in the quiet panic of small business, where margins are thinning, freight costs are rising, power bills are biting, and another week of this can mean the difference between staying open and shutting the doors for good.

And yet the story we are told is always the same. Global pressures. Market volatility. Complex conditions. A regrettable tightening. The language is polished, bloodless, designed to anaesthetise. It is the language of people desperate to discuss consequences while keeping their mouths firmly shut about causes.

But causes matter, and one of the great moral and political disgraces of this moment is that Australians are being made to pay for a war they did not choose, an escalation they did not authorise, and

an imperial order they are never allowed to question.

Let us speak plainly. Benjamin Netanyahu has dragged the region deeper into catastrophe with a level of impunity that would be unthinkable if the perpetrator were an enemy of the West rather than its favoured client.

Donald Trump, grotesque even by the standards of modern American power, has helped normalise the politics of lawless domination, chest-beating militarism, and unconditional indulgence of Israel’s worst instincts.

And Anthony Albanese, in that uniquely Australian tradition of smiling subservience, has chosen not independence, not courage, not principle, but obedience.

Last night he addressed the nation. It took him three minutes. He told Australians they were paying higher prices because of the war, but could not bring himself to name who started it or who his government has refused to condemn for starting it.

He said “Australia is not an active participant in this war” as though that settles something. As though diplomatic cover is not participation. As though standing in Washington’s corner while Gaza was pulverised, Iran was attacked without provocation, and the Strait of Hormuz became a choke point strangling the global economy is not, in any meaningful sense, participation.

If it were Russia causing this pain, Albanese would say Russia. If it were China, he would say China. But it is Israel and the United States, so he finds no language at all.

He cut the fuel excise, promised loans for businesses, told people to take the bus, told them to enjoy Easter, and closed with an invitation to handle it the Australian way. No anger. No accountability. No naming of the illegal war that caused this, or the governments that launched it.

That is cowardice dressed up as statecraft.

And it comes at a cost not paid in speeches, press releases or diplomatic cables. It is paid in dollars at the pump. It is paid in food inflation. It is paid in disrupted trade, higher shipping costs, market fear, investment uncertainty, and the creeping economic anxiety of a population that knows it is being squeezed but is constantly lied to about why.

Wars in the Middle East do not stay in the Middle East. They ripple through oil markets, shipping routes, insurance premiums, supply chains, business confidence, and currency nerves.

https://michaelwest.com.au/the-iran-war-and-the-price-of-albaneses-complicity/

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