From Iran scare campaigns to trillion-dollar AUKUS blunders, the Coalition’s “security hawks” keep mistaking folly for foresight.

The Coalition’s performance on the national stage this weekend is a masterclass in hypocritical, political opportunism, exploiting the shadows of a genuine tragedy to wage yet another ingenuous culture war. Julian Leeser’s confident indictment of Iran for the December 2024 synagogue attack in Melbourne tells us nothing about the event itself, and everything about their own bankrupt cynicism; their desperation. Let’s be clear: this isn’t an opposition; it’s a credibility gap puffed-up into a government-in-waiting; another epic deception fed by Australia’s Murdoch-dominated press.

The Case That Crumbles Upon Contact

We know two appalling, antisemitic arson attacks occurred: one at a Sydney restaurant, another at a Melbourne synagogue. Arrests have been made; local criminals, biker gang members. This is the solid ground of fact. But the Coalition’s leap from “local thugs” to a “Tehran-directed terror plot” is a laughable flight of fancy, sustained entirely by classified, unverifiable intelligence assessments.And another lazy attempt to rake over the coals of Islamophobia.

Prime Minister Albanese’s August 2025 announcement that ASIO had “credible intelligence” implicating Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps has the ring of authority until you remember who’s talking. We are asked to take on faith the word of an agency with a rogue’s gallery of intelligence failures. These are the same spooks who gave us the certainty of Saddam’s non-existent WMDs. The same agency caught bugging the East Timor cabinet room to help a gas corporation fleece one of the world’s poorest nations. Their record isn’t just chequered; it’s diabolical. Inspector Clouseau take a bow.

The Glaring Motive Gap

The Iran theory isn’t just thin on evidence; it’s logically bankrupt. What conceivable strategic interest does the ayatollahs’ regime have in firebombing a small Orthodox synagogue in Ripponlea? Iran’s focus is the Middle East; Israel, its proxies, regional hegemony. Orchestrating a tactically meaningless attack in a Melbourne suburb achieves nothing for Tehran while inviting devastating blowback. It’s a geopolitical suicide pill with no upside.

Contrast this with the obvious beneficiaries of the “Iran did it” narrative. A government gets to look tough on national security. The opposition gets a cudgel to beat them with. And certain allies, who have long sought to isolate Iran, get a willing new partner in their campaign. The coincidence is staggering.

The Intelligence Laundromat

The most damning detail emerged later: as reported by Sky News, the initial leads allegedly came from Israeli intelligence. This transforms the investigation from a search for truth into a potential game of telephone. Israel, with every reason to pin global antisemitism on its arch-foe, provides the “evidence.” Australian agencies, just a tad over-reliant on a key partner, then validate it. The result is a perfect, circular logic: Israel says Iran is guilty, ASIO agrees, and its “independent” conclusion is used to prove Israel was right all along. The intelligence is laundered into legitimacy.

We are told to trust this process without question. But trust is earned, and ASIO’s account is deeply overdrawn. From the Iraq WMD fiasco to its own documented history of operational overreach, the agency’s pronouncements demand scrutiny, not blind faith. Secrecy is its shield, and when it claims to have “credible intelligence” we, the public, have no way to tell solid detective work from political convenience.

The Real Scandal

The rush to blame Iran is a dangerous diversion. If these attacks were the work of local extremists; as the arrests suggest; then the real threat is homegrown. The real failure is in our own ability to combat domestic hate. But it’s far easier for politicians to expel Iranian diplomats and pound the lectern about foreign bogeymen than to do the hard, unglamorous work of protecting communities and addressing the rot of antisemitism here at home.

The tragedy in Melbourne was real. The antisemitism was vile. The victims deserve justice based on evidence, not on intelligence assertions we are expected to swallow on faith from institutions with a history of getting it catastrophically wrong. The Coalition isn’t seeking justice; it’s exploiting a tragedy for a headline. Their performance isn’t just unconvincing; it’s a profound disservice to the truth.

Epilogue: The Price of Manufactured Certainty

History is littered with the wreckage of “credible intelligence.” From the Gulf of Tonkin to Iraq’s phantom stockpiles, democracies keep falling for the conjurer’s trick: secrecy dressed as certainty, fear repackaged as fact. Each time, the price is paid not by the ministers or spymasters, but by the public; through wars we didn’t need, freedoms we didn’t surrender willingly, and communities scapegoated for convenience.

This latest Iran scare has all the hallmarks of the same shabby playbook. If we let it pass unchallenged, we normalise the laundering of political convenience into national security “fact.” The real test of a democracy isn’t how quickly it can find an enemy abroad, but whether it has the courage to face one at home.

Until then, every new “credible threat” should come with a warning label: handle with scepticism; may contain spin.

Epilogue II: The Hypocrisy Dividend

There’s also the small matter of history, which Coalition grandees would prefer you didn’t bring up. James Paterson, Andrew Wallace and the usual Sky After Dark chorus thunder about Labor’s “delay” in proscribing the IRGC, as though they’d been pounding on the doors of Parliament demanding it for years. But when pressed, Andrew Hastie; the only Coalition figure occasionally given to telling the truth rather than the talking points; let slip the fatal detail: when he chaired the intelligence committee in government, the listing never happened. He wanted it, he says. Labor MPs on the committee wanted it, too. But the Morrison government; Peter Dutton, Scott Morrison, the whole National Security Committee of Cabinet; never pulled the trigger.

Why? Because the Coalition was too busy buttering up Tehran. Barnaby Joyce weakened animal welfare rules in 2014 to restart the live sheep trade to Iran. Julie Bishop flew to Tehran in 2015 to sniff around for post-sanctions business. Steve Ciobo jetted in 2016 with a trade mission and reopened our trade office. The government even partially lifted sanctions. Pro-Israel groups were warning about the IRGC as early as 2019; European authorities had disrupted an Iranian-sponsored bombing plot on the continent. But Canberra’s Coalition government? Deaf to security alarms, alive only to a sniff of the export dollar.

The kicker? The trade bonanza never arrived. DFAT’s own numbers show that the grand Iran courtship yielded next to nothing in exports. The hypocrisy isn’t just moral; it’s commercially barren. The Coalition mortgaged its principles for a payday that never came.

So when today’s opposition bellows about synagogues aflame and Labor’s supposed dereliction, remind them: they had their chance. But did nothing. Worse, they pursued Tehran with the ardour of a suitor and the judgment of a drunk. And now they want to play the part of security hawks. It would be funny if it weren’t so grotesque.

Coda: The Grandest Security Blunder of All

What is truly ironic about the Coalition’s insistence on performance as ever-vigilant gatekeepers and (bulked-up on the odd SAS retread in the ranks), muscular security hawks is this: the signature security legacy they bequeathed us; AUKUS; may well be their greatest strategic folly.

• AUKUS is the largest defence procurement in Australia’s history. The estimated cost? Somewhere between AUD 268 billion and AUD 368 billion over coming decades.  
• Already, Canberra has committed billions well before a single submarine of the new class is built.  
• The deal binds us, not liberates us. The “nuclear-powered submarines” that Australia will operate will come with strings; not only technical dependencies, but geopolitical ones. We are leasing strategic direction, not reclaiming it.  
• Worse, the U.S. currently cannot even build enough nuclear submarines to satisfy its own needs, let alone deliver what it has promised to Australia. (In congressional testimony, U.S. naval leadership warned that U.S. shipyards must effectively double production just to meet commitments.)
• And the result: AUKUS is already shifting resources, talent, and political capital away from more immediate defence needs; like counter-terror, cybersecurity, maritime surveillance, and homeland resilience, into a long, slow gamble on an utterly improbable undersea dominance.  
• In the meantime, new technology in surveillance and in drones has rendered submarines vulnerable if not obsolete. By the time our first boat is ready for the slipway, you won’t be able to give it away.

In short: while the Coalition tantalises voters with tales of “toughness” and “standing guard,” its real legacy is this: a multidecade surrender of choice, a runaway cost burden, and a strategic vulnerability buried beneath the shiny veneer of “alliance strength.”

If we are to take anything from this madness, let it be this: the greatest danger to our security may not come from abroad, but from those who posture, preen and scream most loudly about defending us.

Woody Allen quipped: “If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.”

If you want to make Beijing and Washington laugh, tell them about AUKUS.