JACOB GREBER, POLITICAL EDITOR: A striking image from a fast-sinking world order. A lethal display of dominant military might trumping any sense of restraint.
PETE HEGSETH, US WAR SECRETARY: This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight. We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.
JACOB GREBER: The war in the Middle East continues to expand with each day – from America acting with seeming impunity to sink an Iranian warship in international waters off Sri Lanka to the first NATO involvement with Iranian ballistic missiles fired into Turkish airspace.
PETE HEGSETH: They are toast and they know it, or at least, soon enough they will know it.
JACOB GREBER: The military bluster and imagery setting a sobering backdrop for today’s visit to Canberra by Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney.
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: Australia and Canada are middle powers in a world that is changing. We cannot change it back, but we can back ourselves, back our citizens and back each other.
ANGUS TAYLOR, OPPOSITION LEADER: Your speech in Switzerland in January was a much-needed wake-up call for middle powers of the west.
The rules based international order has been exposed as wishful thinking of a bygone and benign era.
MARK CARNEY, CANADIAN PRIME MINISTER: When the rules no longer protect you, you must defend yourself. A country that can’t feed itself, fuel itself, or defend itself has few options.
JACOB GREBER: Mark Carney’s visit coincides with what he is calling a global “rupture” which is forcing “middle powers” like Canada and Australia to rethink their place and influence.
Where the new source of concern is one of history’s oldest villains – great powers acting capriciously.
MARK CARNEY: And the question today for middle powers like us is whether we establish the conventions and help write the new rules that will determine our security and prosperity or let the hegemons dictate outcomes?
SAM ROGGEVEEN, LOWY INSTITUTE: Carney’s message is that if you are too close to any one of those great powers, then you’re at risk of becoming a supplicant, and that, I think, is actually a slightly awkward message for our government to hear, because this government, as well as the one it replaced, is actually doubling down on our alliance with the United States, particularly through the AUKUS arrangement.
JACOB GREBER: Indeed, today the Greens raised questions about potential Australian involvement in the US sinking of the Iranian frigate.
DAVID SHOEBRIDGE, GREENS SENATOR: Were any Australian personnel on this US submarine when it sank the Iranian frigate and left the survivors to drown?
PENNY WONG, FOREIGN MINISTER: For operational and security reasons, we do not disclose specific information regarding Australian personnel.
JACOB GREBER: Few leaders in the world owe their political success to Donald Trump as much as Mark Carney does.
DONALD TRUMP, US PRESIDENT: They have to become the 51st state.
JACOB GREBER: The US President’s threats last year to take over Canada revived the country’s faltering centre-left Liberal Party and propelled Carney into office.
He’s now turning an ability to confront Trump into a call to arms among like-minded countries.
MARK CARNEY: In the post-rupture world, the nations that are trusted and can work together will be quicker to the punch, more effective in their responses, and more proactive in shaping outcomes, and ultimately those countries will be more secure and prosperous.
JACOB GREBER: Much of today’s speech covered ways in which Canada and Australia can cooperate to become stronger on critical minerals, defence, artificial intelligence and capital – and a warning that both countries have “underinvested” in each other’s economies.
MARK CARNEY: Our pension funds and your supers constitute one of the largest pools, soon to be the largest pools of capital in the world – at present nearly $7 trillion under management.
This is a strategic asset for our citizens and future generations, particularly in a riskier world where it will increasingly matter who owes whom, and who owns what.
JACOB GREBER: Mark Carney’s visit has thrown light on the differences between the way Canada and Australia are talking about the Iran war, and America’s justifications.
Government ministers are rhetorically glued to the idea that it’s for the Americans to explain the legality of their actions in the Gulf. Carney, though, has no qualms about the matter.
MARK CARNEY: It would appear prima facie not to be consistent, or to be inconsistent with international law, it’s a judgement for others to make.
JACOB GREBER: Where both men agree is on the need to defang Iran’s nuclear capabilities, and they’re singing from the same song sheet about the regime’s repression and export of terrorism.
As the conflict heads into a sixth day – there are few signs it will end any time soon.
ANTHONY ALBANESE: I think the world wants to see a de-escalation and wants to see Iran cease to spread the destinations of its attacks.
We also want to see the objectives achieved. I want to see the possibility of Iran getting a nuclear weapon removed once and for all.
MARK CARNEY: Before there can be a ceasefire, there needs to be a de-escalation of hostilities. Right now, we have a spreading of hostilities. We recognise that and before we get there, there needs to be the ending of targeting civilians, civilian infrastructure. Those are necessary conditions before a ceasefire can exist.