Opportunistic Asylum

How Australia Exploited the Iranian Women’s Football Team

A fifth member of the Iranian women's football team has withdrawn their claim of asylum. Photo credit: David Hunt

When it comes to asylum seekers, the Australian political machine has prided itself on using cruelty and a purposely obtuse understanding of international law. Bolted sovereignty has been elevated over rights and humanitarianism, while political interests have abominated the dark, hungering hordes heading to the island continent on unseaworthy boats. From the early 1990s, the UN Refugee Convention became increasingly clipped, its applicability scorned in domestic politics. By the time the conservative government of John Howard assumed power in 1996, turning Australia into a vast village of suspicious citizens suffering from arrested development, the asylum seeker became electoral bait, hooked on fishing lines to lure in voters worried their comfortable lives would somehow be ruffled by the dark, brooding arrivals fleeing war-torn areas and predatory regimes.

From then on, a public relations machine was developed to dissuade and horrify those willing to make the journey to the fatal shore. Money was sunk into advertisements distributed through the Middle East warning those wishing to make their way across the seas. In February 2014, for instance, Australian authorities promoted a campaign with the slogan: “No way. They will not make Australia home”. Starring in this squalid effort was a graphic novel depicting asylum seekers in a detention centre suffering from enervating distress. Reality television shows mocking the unsuspecting foreigner at customs such as Border Security also became celluloid staples.

In March, the public exploitation of the asylum seeker suddenly switched. The Iranian Women’s Football team, participating in the AFC Women’s Asian Cup on Australian soil, had presented a magnificent opportunity to show that an Australian government might appreciate the asylum claims of those fleeing a Middle East regime. Prior to their match against South Korea, they had failed to sing the national anthem, prompting savage criticism by commentators back home.

The establishment was initially unclear about what to do. Journalists gathered on the ABC’s Insiders, an apt name suggesting how close Australia’s political scribes are to the linen and contents of power, gave an unspeakable display, refusing to emphasise the innate right to seek asylum. Fuzzy, fudged propositions were gingerly advanced: the visas of the team stay might be adjusted for a lengthier stay; some consideration for their welfare would be given; the Iranian regime was savage, propagandistic and so forth. But “asylum” remained dirty, ranking lower than “fuck” in the national broadcaster’s list of naughty words. That display was all the more contemptible given that Australia was in wholehearted agreement with the illegal attack on Iran, having refused to call it a breach of the United Nations Charter.

This, however, was too good a chance for the Albanese government to miss. The script was writing itself: oppressed women imprisoned in their hotel rooms; oppressive clerical regime in Tehran; fear, terror and surveillance. A mother reportedly warning her daughter not to return as “they’ll kill you.” Then came an intervention from US President Donald J. Trump, insisting Canberra was “making a terrible mistake” in permitting the squad “to be forced back to Iran, where they will most likely be killed”. Grant them asylum, came the call.

The grant of humanitarian visas for seven team members duly followed, though five, fearful for their family and assets in Iran, have since changed their mind. Transport Minister Catherine King tried to be wise, stating that every effort had been made to encourage them to stay. Rather despicably, she expressed pride “that Australia has offered that choice to these women.”

While there was much congratulatory back slapping for the granting of the humanitarian visas, the Janus-faced nature of Australia’s migration policy remained in play. Hours after the grant, the Albanese government introduced changes to the Migration Act 1958 (Cth) in the form of the Migration Amendment (2026 Measures No. 1) Bill 2026 (Cth) granting the Home Affairs Minister powers to block those already granted temporary visas from visiting Australia. According to Home Affairs officials in a 1.5-hour committee hearing regarding the hurried amendments, the travel ban would endure for six to 12 months, affecting anywhere up to 61,000 visa holders from the Middle East.

The Coalition found good reasons for the changes. As Liberal Senator Jonathon Duniam reasoned, one had every reason to be suspicious of those from “a region subject to conflict” who given temporary travel documents, be it a visitor or tourist visa “that they would stay beyond the expiry of that visa, potentially to seek asylum and perhaps stay on illegally.” (How opportunistic those fleeing war can be!) To salve his conscience and those of his party members, Duniam stated that such suspensions were temporary in nature. “This is not permanent prevention of people from coming into this country.”

Greens immigration spokesman, Senator David Shoebridge distilled the nature of the changes to reporters in Canberra. “On the same day that Labor gave that one chance to a handful of brave Iranian footballers, they shut the door to 7,200 other Iranians who had already been granted visas, who had security clearances”. When speaking against the amendments in parliament, Shoebridge found it churningly grotesque that these individuals “could not come to this country and seek protection from this regime, from Israeli bombs, from US missiles and from the acid rain and black rain that’s falling as a result of Israeli and US bombing.” The measures had been introduced, thought Shoebridge, in a fit of fear “about being outflanked by One Nation. You are responding to the Islamophobia of One Nation.”

The Australian Greens Leader, Senator Larissa Waters, observed the distasteful nature of the Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke’s self-lionising for “providing asylum to a handful of Iranian young women who’ve distinguished themselves on the soccer field while at the same time shutting the door on thousands more” who already had the right to come to Australia. “You’ve really rewritten the rules on how cruel a government can be.”

Independent Senator Lidia Thorpe was even more derisory, telling her fellow parliamentarians that this was “Labor’s new White Australia policy.” It was fitting for a government that proved to be “the first in the world to congratulate Trump and [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu for their illegal bombing of Iran.” Canberra had also added its complement to the conflict by sending defence personnel and an aircraft to the Gulf. “And the very moment that [the Albanese] government is helping escalate the violence, it is also slamming the door on the people who will inevitably forced to flee it.” Like Shoebridge and Waters, she saw the race card at generous play, an “example of how Labor, the Coalition and One Nation are all competing to be the cruellest and most racist because they think this is the path to political success.”

Thorpe can be taken to task at times for being so strident as to misshape an argument, but the spirit of cynicism shown by this government has been something to behold. Paul Power, co-CEO of the Refugee Council of Australia, saw an appropriately ghastly historical parallel in the proposed amendments. In the late 1930s, countries closed their doors to European Jews deprived of their citizenship. At the Evian Conference, convened in July 1938, delegates from 32 countries, including Australia, affirmed their general reluctance in admitting Jewish refugees. The dark star of the conference was Australia’s Trade and Customs Minister, Thomas White, who declared “that Australia would not help because it did not want to import a ‘racial problem’.” Governments come and go, but opportunism remains eternal.