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More than 1,500 Australians have now arrived in Australia on flights from the UAE, with Australian citizens also leaving Qatar for Europe and Saudi Arabia.
Speaking to David Speers on ABC’s Insiders on Sunday morning, Foreign Minister Penny Wong said the Iran conflict has become a major consular crisis for Australia. It comes after the RAAF last week deployed two aircraft to the Middle East in case they are needed for evacuations.
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“We have many people in the region, as you know, I’ve indicated about 115,000, not all of them want to leave, obviously. But still the numbers of people in the region mean this dwarfs any consular crisis we’ve previously had,” she said.
“We have opened the registration portal, which is where people can register as both being there so they get information, but also indicating that they want to leave. There have been a lot of people register.
“We’re working through that and to date we have about 11,000 that we have assessed as eligible and seeking to leave and we’ve opened the portal to more countries in the region, including Lebanon, so that Australians can register.”
According to Minister Wong, nine flights had left Dubai for Australia as at Sunday morning, with two more scheduled that day.
“We’ve also had buses from Doha to Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. So, a land crossing because Qatari airspace has been very limited. And so we have sought to offer people an option for a land border crossing. And I understand those buses arrived safely this morning, so I’m very glad about that.”
The Foreign Minister also confirmed Australia had been asked for defensive assistance by Gulf countries against Iranian drone and missile attacks, potentially to help flights leave the region safely.
“The issue of the flights, they make assessments of what is safe and that’s why you see a very structured schedule out of Dubai. Obviously, we’ve had many countries which are non-participants attacked by Iran through this,” she said.
“You would anticipate as a consequence that we have been asked for assistance, and we will work through that carefully in accordance with the position I have outlined, which is we are not participating in offensive action against Iran and we’ve made clear we would not participate in any ground troop deployment into Iran.”
Speaking to media in Adelaide on Friday, Minister Wong had also noted that she was “disappointed” with reports some of the commercial flights returning to Australia were only half full.
“We are seeking to work even more closely with the airlines to try and coordinate that. We want every seat filled,” she said.
The government has indicated that commercial services are its preferred method for returning stranded Australians, due to the scale of the problem.
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David Reed
says:An A380 arrived in Perth yesterday with 83 passengers? Obviously no rush to get home?