Andrew Bolt: Australia such a pushover that ransoms have soared

Kylie Moore-Gilbert’s release has made us look such a pushover in hostage diplomacy that it seems to have bumped up the ransom for Aussies.

The ransom for an Australian just went up. So Kylie Moore-Gilbert is lucky she’s a pretty Anglo woman who photographs nicely.

Moore-Gilbert is now out of an Iranian jail and back home because the Morrison Government was still willing to pay for her freedom by flying three Iranian terrorists back to Iran.

And how the media cheered Prime Minister Scott Morrison to have rescued this damsel in distress.

Trouble is, we now look such a pushover in hostage diplomacy that it seems the ransom for Australians has soared.

Last year Iran freed two Australians, travel bloggers Jolie King and Mark Firkin, after arresting them on preposterous suspicion of spying.

And what a coincidence: King and Firkin came home on the day we learned Australia had freed an Iranian research student wanted by the United States for allegedly trying to export radar equipment for detecting stealth planes.

Attorney-General Christian Porter wouldn’t say last year whether there’d been a swap, just like Morrison wouldn’t last week confirm what Iran had already announced – that Moore-Gilbert was part of a prisoner swap.

Kylie Moore-Gilbert. Picture: University of Melbourne.

But, Iran has clearly worked out we’re a willing customer in the hostage trade. Its exchange rate has rocketed from two Australians for one Iranian last year, to one Australian for three Iranian terrorists today.

That’s not because Moore-Gilbert is a big catch.

She’s just an academic who was yet silly enough to fly to Iran two years ago for a conference. Silly, because Iran is a paranoid Islamist regimen that’s been arresting foreigners on fake charges of spying.

It is still holding men and women from Britain and US – even an artistic affairs officer, a conservationist and a journalist – as bargaining chips, and Moore-Gilbert was an easy mark. She had an Israeli boyfriend, which is catnip to Jew-hating ayatollahs.

Even better, she’s a citizen of Australia, weak enough to pay blackmail.

And we paid a lot for her – agreeing to fly three Iranian terrorists from Thailand back to Iran. These are three Iranians who’d been jailed for plotting to assassinate Israeli diplomats in Bangkok, and the only consolation is that they’re so thick that they blew up their own hide-out, plus the legs off one them.

Iran’s Qarchak prison, where Kylie Moore-Gilbert was jailed.

But Iran could, with that swap, boast it had the better of the deal – three for one! It could also assure the many terrorists it deploys that it will bring them home, too, if their own missions blow up in their faces. Or legs.

That’s one danger. Another is to Australians still thinking of travelling to Iran. They’re passports are now stamped “reward for capture”.

But also think of the danger now to Australians in China.

China is so into this hostage diplomacy that our Government’s official travel advice warns against going there: “Authorities have detained foreigners because they’re ‘endangering national security’. Australians may also be at risk of arbitrary detention.”

Not just Australians. China two years ago arrested two Canadian businessmen, Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, claiming they were spies.

In truth, it arrested them to blackmail Canada into freeing Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou, arrested days earlier on charges of fraud and busting US sanctions on Iran.

(Odd, how it all comes back to Iran.)

But Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he won’t swap Meng for the two Canadians because giving in to blackmail would just make Canadians less safe.

Yet giving in is what our own Prime Minister has now done.

Huawei Chief Financial Officer, Meng Wanzhou, leaving the British Columbia Supreme Court with her security team in Canada. Picture: Don MacKinnon/AFP

Which brings me to the bad luck of Yang Hengjun.

Yang is an Australian citizen – a writer – who was also arrested by China two years ago on claims he was a spy.

Arresting Australians like Yang doesn’t just give China hostages in its war to force Australia to shut its mouth about human rights.

One of Yang’s friends, Sydney academic Feng Chongyi, says he was actually taken hostage in reprisal for the arrest of Meng, daughter of Huawei’s founder.

Australia is dragged in because it banned Huawei from building our new 5G network, to stop China from spying on us.

China was furious, and has since punished Australia with bans on barley, beef, wine, timber and coal. Now it has hostages, too.

But poor Yang. Few Australians actually care when some dumpy, middle-aged Chinese-Australian man gets arrested. Besides, Canada refuses – so far – to cut any deals.

So what’s Australia got left to bargain with? How many Chinese spies can we offer for Yang’s freedom?

More now, I suspect, than the Morrison Government would dare arrest, or voters wish set free.