‘Weak and incompetent’: Peter Dutton blasts six personnel, no warship deal for Red Sea

Peter Dutton has condemned Australia’s refusal to provide a warship to a US-led Red Sea mission as a decision that ‘could only be welcomed by Hamas’.

Richard Marles said Australia’s Red Sea commitment was ‘greatly appreciated by the United States’. Picture: AFP

Australia will provide just six ADF personnel to a new US-led mission in the Red Sea while rejecting an American request for a warship, in a decision condemned by Peter Dutton as one that “could only be welcomed by Hamas”.

Defence Minister Richard Marles announced the token commitment on Thursday, while pledging a further five Australian personnel to a wider maritime security operation in the Middle East. “We won’t be sending a ship or a plane,” Mr Marles told Sky News. “That said, we will be almost tripling our contribution to the combined maritime force.”

He said the commitment was “greatly appreciated by the United States”.

The government’s refusal to send a warship to the region at the request of the US has exposed deep divisions with the opposition on the normally bipartisan issue of national security, with the Opposition Leader demanding the decision be overturned.

“It takes a lot of effort with a special blend of weakness and incompetence for our Prime Minister to turn his back on our closest ally; a decision that could only be welcomed by Hamas – a listed terrorist organisation,” Mr Dutton told The Australian.

“Doesn’t that say it all? The Albanese government is an international laughing stock. The decision should be reversed and our integrity restored.”

Mr Marles defended the decision, which was publicly confirmed more than a week after The Australian revealed the US request, saying the ADF’s resources needed to be focused on Australia’s region.

“What comes from the ­Defence Strategic Review is an urgency around Australia maintaining a strategic focus on our immediate region, and that’s what we’ll do,” the Defence Minister said.

Mr Marles said the opposition’s suggestion that Australia had shown itself to be a less dependable ally to the US was “patently ridiculous”, and suggested the Coalition’s strategic outlook remained frozen in time.

“I mean, what you actually have right now is a clarity of strategic thought which was missing for the decade under the previous government,” he said.

US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin this week announced the new 10-member Red Sea task force, Operation ­Prosperity Guardian, to protect shipping from Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, who have vowed to continue their attacks until Israel ends its war on Hamas.

It will include ships from the UK, Canada, France, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands.

Yemenis wave flags and chant slogans during a march in solidarity with the people of Gaza. Picture: AFP

Defence Strategic Review lead author Peter Dean said the government had made the right call in declining the US request.

“The government has a strategy they’ve committed to,” Professor Dean said. “And despite political pressure and other pressure, they’re sticking to it. That is not a weak decision.

“Yes, we are dependent on international trade. But we cannot police the global commons and maritime highways as a regional middle power. We have finite resources.”

Professor Dean, the United States Studies Centre defence program director, said any available Australian Navy ships should be patrolling the East and South China Seas.

But former Defence Department deputy secretary Peter Jennings said the government’s refusal to commit a warship to the Red Sea operation was “a spectacular misreading of what America expects of Australia”.

“(US President Joe) Biden went into AUKUS really thinking that this was a way to get Australia to step up into a strategic leadership role on security,” Mr Jennings said.

“They weren’t expecting that Australia would then goof off on security for the next 10 or 15 years until the submarines arrived.”

Mr Jennings, director of Strategic Analysis Australia, said it was “not adequate” for Australia to say “we’re only interested in Indo-Pacific security now”.

“The fact is that Australia does have an interest in not only freedom of navigation as a general principle, but also freedom of navigation from the Suez Canal into the Indian Ocean, through the Indian Ocean into the Pacific,” he said.

More than 100 container ships travelling between Europe and Asia have so far been rerouted around the Cape of Good Hope amid Houthi drone and missile attacks, adding nine days to the average journey and tens of millions of dollars in fuel costs.

Yemen's Houthi fighters' takeover of the Galaxy Leader Cargo in the Red Sea. Picture: Getty Images

The Australian revealed last week that the US-led Combined Maritime Forces in Bahrain had asked Australia to send a warship to join the Red Sea operation. But after initial talks with Australian officials, it’s understood the US downgraded its request.

Anthony Albanese said this week that the US “understands the best way for us to support this is through diplomatic support”.

China’s state-run Global Times newspaper welcomed the decision as evidence Australia was “distancing itself” from its closest ally.