Australia politics live: Iranian women’s football team arrive at Gold Coast airport | Australia news

‘This is a rare opportunity to hold the regime to account’ says Moore-Gilbert

Kylie Moore-Gilbert, the a security studies expert at Macquarie University who spent 804 days in a prison in Tehran, has commended the way the government handled giving asylum to the Iranian woman’s soccer team.

“I think they acted swiftly and did the right thing,” she told the ABC just now. “I commend Albanese’s swift action on this. I think it became a global story and it became politically unfeasible for them not to do anything … given the evidence, that perhaps some of these women were being coerced and controlled by the Iranian delegation.”

She said it was “concerning” that the majority of the women were on their way to the airport and would leave Australia soon. “Whether or not that’s what they desire is still unknown,” she said, continuing:

This is a rare opportunity to hold the regime to account for the way it treats women and girls, and if there’s any evidence of [coercion], seize upon it and do our very best to protect these women in a very difficult situation.

Speaking about Motjaba Khamenei, Iran’s new Supreme Leader, she said:

He’s said to be even more hardline than his father, and he’s even closer to the IRGC.

I think it’s going to get really, really messy and this crisis will become protracted.