Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne insist Australia is doing all it can to airlift people out of the crisis in Afghanistan.
The government says it has flown more than 1000 people out of Kabul since last Wednesday, and that it stands ready to help, if the United States extends its deadline for withdrawal, as seems increasingly likely to be the case.
But while the collapse of the Afghanistan government might have come as a shock to a world distracted by COVID, it surely should not have surprised Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
The United States, the United Kingdom and the other nations who played their role in the 20-year war in Afghanistan should have been similarly prepared.
To start with, the US signed a deal on February 29 last year to exit Afghanistan by May 1 this year.
It was signed directly with the Taliban, as was reported at the time.
While new President Joe Biden might have extended the May 1 deadline to September, he was as determined as his predecessor, Donald Trump, to end the war.
On this timeline, Western nations have had 15 months to plan for the withdrawal of those Afghans and foreign citizens who would want to leave with the military, if not before them.
The governments involved may have had their reasons for not acting earlier, but how much easier would it have been to co-ordinate flights of refugees - and to finalise all of the paperwork that now seems to be causing so much trouble - when the Afghanistan government was still in power?
Instead, we have the chaotic withdrawal that has shocked the world in recent days, and not just at a distance.
The Hunter has a small but determined Afghan community, and for them the anguish and heartbreak is visceral. Some have already lost family and friends to the Taliban, while others know their loved ones are in the fundamentalists' sights, as Newcastle Herald reporter Gabriel Fowler writes today.
From John Howard's time onward, the federal Coalition has done well, electorally, out of hard-line refugee policies.
The threat of "potential terrorists" entering Australia with genuine refugees may well be real.
That's why the government should have used the past year to identify those we needed to help.
Despite the risks, our international duty to the Afghans must come before "tough on borders" domestic politics.
ISSUE: 39,651
