Opposition defence spokesman James Paterson says he supports Australia\u2019s decision to deploy military assets to the Middle East, and agrees it will not undermine the nation\u2019s ability to defend its own security interests.<\/p>\n
The Coalition has backed the Government\u2019s decision to send military support to the United Arab Emirates, with Senator Paterson saying the move serves Australia\u2019s national interest and provides an opportunity for the Australian Defence Force to \u201clearn the lessons of modern warfare\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen your friends ask you for help. If you\u2019re able to help, you should help. And there\u2019s no question that the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf states are our friends,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s in Australia\u2019s national interest or the waterways around the Gulf, and to the airspace above the goal to be cleared as soon as possible. If they can be clear, that will allow the resumption of the flow of oil through the Gulf and Australians to leave the Gulf who wish to come home on regular scheduled commercial flights.\u201c<\/p>\n
\u201cFinally, this is an opportunity for us to learn the lessons of modern warfare \u2026 To be assisting in the interdiction of those drones and missiles is an opportunity to learn about this modern form of conflict and to bring those lessons home.\u201c<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Opposition defence spokesman James Paterson says he supports Australia\u2019s decision to deploy military assets to the Middle East,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":530597,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,12241,44,84,41,39,42,40,5071,1720],"class_list":["post-530596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-middle-east","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-us-politics","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=530596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/530597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=530596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=530596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=530596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}