The Coalition welcomes the long overdue commitment by the Albanese Government to belatedly reopen Australia’s embassy in Kyiv.
For two years the Coalition has questioned why Australia’s embassy had remained closed when more than 70 other countries had already reopened theirs, including Canada with whom Australia shares the same embassy building.
In August this year I personally travelled to Kyiv on behalf of the Coalition, met with Ukrainian Government officials, visited the embassy site and announced that a Coalition Government would reopen the embassy.
The Albanese Government’s failure to act much, much faster made Australia an outlier, and meant that for more than two years Australia missed out on crucial in person briefings and intelligence that could have better informed our understanding of Russia’s war against Ukraine and the optimal support that Australia should have provided to Ukraine.
The reopening of Australia’s embassy brings to an end an embarrassing episode that showed intransigence or ineptitude by the Albanese Government and was an insult to the courageous Ukrainian people.
Penny Wong’s inability to articulate why the embassy can reopen now, after arguing for more than two years that it couldn’t, only reinforces that this decision could and should have been made a long time ago.
The Coalition acknowledges all of those who waged a long campaign for this commonsense decision to be made, especially the determined and resilient members of Australia’s Ukrainian community.
We maintain our bipartisan support for all Australian assistance to Ukraine, including the measures announced by Senator Wong, and hope that the reopening of Australia’s embassy will enable more timely commitments and delivery of that assistance into the future.
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