The minister for multicultural affairs, Anne Aly is speaking to the ABC and she is asked about the Israeli government claiming credit for Australia’s actions in expelling the Iranian ambassador.

Aly says:

My thoughts are very much along the lines of Tony Burke’s response to that. (He called it “complete nonsense” this morning.

I think it’s wrong and I’ve said this before, to conflate what is happening in Australia and conflate Australian Jewish community and indeed the Australian Muslim community, with what is happening overseas.

Unfortunately, too often these two things have been entangled and conflated together and I think it does a real disservice.

It does a real disservice to the Muslim community and particularly the Australian Jewish community here. It also feeds into the breakdown in social cohesion. It feeds into anti-Semitism, when we conflate Australian Jewish community with what is happening in Israel, in the same way – and I’ve said this before to you, – in the same way that we conflate all Australian Muslims with acts of terrorism overseas as well.

But given we know now that Iran has interfered so dramatically in actually anti-Semitic attacks in Australia, doesn’t that show that overseas interventions are actually having an impact here in Australia?

Let’s be very clear – the reason that we took such strict action here is because a foreign government, the Iranian government, our intelligence agencies got the evidence to show that a foreign government, the Iranian government, had orchestrated, through a number of what the Mike Burgess called cut-out – in other words proxies – orchestrated an attack on Australian soil, against Australians.

So it was something that happened overseas that had a domestic or Iranian… Led by the Iranian government that had a domestic impact here, that sought to harm Australians here and so the correct response is to take the response that the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister and the Minister for Home Affairs took yesterday, which is to expel the Iranian Ambassador and undertake the process of listing the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organisation.