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Robert Pether’s Fight to Come Home

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At Senate Estimates, I raised my ongoing concerns with the Department regarding Mr Robert Pether, an Australian engineer who was unfairly jailed in Iraq and is now being held under a travel ban that prevents him from returning home to Australia. His situation is dire — he is severely unwell, homeless, unable to work, and has very limited resources.

I asked what assistance the Australian Government is providing and was told he is receiving consular support. I was also informed that the Government is actively engaged with Iraqi authorities, and that his plight has been raised by the Prime Minister, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, and the Australian Ambassador — most recently in September this year.

Let’s hope the Iraqi authorities are listening.

— Senate Estimates | October 2025

Transcript

CHAIR: Welcome back. It’s good to see you, Minister Farrell. I know you’re just here briefly. The call is with Senator ROBERTS till two o’clock.  

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you for appearing today. I’ve got four topics I’d like to discuss. I’ll go through them one at a time, of course. The first topic is Mr Robert Pether, who was jailed in 2021 on fraud charges in Iraq, which the UN described as an arbitrary detention. I have two very short questions but a long preamble to set the scene and make sure I’m on the right track. Mr Pether is a mechanical engineer. He went to Iraq to rebuild its central bank headquarters in Baghdad. A contract dispute between the bank and his employer, CME Consulting, landed Mr Pether and his Egyptian colleague, Khalid Radwan, in prison after the bank accused the men of stealing money from the project. After being held without charge for almost six months and then subjected to a speedy trial, the two were each given five-year jail sentences and slapped with a joint fine of $17½ million. A 2022 UN report determined that the case contravened international law and that Mr Pether and Mr Radwan had been subjected to ‘abusive and coercive interrogations’. The International Chamber of Commerce’s Court of Arbitration ruled that Iraq’s central bank was at fault in the dispute with CME and ordered it to pay $13 million to the company. Mr Pether was finally released from jail late at night in June. He is fragile, in very poor health and not receiving proper medical treatment. He has limited means and has been homeless in a foreign country. I have two simple questions. Robert Pether is in poor health, is homeless and is being prevented from leaving the country. When will the Australian government bring him home?  

Ms McGregor: Firstly, I want to acknowledge the immense toll that Mr Pether’s detention and travel ban have had on him and his family. We are working tirelessly to secure the lifting of that travel ban that is on him. We very much welcome the release of Mr Pether on bail earlier this year. We will continue to provide consular support to him and his family, including continuing that advocacy for him to be able to leave Iraq.  

Senator ROBERTS: What specific action has the Australian government taken to have Mr Pether returned to Australia and his family, given that his health is now severely compromised?  

Ms McGregor: We remain engaged with Iraqi authorities, as I said, to advocate for Mr Pether to depart Iraq and be reunited with his family. We continue to provide consular assistance. Any ongoing legal matters in relation to that particular travel ban are, of course, a matter for Mr Pether, but I would say that we have consistently advocated for Mr Pether at all levels since his detention in Iraq in 2021. More than 240 representations have been made by Australia, including by the Prime Minister and the Minister for Foreign Affairs. Most recently, on September, the foreign affairs minister raised his case with her Iraqi counterpart in the margins of the UN General Assembly. The Australian ambassador in Iraq has also raised Mr Pether’s case with the appropriate officials in Iraq, including the Prime Minister and the President.  

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. It’s a disturbing case. What about his health and his welfare?  

Ms McGregor: We continue to provide support for his health and his welfare. I don’t want to go into details of that, out of respect for his privacy, but we are continuing to engage with him regularly to receive updates on his situation 

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Iraq invasion was based on WMD lies

20 years ago Australia joined the USA in an illegal invasion of Iraq.

We were told Saddam Hussein had yellow cake and weapons of mass destruction, this was an outright lie.

Transcript

I commend the Greens for the intent behind their speech. We need scrutiny when we deploy people overseas. I commend our armed services for their work overseas and in this country. They have sacrificed a lot, and they have covered themselves with honour. 

But I remind the Senate of Mr Alexander Downer’s interview on the 7.30 program, on the last day before he retired, where he said that John Howard came from America and strode into cabinet and said, ‘We’re off to Iraq.’ That’s not good enough. Now is not the time to do this.

I want to refer to a new book recently released by Clinton Fernandes titled Sub-imperial Power: Australia in the International Arena. Clinton Fernandes is a Canberra man who works for the University of New South Wales and lectures at ADFA. He has the guts to tell it as it is. It reads: ‘We are a sub-imperial power of the United States. We are making a mess of things by following the United States blindly into conflicts.’ 

Look at the Afghanistan withdrawal. Look at the mess that was created. Look at the weapons of mass destruction and the lies that were told to justify our invasion of Iraq. Then, quite openly and blatantly, we were told, ‘Oh, there weren’t any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; we lied to you.’ The United States did that. Australia did that. Britain did that. Tony Blair admitted it. Where is the accountability?

Yet, on the other hand, I’m conflicted. I had a haircut on Friday, and the barber was from Iraq. He said that Iraq is better off in certain areas. So I can’t speak with knowledge. 

There are two parts to the Greens motion in part (b): 

(i) urges the Australian Parliament and government to learn the lessons of the past and to never again be dragged into another country’s unjust war of aggression … 

I support that. We need to learn from this. The only way to get accountability is to ask questions about it.

The second part reads: 

(ii)  calls for the withdrawal of ADF personnel still deployed to Iraq today under Operation Okra and Operation Accordion. 

I can’t vote for that because I don’t know the background. I don’t know what the consequences will be, so I’m not going to open my mouth one way or the other on that, but I want to echo the words of Senator Watt: we need an inquiry into that deployment. I think the Greens are on the right track in opening that issue up, but I cannot support the suspension of standing orders to do that.

I do support the intent, which is to have an inquiry and to develop accountability for these decisions of wantonly invading other countries in support of the United States.

So I commend the Greens, but I won’t be supporting their motion for the suspension of standing orders.

I thank you for raising it. 

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Ukraine: lets take a different perspective

We know that truth is the first casualty of war. Politicians of both sides hint they want to drag us into another war, but we have been lied to before. War is horrible for all involved, we must seek peace wherever possible as the people are the ones who suffer most.

Transcript

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I want to note that peace and security are my goals. Yet often these conflict—part of the irony of the human condition—at a personal level and a global level. We do know some things for sure. War is ugly. There are many inhuman actions in even the smallest war. We also know that truth is always war’s first casualty. We’re told there are two sides to this issue in Ukraine. I want to discuss a third view. So far, we’ve only heard one view. I’ll leave the other side to the Russians. They can talk for themselves; I’m not going to speak for the Russians. I want to discuss a third view. Having read widely in the last 14 years, I no longer swallow the crap we were fed at school and continue to be fed in the media.

Former Senator Ron Paul in the United States is acknowledged for trying to start a department of peace in America instead of a defence department. He had the respect, when he was in Congress, of both sides of politics, Democrats and Republicans. He is very well known for his honesty, his competence and his sincerity. Ron Paul said that every major war since 1913 can be directly attributed to the United States Federal Reserve bank, which is controlled by globalists.

Senator Steele-John just talked about Iraq. Mr President, I’d take your mind back to Iraq, and I remind people of what Mr Alexander Downer said when he retired. On his last night he said that, when John Howard came back from the 9/11 World Trade Center towers collapse in 2001, he walked into cabinet and said, ‘We’re off to Iraq.’ And the cabinet followed, and Australia followed, and in that conflict we killed Australian men and women—young men and women. We also killed a lot of Iraqis and people of other nationalities. ‘We’re off to Iraq.’ I can recall another incident, too, when Prime Minister Howard, Prime Minister Tony Blair from the United Kingdom and President George W Bush from the United States said, ‘We’re all going to go there because of weapons of mass destruction.’ And then, quietly, the world was told they never had any evidence of weapons of mass destruction, but not one parliament, not one congress, held anyone accountable. It went similarly after the Vietnam War and so many other wars around the world, and, as Senator Steele-John just said, it was led on many occasions by the United States.

I have huge admiration for the United States, having lived there for five years, been through all 50 states, worked in eight states and lived in eight states. I admire what the United States has done. I’m married to an American—a dual citizen of Australia and America. But I recognise now that I swallowed a lot of rubbish and propaganda from the Americans, because the government of America led many war efforts. The American people are fine, peace-loving people, but we have been taken into conflicts. So I’m open to alternative views on the Ukrainian issue, but we have no dog in this fight and we should stay out of it.

We repeatedly see decisions in the place—as people know, I can see—where there is data contradicting the reality, and yet, without any data, we blunder into things. We sometimes ignore the facts and data. And always, as one of the Labor senators pointed out, the people pay. So I raise questions. I question the narrative. I question the media narrative—it’s one-way. I question the political narrative—it’s one-way. I question the propaganda and the demonising. But I don’t make statements without facts, and I don’t know sufficient facts to take other than a third view here.

I question the cost of fuel. The biggest impact on our fuel prices is not the Ukraine conflict; it’s government taxes. Senator Hanson has flagged a reduction in excise duty. I question our capacity to defend ourselves, because we need manufacturing to produce weapons, armaments, tanks. We don’t have that capacity anymore. We’ve been gutted by adherence to UN agreements—the Lima declaration, the Kyoto protocol. We see, today, the government setting aside money for injecting babies—babies!—with an untested vaccine.

We heard the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Senator Payne, talk about the Russians now having to fight German weapons that are being given to Ukraine. But the Germans are giving them billions of dollars for gas, because the United Nations has destroyed Germany’s capacity to look after its own energy needs. We have been disarmed. Germany is being disarmed. The only concrete thing I will say in this statement is that we need to get the hell out of the United Nations, not follow it, because the United Nations is pushing a war on humanity.

I’m not sufficiently informed to take a stance either way on this issue. I am, though, sufficiently informed to invite all senators to question what we’re being told. I implore senators, first of all, to understand basic needs of humans and the needs that are driving these conflicts, whether they’re domestic, national or international, and to understand that meeting universal human needs for security, basic interactions and connections is key. It is key to connection and key to relationships.

So I’d just ask people to question. I question how the Ukraine—I’m told by Senator Steele-John—is $129 billion in debt to the IMF, when it’s one of the richest countries in the world. How is that possible? So I ask questions, and I take a third view.

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