If only the Iranian women’s football team were ISIS brides, our government would have pulled out all stops to help them.

But rather than help to establish a violent caliphate, the Iranian girls used their tour of Australia to quietly defy an Islamic regime.

That was their mistake. In modern Australia, opposing Islamists rather than supporting them is the wrong kind of courage.

The Albanese government has a peculiar allergy to confronting radical Islam. It breaks out in bureaucratic hives.

But when it comes to assisting Islamists, it can be surprisingly energetic.

Iranian state television labelled the Iranian women ‘war-time traitors’ for failing to sing their national anthem before a game on the Gold Coast last week.

In Tehran, there are calls for them to be tried for treason and ‘dealt with severely’.

Exiled Iranian crown prince Reza Pahlavi warned that ‘as a result of their brave act of civil disobedience in refusing to sing the current regime’s national anthem, they face dire consequences should they return to Iran’.

In other words, these women may have committed the unforgivable crime of demonstrating a conscience.

In a free country, that sort of behaviour is applauded. In Iran, it’s prosecuted.

And yet here in Australia, where our political class rarely misses an opportunity to congratulate itself for defending women’s rights, the official response has been something approaching a polite shrug.

You might imagine that the Albanese government, endlessly lecturing us about ‘standing with women’, would show a flicker of urgency to help these women.

You would imagine wrong.

Ask the Albanese government to help a group of burka-wearing Islamic State supporters get from Syria to Western Sydney where they can live happily ever after, and you’ll get a wink and a nod.

Immigration Minister Tony Burke will hold secret meetings to discuss how it might be done.

But help courageous Persian women here in Australia avoid death for daring to defy the mullahs?

Well, steady on.

Suddenly, the machinery of compassion grinds to a halt and the government discovers a deep and abiding respect for process.

‘No special treatment,’ Assistant Minister Matt Thistlethwaite told Sky News Australia on Sunday morning.

And while the Iranian players were being told, in effect, ‘best of luck back home…’ Labor politicians were busy celebrating International Women’s Day.

Federal and State Labor MPs were posting happy snaps of themselves with women in Parliament.

Take South Australia’s Peter Malinauskas for example. He tweeted …

‘You’re looking at the first ever South Australian Cabinet where there are more women than men.

‘We don’t just talk about backing women. We back them to lead our government.

‘International Women’s Day can’t just be a date on the calendar.

‘Equality is something we all need to fight for.

‘Every. Single. Day.’

Except, apparently, on the day a busload of Iranian women quietly beg the free world for help.

Now yes – in fairness – asylum and visas are a federal responsibility, not a state one.

But the irony remains thick enough to butter toast.

Yesterday we had Labor – at Federal and State level – boasting about fighting for women while doing less than nothing to help women who are literally for their lives.

The contrast is almost impressive: endless speeches about empowerment on one hand, and a very careful avoidance of the women who might actually need empowering on the other.

As the Iranian team left their Gold Coast hotel last night, one of the players appeared to gesture for help through the bus window.

A small, desperate signal.

Sadly for her, she’s not the kind of woman our government rushes to rescue.

If only she’d been an ISIS bride.