The government has told Australians that additional flights will assist those stranded by the Middle East war, with the Opposition pushing for military planes to be deployed.
The first commercial flight out of Dubai since war broke out between the US, Israel and Iran on Saturday touched down in Sydney late Wednesday night, with more than 200 Australians on board.
Global airspace over the region has been disrupted, with Iran having now launched strikes at 11 countries in retaliation, the latest of which were headed towards Türkiye overnight, before NATO air defences shot a ballistic missile down.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong has confirmed three additional flights would leave the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Thursday with Australians on board, as long as it is "safe and secure to leave".
She said the first of six crisis centre teams had been deployed to ensure the safety of Australians on the ground and to help them leave.
There are 115,000 Australians in the region, with at least 24,000 located in Dubai. This includes expats or people transiting through.
"When you have this number of people... The fastest way is to use commercial flights when made available," she told reporters in Canberra.
Opposition defence spokesperson James Paterson has called on the government to deploy Australian Defence Force (ADF) planes to assist repatriation efforts.
"If those commercial options are not available, then every other option needs to be considered, including using ADF assets to repatriate Australians, if that's necessary."
He said ADF planes had been used to "evacuate Australians from conflict zones" in the past.
When asked about the involvement of military personnel, Wong refused to go into specifics of assets on the ground but said her government and staff were "looking at all contingencies".
The foreign minister said she was "deeply concerned" by the conflict, which has spread "very rapidly" and is "much more intense.
"I don't think we anticipated, or any country might have anticipated that Iran would respond in the way that it has," Wong told reporters in Canberra.
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