The history of the Australian Labor party and in particular the New South Wales branch has been one of navigating tensions between the pro-Israel forces and the growing pro Palestine solidarity movement within the right and the left factions, the union movement, the grass roots members, and the young activists.
Premier Chris Minns has cast aside this policy in practice and moved the Party and its union affiliates into rough, uncharted waters, driving division and fracturing party solidarity.
His one-sided pro-Israel politics has ignored this history to the detriment of the Australian Labor Party and its multicultural support base.
Premier Minns has been relentless in his unwavering support for Israel and the Israel lobby in Australia, pushing through their Zionist agenda and his anti-protest laws.
Policies and decisions rejected by the overwhelming majority of Labor and Union rank and file membership and across the vocal multicultural constituencies in Western Sydney.
Such a stance has prompted warnings from former NSW Labor Premier Morris Iemma that the party is in danger of losing seats in Western Sydney to independent candidates. A reality that is driving panic amongst Western Sydney Labor MPs.
Labor’s rank and file members are seething with anger. They are furious and can’t wait for the upcoming NSW state conference later this year to have their say.
They resent the indignity of having the head of the state of Israel, Issac Herzog, accused of inciting genocide in Gaza, to be in their midst. A man that represents a state that has murdered over 70,000 civilians with over 100,000 injured, many of them women and children and thousands more still under the rubble and thousands in Israeli jails, many starved and tortured.
The Israeli President’s invitation to Australia has deepened the schism between the rank and file of the Australian Labor Party and the union movement on the one side and their leadership on the other.
You would be hard pressed to find members of Labor’s rank and file or in the union movement who would welcome the Israeli president’s visit as voiced by former Federal Labor minister, Ed Husic MP.
Many members have expressed their profound outrage to President Herzog’s arrival, and many have gone onto the streets to express their distaste. This rank-and-file opposition is not fringe or abstract: it is real and rooted in outrage over statements made by Israeli leadership that have been cited in proceedings before the International Court of Justice as evidence of genocidal rhetoric.
Like many Australian citizens, Labor’s rank and file wanted Herzog arrested for inciting genocide against an innocent civilian population in Gaza, they wanted him charged and locked up.
Chris Sidoti, an Australian Human Rights lawyer, response to the visit of Israeli President Isaac Herzog, says: This is one of the most divisive figures in the world. Bringing him to Australia will undermine social cohesion, it will not rebuild it. It will increase division; it will not bring about national unity. It was a crazy idea in the first place.
Many members are so disillusioned that one friend had written to me expressing her total disappointment in Labor’s policy decisions around the genocide in Palestine and the Herzog invitation. “I am thinking of joining the Greens.” She concluded.
Others expressed interests in leaving the party or leaving their factions as they can no longer bear witness to the ongoing incitement by the NSW state Labor leader, Premier Chris Minns, against the pro Palestine protestors, demonising them and pushing through his draconian anti protest laws and defending police brutality against peaceful protestors.
Premier Minns is also facing backlash from within his own parliamentary Labor caucus where he is accused of gaging MPs, reprimanding MPs and taking on an “incredibly dangerous position” to ban protests.
Deep fracture inside Labor has set in as anger mounts against the NSW Premier and his anti-protest laws, the Police treatment of peaceful protestors and the image of an Islamic congregation in prayers assaulted by police yet Premier Minns continues to dodge and fail to admit responsibility.
Many in Labor now say Minns must go.
The participation of rank-and-file Labor members and Labor parliamentarians from the Left and the Right of the Party in the February nine protest, is not only a backlash against the Premier’s Zionist supporting decisions, but more so about the historical repositioning of a party losing its ethical consistency and moral base.
While the recent polling by Roy Morgan showed the ALP to have received only 25 per cent of the primary vote compared to Pauline Hanson -led party on 30 percent, the reality for Labor may well be worse amongst multicultural communities in Western Sydney waiting for the March 2027 State election.
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