Penny Wong has stepped so warily around so many traps over the past five months that it was jarring to see her playing Twister in a minefield this week when she had three positions on Israel within a day.
The foreign minister lost her footing from the moment on Monday afternoon when her department was caught in the act of changing policy on whether Australia recognised West Jerusalem as the Israeli capital.
From a small start – just a quiet change to a website – the government stumbled into a mess. And while some debates are messy by necessity, like the public argument over the stage three tax cuts, this one was not. It was all avoidable.
Wong did not take long to recover. She never does. She took a position to federal cabinet on Tuesday morning and had an agreement around the table very quickly to restore Australian foreign policy on the treatment of Jerusalem as the capital. Jerusalem will be, once again, a “final status” issue for any peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
Anthony Albanese summed up the view within the cabinet and the decision went ahead with a strong consensus. The timing was rushed but, in the end, exquisite. Labor dropped the policy Scott Morrison sprung on Australians four years ago, almost to the day, when the then prime minister thought he could win the Wentworth byelection in eastern Sydney by favouring Israel with the formal recognition of West Jerusalem as the capital.
Read the article by David Crowe in The Sydney Morning Herald.