Labor’s 2021 National Platform states that while the party supports the two-state solution in regard to Palestine and Israel, it “calls on the next Labor government to recognise Palestine as a state and expects that this issue will be an important priority for the next Labor government”.
That would be the Albanese government.
The resolution was passed by federal Labor at the party’s 2018 national conference, and the force behind the policy shift was then shadow foreign minister Penny Wong, and the senator was also behind the push for its incorporation into the national platform in 2021.
This issue has come to the fore, as, at the recent Victorian Labor conference, the state party adopted a resolution calling on the “Albanese Labor government to recognise the Palestinian state within the term of this parliament, joining with 138 countries and the Vatican, which have already done so”.
Indeed, in 2013, Australian Jewish News dubbed the current PM Anthony Albanese as “unashamedly pro-Palestinian” and “a founder of the federal Parliamentary Friends of Palestine”. But it then welcomed the then deputy PM’s opposition to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.
However, on addressing the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce last Friday, Albanese restated Labor’s support for the two-state solution and that his party “will take a principled approach on this issue”.
And in the absence of any mention of recognising Palestine as a state, the PM affirmed it won’t be happening.
Read the article by Paul Gregoire from Sydney Criminal Lawyers.