The Labor Party has broken into open warfare over Israel-Palestine, with Bob Carr accusing former federal cabinet colleague Mark Dreyfus of holding a secret meeting to try to “silence” him.
Mr Carr, a former foreign minister, has discovered Mr Dreyfus and his Labor colleague Michael Danby met Chinese businessman Huang Xiangmo last year.
Mr Carr is outraged that, in the early weeks of last year’s election campaign, Mr Dreyfus and Mr Danby went to see Mr Huang, who provided $1.8 million to start the Australia-China Relations Institute, which Mr Carr runs.
While Mr Huang was the institute’s founding financier, it is now fully funded by the University of Technology Sydney.
The accusation is contained in Balcony Over Jerusalem, a new book looking at how the media, lobby groups and political parties in Australia deal with the Israel-Palestine issue. “The purpose of the visit by the two Labor figures was to protest that I had the audacity to occasionally criticise Israel for spreading settlements on the West Bank,’’ Mr Carr said.
Read the full article by John Lyons at The Australian (subscription only).