NSW Labor conference backs recognition of Palestine and two-state solution
The New South Wales Labor conference has urged the next federal Labor government to recognise Palestine in a development likely to flow through to the party’s national conference next July.
The motion carried by delegates in Sydney on Sunday night affirmed the two-state solution, and it recognised Israel and Palestine’s right to exist “within secure and recognised borders” before urging the next Labor government to recognise Palestine.
The references to the two-state solution and the right to exist secure state borders were added during backroom negotiations in the lead-up to the vote.
Separate pro-Palestine motions also passed Labor conferences in Queensland and the Australian Capital Territory over the weekend.
The former NSW premier and federal foreign affairs minister, Bob Carr, has been spearheading the internal effort to push Labor towards the diplomatic recognition of Palestine.
Carr told the conference if Gough Whitlam was still alive, and on the floor on Sunday, he would be urging delegates to recognise Palestine. He told delegates to go back to their branches and report the passage of the motion with “pride”.
The proposal passed with only a couple of voices heard in opposition.
Carr later told Guardian Australia the only way to save the two-state solution was for countries to give diplomatic recognition to Palestine.
He said the positions adopted at the state conferences would influence the outcome at the party’s national conference and likely lead to further strengthening of the national policy position.
“I think you can say these conferences point to a consensus between the left and the NSW right factions,” Car said.
While every increment of change in Labor’s stance on Israel triggers a flurry of lobbying, and an internal battle – Labor has been moving in the direction of adopting a more pro-Palestinian stance since 2012.
The last ALP national conference in July 2015 passed the strongest resolution yet seen at the national level.
The form of words adopted by the national conference says if “there is no progress in the next round of the peace process, a future Labor government will discuss joining like-minded nations who have already recognised Palestine and announcing the conditions and timelines for the Australian recognition of a Palestinian state, with the objective of contributing to peace and security in the Middle East”.
The conference resolution of 2015 was resisted strenuously at the national conference by senior players in the Victorian right, which is the federal Labor leader Bill Shorten’s factional grouping.
But the Victorian right was outflanked on the conference floor by the NSW right.
Shorten faced a new round of public pressure earlier this year to move Labor towards a more pro-Palestine position ahead of a visit to Australia by the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Ahead of Netanyahu’s visit, the former Labor prime minister Bob Hawke argued it was time to recognise the state of Palestine because the humanitarian principles underpinning the Jewish state were being “trashed by the inexorable expansion of ... settlement in the West Bank”.
Hawke was joined in that call by Gareth Evans, a former Labor foreign minister, as well as Carr, who has spearheaded the pro-Palestine push inside the NSW right faction for several years.
As well as the Palestine motion, the NSW Labor conference also saw lively debates on strengthening the workplace industrial relations framework, and on economic policy.
Shorten used the opportunity of the conference to unveil a 30% tax rate on distributions from discretionary trusts in an effort to crack down on income splitting and aggressive tax minimisation by high-wealth individuals.
A number of trade union delegates used debates on motions to declare the federal workplace relations framework “broken”.
Ahead of a signal expected from federal Labor this week on some of the changes it will take to the next federal election on workplace relations, Dave McKinley from the Electrical Trades Union declared: “We need to tear the bloody [Fair Work Act] up, we need to burn it and start again.”
Brian Parker from the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union declared the current laws “rat shit” and he said he hoped the union movement “with our lawyers” would be at the forefront of efforts to rewrite the legislation.