Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese defended the section in his party’s 2026 National Platform dealing with “Israel and Palestine,” telling the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on Sunday that the “platform has got the balance right.”
The National Platform, passed during the Labor Party’s 50th national conference, which took place over a three-day period last week, remains virtually unchanged from its draft form, which had been sharply criticized by Israel’s embassy in Canberra last week.
The platform, meant to guide the party for the next three years, essentially endorses the Palestinian narrative in the conflict. It calls for an end to the “occupation,” opposes “the annexation of Palestinian territory” and condemns Israel’s “illegal settlement activity” and “extremist settler violence.” It called for sanctions to be imposed on Israel if necessary.
Albanese told “Insiders,” an ABC Sunday show, “I support the right of Israel to exist within secure borders. I also support the legitimate aspirations of Palestinians for their own state and to live in peace and security with prosperity.”
Everything Australia does has to be “balanced,” he said.
By “balanced,” Albanese referred to the fact that still more extreme anti-Israel amendments had been rejected.
Labor MP Ed Husic, a representative from New South Wales, led a failed effort to add a resolution supporting Palestinians claims of genocide.
Husic’s resolution also called on the government to pull its officials from Tel Aviv and to establish full diplomatic ties with the “State of Palestine,” which Albanese’s government recognized last year.
In opposition, pro-Israel Labor delegates wanted to bring an amendment calling on Hamas to disarm and have no role in a Palestinian state, The Australian reported.
Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles dissuaded them, saying that while the Israeli-Palestinian section was flawed, it was important to compromise for the sake of unity and an amendment of the kind they proposed would only lead to a harsher platform against Israel.
The Labor Party was eager to present a unified face to the public, according to The Australian. At one point, Jewish Labor Member of Parliament Josh Burns and MP Basem Abdo, the son of Palestinians, shook hands on stage in a display of that unity.
Albanese pointed to this moment on Sunday. “There has been contributions on the floor of the conference, including from Josh Burns and Basem Abdo, two people who are considered in their approach, two people who recognize that it’s in the interests of both Israelis and Palestinians to have peace and security in the Middle East,” he said.
But 50 pages of amendments filed ahead of the Labor conference’s weekend session on foreign affairs, inadvertently made available online and then taken down from the Labor conference’s website, show that Labor’s rank-and-file were more extreme in their views than the final platform suggested, The Australian reported.
One amendment proposed replacing the wording, “Russia’s illegal and immoral war against Ukraine” with “illegal and immoral wars against Ukraine, Palestine, Iran, and Lebanon.” It also sought to remove “Islamist” from a pledge to “meet security challenges posed by terrorism, including to counter violent extremism and work to mitigate the evolving risks of Islamist and right-wing terrorism.” “Islamist” was to be replaced with the amorphous “hate groups.”
Another amendment, connected to opposition raised against Australia participating in the F-35 fighter jet supply chain following the Gaza war, proposed that “Australia’s defense trade should operate consistently with Australia’s international and legal treaty obligations and human rights commitments.”
Still another amendment called for “the release of Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti.” Barghouti was arrested by Israeli forces during the Second Intifada in 2002. As a senior leader in Fatah, he was responsible for thousands of attacks against Israel.
While these amendments were not adopted, pro-Israel and Jewish groups nevertheless expressed disappointment at the platform’s ultimate wording.
Labor Friends of Israel spokesman Mike Kelly said in a statement that the group was “deeply disturbed by the events at the national conference whereby elements of the Labor movement succeeded in having the national platform amended to exclude the reference to our policy on Hamas.”
“There was no excuse for not remedying this in the light of the extensive commentary and debate that highlighted deleting the reference could only be interpreted as the movement embracing Hamas,” he said.
In a statement provided to JNS by the Australia Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, the main public affairs organization for the Australian Jewish community, Executive Director Colin Rubenstein said his group was “deeply disappointed that the National Conference has still adopted changes to the ALP National Platform that removed these explicit calls for Hamas’ disarmament, Palestinian Authority reform and guarantees of Israel’s security.”
“There can be no credible pathway to peace while Hamas remains armed and committed to Israel’s destruction, and with an unreformed Palestinian Authority that continues to fund pay-for-slay terror salaries, incite violence, and lacks the capacity to govern effectively,” he said.
Rubenstein expressed relief that MP Husic’s “highly extreme and incendiary proposal on the Middle East” had been rejected.
He also welcomed the July 21 statement by Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong reaffirming the government’s position that “Hamas must disarm and play no role in the State of Palestine” and that the Palestinian Authority must reform, including ending its payments to terrorists.
The Executive Council of Australian Jewry, an umbrella group of 200 Jewish organizations, warned on Sunday that the Labor platform could lead to a change in the government’s position.
“The concern is that the weakening of resolve to exclude Hamas from any role in governing a Palestinian state and to hold the Palestinian Authority to account for failing to honor its written commitments, as now enshrined in the ALP platform, will eventually become government policy,” said ECAJ co-chief executive Peter Wertheim.
