Piers Akerman: Penny Wong’s Palestine speech was out of touch and divides Australians

Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s comments this week on Palestine and a two-state solution plays directly into the hands of Hamas and has made Australia a laughing stock, writes Piers Akerman.

Penny Wong is bowing to the baying Opera House mob that celebrated the rape, torture and murder by Hamas of innocent civilians on October 7.

Supporting their crazed demand for a Palestinian state plays into the hands of Hamas, the internationally recognised terrorist group that cannot confirm it still holds enough hostages to meet the ceasefire proposal now being discussed.

Good principles should drive policy, but under Labor this blatant wooing of Muslim voters is ushering in an era of grotesquely unprincipled policies.

Wong’s view is so out of touch that even most Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza oppose a two-state solution. She is the flag bearer for the hate-filled extreme Left in the Albanese government.

Wong’s address at the Australian National University smashed the long-held bipartisan policy on Israel yet it was lauded by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Her plan only refreshes Hamas’s appetite for more terror.

Time and again, Labor is dividing Australians – not uniting us – and also distancing us from our allies.

Penny Wong’s statements on a two-state solution was ‘grotesquely unprincipled’, writes Piers Akerman. Picture – Rohan Thomson/ANU

It is notable that Australia has not pledged support for Israel in the event of an attack by Iran.

The Voice referendum – the key pillar of Albanese’s emotional acceptance speech after his election – was overwhelmingly rejected by the Australian public.

His second election pledge – to reduce the price of electricity to householders by $275 by 2025 – is unachievable yet Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen continues to claim that it is being delivered.

Alinta Energy CEO Jeff Dimery has said its time for “truths and straight talking”, but both concepts are totally alien to the government.

He says “Australians will have to pay more for energy in the future”.

“Whether we pay through our taxes, or pay the large upfront costs of an EV, or batteries and solar … or we’re paying more for electricity from the grid, we’ll all pay more in the aggregate,” he says.

“I don’t think the average Australian is prepared for that reality.”

The government certainly isn’t ready for reality on energy or any other issue.

It has promoted myths about Indigenous Australians and proposes to spend billions more on people living in uneconomic and unsustainable remote communities.

More dangerously, it has secretly concocted a dystopian Nature Positive Plan to tie up even more of the continent in environmental green tape and drive more industries offshore.

Albanese’s big new plan to provide subsidies for green industries is just an arrangement to direct further funds into the coffers of the ailing trade union movement, now almost wholly dependent on support from the giant superannuation funds to which workers compulsorily contribute.

Every single Labor policy has diminished the prospects for younger Australians and reduced the quality of life for older Australians.

Now, Wong’s woke foray into the Gaza conflict has made the nation an international laughing stock. We are members of The Quad group with India, Japan and the US, but the Indians look to Russia more than they do to Australia in almost everything except cricket.

Japan regards us warily, and as former ambassador Shingo Yamagami wrote recently, Albanese allowed The Quad security dialogue to languish as he attempted to repair ties with Beijing.

When she was at the ANU, Wong might have asked the students whether they would rather study in Canberra, Harvard, Oxford or in Beijing or Moscow.

Outside the Leftist bubble, the Anglosphere remains the preferred destination for those who treasure Western civilisation and not the theocracy of Iran or the kleptocracy of Russia or the autocracy of China.

Wong has brought shame upon Australia but praise from supporters of Hamas, which says all that needs to be said about this government.

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