By Paul Sakkal
The first Palestinian-Australian federal politician is likely to be installed in place of a veteran Labor MP, providing a new voice for the government in its ferocious political dispute with the Greens over the conflict in Gaza.
Maria Vamvakinou, one of the party’s most sympathetic Palestinian supporters, told this masthead she had informed Prime Minister Anthony Albanese she would end her 23-year-long political career at the next federal election.
Maria Vamvakinou has represented her Melbourne seat for more than two decades.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Basem Abdo, a communications specialist, has won the support of key Socialist Left figures, including Vamvakinou. Preselection for the seat will take place later this year, but Abdo’s backing from the Socialist Left means he is poised to replace the veteran MP.
Born in Kuwait to parents from a village in the occupied West Bank, Abdo’s family sought refuge in Jordan during the Gulf War before migrating to Australia in 1991.
Labor sources said Abdo had been a mature and conciliatory voice during a heated factional dispute over the wording of a motion on the Middle East conflict at last month’s Victorian Labor conference.
Abdo told this masthead his father had “left Palestine as a result of the 1967 war and my family has lived through displacement. My grandparents died living under occupation.
“We need to see the advancement of justice for Palestine and the Palestinian people, and their right to self-determination. Advancing peace can only come about through the application of justice and international law,” he said.
Vamvakinou said Abdo would be a formidable voice in parliament as a person with genuine understanding of the community of Calwell, where he lives. Abdo has been working in Vamvakinou’s office in recent years.
“Calwell has grown remarkably in the ensuing years and continues to write the history of contemporary multicultural Australia, a focus which has guided and informed my work over the years,” she said.
About a quarter of voters in the outer-Melbourne seat are Muslim, according to the 2021 census. Labor insiders fear a backlash among some Muslim and other, largely left-wing, voters sympathetic to the Palestinian cause in multicultural seats and inner-city progressive ones.
Labor suffered significant swings against it in working-class Melbourne and Sydney seats at the previous election, including a 10 per cent primary vote drop in Calwell, which is now held by a 12 per cent margin.
Prospective Labor candidate Basem Abdo.
A fierce debate erupted in federal parliament last week when Labor and the Coalition berated the Greens for lending support to pro-Palestinian activists who have targeted federal MPs and vandalised electoral office.
Greens leader Adam Bandt accused the government of being complicit in the Israeli invasion of Gaza after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton blamed the Greens for encouraging the protests.
Labor senator Fatima Payman quit an internal party committee last week, in a further sign of the West Australian’s isolation within the government following her comments on Gaza. She had earlier stepped down from two parliamentary foreign affairs committees following a rebuke from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese after the first-term senator used the controversial phrase “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”.
Labor sources said Abdo, as well as being a broadly well-credentialed candidate, would be able to authoritatively counter what they described as false Greens claims that Labor has sided with Israel in its military response to the October 7 Hamas terror attacks.
Even before the war in Gaza created tension between Labor and an Arab diaspora that has long backed the party, senior party figures raised the alarm about a lack of culturally diverse candidates in seats with large migrant populations.
The Socialist Left faction in Victoria has not selected a culturally diverse MP since Vamvakinou entered parliament in 2001.
Before the Gaza conflict, Bandt said his focus was on winning the Labor seat of Macnamara to add to the Greens’ tally of four federal seats. But recently the party has shifted focus to Wills, which has a large Muslim population and is the heart of the left-wing pro-Palestine protest movement in Melbourne.
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