Penny Wong will never be able to please the campus fanatics

The left-wing fanatics on campuses and in the unions will never be satisfied, and will move on to the next grievance before the end of the week.

Penny Wong’s move to recognise Palestine at the UN has shocked a multipartisan group of MPs, such as Labor’s Josh Burns, the Liberal Party’s Julian Leeser and independent Allegra Spender. Like many other Australians waking up on Saturday morning to the news of the vote, a sense of disbelief regarding the vote is not entirely unwarranted.

Hamas, the group that governs the Gaza Strip, is proscribed in Australia as a terrorist organisation. Hamas directed the attack on Israel on October 7 in one of the most depraved atrocities in living memory.

Before Hamas won an election in 2006, the last effort to establish Palestinian statehood was rejected by Yasser Arafat at Camp David in 2000. And the Second Intifada that followed obliterated any progress towards a peaceful two-state solution. As Hillary Clinton reminds us, if Arafat had not rejected her president husband Bill’s efforts at Camp David, Palestine would have had a state now for the past 24 years.

Wong, of course, does not endorse Hamas. Like other Western diplomats, she seeks to empower the Palestinian Authority, a Fatah-dominated organisation that has limited rule over the West Bank.

President Bill Clinton, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, left, and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, right, walk on the grounds of Camp David.

Yet the Palestinian Authority is notoriously corrupt, and deeply unpopular with Palestinians. A March poll carried out by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research found if elections were held in Gaza or the West Bank today, Hamas would win.

The sad reality is that as long as popular support for Hamas persists, any efforts to strengthen Palestine’s position at the United Nations, will, however unintentionally, lend legitimacy and influence to a group that engages in murder, rape and terrorism.

This might be why on Saturday, after directing her ambassador to the UN to vote on the same side as Iran, Russia and China, Wong disassembled. She stated that Australia was not actually “recognising Palestinian statehood”, but rather “expanded Palestinian participation in the United Nations”. Wong’s desperate effort to reconcile two contradictory positions of recognising Palestinian statehood while simultaneously denying such recognition exposes the depths of her predicament.

Like every other politician, Wong has different constituencies to please. On the one hand, the Labor government must be seen to please voters in safe Labor seats, some of which are home to a high proportion of the Australian Muslim population. Simultaneously, Wong must fend off challenges from the Greens on her left flank, as they continue to siphon away Labor supporters. On the other hand, Wong is the Foreign Minister of Australia, and must engage at the highest levels with our allies, including Israel and the United States. Navigating this balance was always going to be hard.

The difficulty of threading the needle on Israel and Gaza was highlighted recently in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal by Harvard economist Roland Fryer. Fryer analysed the cowardly behaviour of American Ivy League university administrators through the framework of signalling theory. He points out that university administrators have a “two-audience signalling quandary” in which they must mollify their own fanatical students, while also placating wealthy donors and alumni. Administrators who do not have strong preferences “will engage in a highwire act of trying to appease both students and alumni”, writes Fryer.

In voting for recognition of Palestine at the UN – which Wong states isn’t really recognition at all – the Foreign Minister is attempting to walk the same high wire.

She knows the UN resolution will not be passed by the Security Council in which the US has veto power, and so the resolution itself is an empty gesture. But even though it is merely symbolic, the gesture is likely to be welcomed by student protesters, the Greens, unions, and many voters in Labor seats. From Wong’s point of view, she is pleasing both constituencies at once, walking the wire with careful precision.

Wong’s funambulism is not limited to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; it extends to Taiwan as well. Speaking at the Press Club last year, Wong tried to downplay the possibility of war over Taiwan, dismissing such discussions as mere “parlour games”.

However, in the same breath, she emphasised the importance of deterrence in the Asia-Pacific region. This contradiction exposes her lack of conviction on the matter. If the threat of war were truly just a parlour game, there would be no need for deterrence.

But it is clear what Australia’s stance should be in both cases. Australia is a liberal democracy, as is Taiwan, as is Israel. If we believe in the importance of democratic values we should be supporting other nations in their defence against autocratic regimes who wish to invade, attack or terrorise the people of free nations. Just as we support Ukraine in its efforts to repel invading Russian forces, we should be steadfast in defending Israel after its brutal invasion by Hamas.

What Wong does not seem to realise is that her high wire is actually a fence on which she sits. Wong’s performance shows a lack of conviction. In trying to please everybody, she will end up pleasing nobody. The left-wing fanatics on campuses and in the unions will never be satisfied, and will move on to the next grievance before the end of the week.

Meanwhile, Jewish Australians who are feeling besieged and abandoned will feel betrayed and bewildered, and see the vote as a reward for Hamas. And many everyday Australians witnessing the explosion of anti-Semitism at home will be wondering: What has become of the Australian way of life?

Claire Lehmann is founding editor of online magazine Quillette.