ALP in shift towards recognising Palestine

Australia is likely to formally recognise the state of Palestine if Anthony Albanese becomes PM.

Federal Labor leader Anthony Albanese. Picture: AAP

Australia is likely to formally ­recognise the state of Palestine if Anthony Albanese becomes prime minister, following a change to the ALP’s policy platform.

At Labor’s online national conference later this month, the final platform will be changed from the draft version released on Sunday to include a “statement in detail” that will call on “the next Labor government to recognise Palestine as a state”.

The policy platform will also be amended to call on the next Labor government to treat the issue of Palestine as an “important priority”, bringing it in line with Labor’s policies ahead of the 2019 federal election.

The statement has been endorsed by shadow cabinet and the ALP’s national executive.

Mr Albanese and opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman Penny Wong were said to have been blindsided by its omission from the draft, sparking a complaint from Bob Carr, a pro-Palestine former foreign minister in the Gillard government.

The amendment was sent to ALP figures on the weekend as an “appendix” to the draft platform, with Left faction leaders sending an email to “comrades” saying the statement should be “considered as part of the draft”.

“National executive has endorsed a recommendation that a new statement-in-detail be put to the (online national conference) at the end of March,” a Labor spokeswoman said.

“The statement-in-detail reflects the wording of the resolution adopted unanimously by the 2018 national conference.”

The issue has sparked conspiracy theories within Labor, with senior party sources saying the pro-Palestine statements should have been in the original draft ­version but were removed in the “editing process”.

A Labor source said members of the party’s National Policy Forum agreed to insert the pro-Palestine statements to the draft in a key meeting last December, only to find they were “missing” as the document was set to be released on the weekend.

Other Labor sources say the pro-Palestine statements were not intended to be in the document, and note they were not included in the party’s preliminary draft platform that was published in The Australian last September.

Labor’s preliminary draft platform and final draft platform did not go further than referencing the party’s support for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, which is a similar position to that of the Morrison government.

Mr Carr made a personal complaint to Mr Albanese and Senator Wong about the draft policy platform when he was alerted to its contents by Palestine advocate Wendy Turner.

“I confirm that when Wendy Turner, from the Queensland ALP, alerted me that the thing had gone missing, I made the strongest representations to the leader’s office and to Penny Wong,” Mr Carr said.

“Both were under the impression that the policy was there. They saw it as a routine re-­endorsement of a policy adopted at the last conference.

“We all joked about it and we are looking for an answer to this mystery.”

Mr Carr joked he would gain more respect for the Israeli defence forces if its deletion from the draft platform turned out to be a covert cyber intervention.

“If this had been a cyber intervention from Israeli forces, my respect for their capacity — already high given their achievements in Tehran, already high given their attention to Iranian nuclear development — has soared,” he said.

Palestine is recognised by 138 nations but not by major Western allies including the US and Britain.

Senator Wong stressed that the Labor Party was also a strong ­supporter of Israel and said that ­recognising Palestine would remain a “matter for a future Labor government”.

“After significant debate and negotiation, in 2018 the national conference made it clear that Labor supports a two-state solution, which recognises the right of Israel and Palestine to exist within secure and recognised borders,” she said.

“It recognised the desire of this conference to recognise Palestine as a state, but it made it clear that is matter for a future Labor government.”

The draft policy platform was 115 pages, down from 310 pages in the final version endorsed at the 2018 national conference.

This meant that large swathes of the former platform were omitted from the draft.