Five WA Labor MPs join pro-Palestine Greens at Gaza event

The presence of five Labor WA state MPs at a Gaza event points to disunity over the conflict and follows recent rumblings over the party’s support for oil and gas.

‘Autonomy’: From left to right: Labor MP Hugh Jones, Greens MPs Sophie McNeill and Tim Clifford, Ayman Qwaider, Labor MPs Ayor Makur Chuot and Lisa Munday, Amy Curtis, Labor MPs Klara Andric and Dave Kelly, Animal Justice Party MP Amanda Dorn, and Greens MPs Brad Pettitt and Jess Beckerling. Picture: Facebook

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West Australian Premier Roger Cook has told five rogue Labor state MPs who joined an event organised by a Greens pro-Palestine campaigner to focus on the government’s priorities amid the signs of tension in the government’s swollen backbenches.

Ousted Labor powerbroker Dave Kelly joined forces with the Greens’ star recruit, former ABC foreign correspondent Sophie McNeill, to create the first of what Ms McNeill says will be a series of briefings about the Gaza war for members of the WA parliament.

Four other Labor backbenchers – Hugh Jones, Lisa Munday, Klara Andric and Ayor Makur Chuot – joined the Greens MPs and Animal Justice MP Amanda Dorn for the briefing.

Mr Kelly said the group heard from Amy Curtis, a Perth nurse who spent three months in Gaza with the Red Cross, and Perth man Ayman Qwaider, who Mr Kelly said had lost his sister and her children to an Israeli airstrike.

“The testimony was not about politics. It was about the staggering level of suffering,” Mr Kelly said. “We need an end to the war and all hostages and prisoners ­released with aid returned.”

Asked about the meeting, Mr Cook’s office did not appear to ­endorse the Labor MP’s decision to participate.

A spokesman for the Labor Premier told The Australian: “All state government MPs are expected to be focused on the government’s priorities of delivering jobs, healthcare and homes for Western Australians.”

Mr Kelly was a longtime powerbroker for the dominant left faction of the WA Labor Party and a cabinet minister until 2022 when then premier Mark McGowan forced him to the backbench. Labor sources said Mr Kelly was unlikely to be preselected for ­another term and was therefore acting with unprecedented autonomy.

Last month Mr Kelly broke ranks with his party over its support for the gas industry, signalling tension between the Cook government’s leadership group and the backbench.

Mr Kelly – a former water and fisheries minister – launched an attack on Woodside Energy chief executive Meg O’Neill in state parliament on June 25.

Ms O’Neill had said young people who criticised the oil and gas industry while embracing online shopping were hypocritical. Mr Kelly said this was “quite ­disrespectful and arguably arrogant”. The following day, Treasurer Rita Saffioti said she did not support Mr Kelly’s comments.

Labor’s dominance in WA means its ranks include ­numerous MPs with little to no chance of becoming ministers. There have been growing signs of disharmony in the past year, primarily over the government’s support for the oil and gas industry, and the Gaza meeting is the most clear sign to date of disunity within state Labor over the conflict.

Ms McNeill told The Australian that she and Mr Kelly organised the event inside the WA parliament “because we thought it was really critical for parliamentarians to hear first-hand about this unfolding genocide”.

She said there was a lot of support for Palestine among state and federal Labor MPs who, she said, were increasingly uncomfortable with the Albanese government’s “failure to act”.

“We have come to a point where we need Labor MPs internally to put pressure on because we are 20 months into this genocide and the government has failed to take concrete steps,” she said.

“The time has come to ask themselves, ‘what did I do?’.”

Liberal senator from WA and Coalition foreign affairs frontbencher Michaelia Cash said that while no one wanted to see innocent civilians suffer, the situation in Gaza “is one for which, overwhelmingly, the terrorist organisation Hamas is morally responsible”.

“It is disappointing that Mr Kelly seems to have forgotten to condemn Hamas, the terrorist group who started this war when they massacred 1200 civilians in cold blood, who use the people of Gaza as human shields,” she said.