Test of Wills: Peter Khalil says extreme campaign can’t become normalised

Peter Khalil remembers the moment he realised the battle for Wills was about far more than deciding who would sit in the next federal parliament.

It was a month ago, when early voting had just begun, and the energy, tension and anger built up over a fractious, campaign was being funnelled into the parking lot of the Brunswick Masonic Centre in Melbourne’s inner-north.

The queue of people waiting to vote snaked through the parking lot and into the street. On either side of the electors, a crush of T-shirted campaigners, some representing local candidates and others a menagerie of activist groups, jostled to be seen and heard.

Crowds at the only pre-poll station in Wills – Davies Street, Brunswick.Credit: Wayne Taylor

Khalil, like former Victorian Greens leaders Samantha Ratnam and other candidates, was also there. He was in quiet conversation with a voter when he heard someone scream “baby killer!” He turned to see a young man, his face contorted in rage, screaming at him again. “Khalil baby killer!”

“Initially, I was going to react to that,” Khalil tells this masthead. “But I remember thinking I am not going to yield to that hatred. I am going to keep talking to this person because they deserve to have their engagement with their MP to ask their questions, and I am just going to ignore what they are doing.”

Khalil doesn’t know who the young man was and declines to say who he was campaigning for. In a sense, it doesn’t matter. As early voting went on, with voters spending up to 45 minutes in the parking lot waiting to cast their ballots, he was not a lone voice.

“They would scream at me and I would just ignore them and talk to the person in front of me,” Khalil says. “Often I would say ‘I’m really sorry about this.’

“I was doing it, I guess, because I thought our democracy is precious and we need to protect it and I had an obligation to that.

“To the chagrin of my staff, I refused to take breaks or have lunch. I did eight hours straight with a couple of toilet breaks. But I remember that moment. I said to myself whatever happens, win or lose, hold your nerve, maintain your integrity and don’t yield to this.”

The Muslim Votes Matter advocacy group targeted Khalil over a trip he took to Israel 15 years ago.Credit: Gus McCubbing

The Wills campaign was one of the ugliest of a federal election marred by public confrontations, including far-right agitators filming themselves approaching Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in a Melbourne hotel and a physical altercation between attendees and right-wing activists at a candidates’ forum in Kooyong.

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke pulled out of an event over safety concerns, and masked neo-Nazis protested outside Coalition senator James Paterson’s office.

Throughout the campaign both the prime minister and then-opposition leader Peter Dutton were confronted by hecklers, who shouted at the leaders over climate change, the war on Gaza, refugees, nuclear energy and mental health.

Behaviour at polling booths and towards candidates became so toxic that the Australian Electoral Commission issued a warning ahead of election day, and senior Labor, Liberal and independent members condemned antisemitic graffiti and vandalism.

In Wills, the Greens and their popular candidate in Ratnam lay siege to a gentrified, traditional Labor seat where Khalil’s margin had been halved by a redistribution of boundaries.

Greens candidate for Wills Samantha Ratnam campaigning for early votes outside the Brunswick Masonic Centre.Credit: Paul Jeffers

Beneath this headline contest, it was ground for Melbourne’s pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel protest movement to harvest the fury, dismay and grief caused by the horrors of Gaza and direct it against a sitting government MP. This included, to Khalil’s deep consternation, an overtly sectarian pitch to Muslim voters.

Khalil says the electors of Wills approached their task as voters always do. Some happy to talk to Khalil made it clear they were voting for him while others politely provided the reasons they weren’t. But around them, the atmosphere was punctuated by intimidation and harassment of campaign volunteers, candidates and voters. The most serious incident was an alleged death threat.

“There was one incident on pre-poll where a volunteer for another candidate essentially told my volunteers and staff he would like to line them up and shoot them,” Khalil says. “He then pretended to have a machine gun and simulated shooting them.”

In the final week of voting, Khalil’s electoral office in Coburg was evacuated after activists occupied the roof of the Sydney Road building. It was the third time the office was evacuated since October 7, 2023, for security reasons. To meet with their local MP or his staff, constituents must announce their arrival on an intercom system and pass through two sets of security doors.

Ratnam culminated her campaign for Wills with a positive pitch to “do it for every single Palestinian who has struggled over 70 years, for every single Gazan child who is suffering right now”.

The flip side of this coin was a highly personalised campaign by others against Khalil. Fliers, banners and campaign material were distributed which variously encouraged voters to kick him out, described him as a war criminal and condemned him for taking a sponsored trip to Israel.

Similar banners were displayed against Labor MPs Julian Hill and Anne Aly, who last week became the first Muslim woman sworn into the cabinet of an Australian government.

A pamphlet accusing Khalil of supporting genocide featured a doctored image.

Khalil says it is legitimate for people to argue that Australia could and should be doing more to end the war in Gaza. It is an argument he is more than willing to have, given his deep knowledge of the Middle East and personal advocacy for greater humanitarian aid, acceptance of Palestinian refugees and a ceasefire. “People are affected by this terrible loss of life,” he says. “How can you not be, as a human being?”

Khalil says the death threat at early voting was reported to police and once the usual, post-election parliamentary inquiry is established, he will make a detailed submission about the conduct of the Wills campaign. He says his motivation in talking about it now is to call out a problem in Australian politics that goes beyond Wills.

“It is unacceptable that volunteers who are willing to give of their time to campaign for a candidate or an MP or a party because they believe what it stands for are subjected to threats or physical intimidation and harassment,” he says. “I don’t want that to be normalised in our political system and democracy.

“All of us have a responsibility to uphold democracy and our democratic institutions, particularly elected representatives. Yet, some elected representatives have chosen extreme populism: talking down our democratic system as failing, with some openly calling for it to be brought down entirely; demonising political opponents; using disinformation and misinformation; politicising and often weaponising war and tragedy; stoking division and sectarianism to drive anger and then channelling it towards political opponents by ascribing blame to them for international conflicts.”

Khalil argues that voters at this federal election rejected “extreme populist tactics” employed by the radical left and the far right. He sees the result in Wills, where he retained his seat after a 2.8 per cent swing to the Greens, as a repudiation of the campaign tone and tactics employed against him.

He cautions, however, that the full story of Wills is more complicated than this. The bigger picture is difficult to see when you are busy shouting hateful things at an early voting centre.

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