Australia was on the verge of sanctions against Israel… and then walked away

The problem for the Albanese government isn’t just about Australia moving too slowly against illegal Israeli settlements – it walked up to the negotiating table but then decided that it was all too much and just walked away.

Australia was a part of these negotiations with Britain, France, Canada and European governments over action that would target trade with illegal West Bank settlements, and at that stage, was open to “more aggressive action”. Foreign minister Penny Wong, who never misses the opportunity to miss an opportunity – as well as leaving her morals behind – then instructed Australia to remove itself from the table and advised its partners that it wouldn’t be joining this action.

Britain has declared Israel’s occupation of the West Bank unlawful and described the forced displacement as ethnic cleansing. Canada and France are also joining action on settlement imports. These countries created the pathway for the sanctions on illegal Israeli settlements, so all Australia had to do was flow in the slipstream.

The obvious question is: what actually changed in those last moments?

The government did cite all these concerns about enforceability and unintended consequences – Australian businesses losing export revenue – but, as we’ve explained before, this is a Labor government that is beholden to Zionists interests and donations to the Labor Party, and despite its rhetoric, will do nothing at all that acts against the state of Israel. Absolutely nothing. Even when it engages with unlawful activity and ethnic cleansing.

It will be interesting to see how Australia’s current bid for a seat on the UN Security Council proceeds, because this type of behaviour of walking away from a critical issue and leaving its partners in the lurch shows a complete lack of courage and exactly the type of behaviour that the United Nations doesn’t need at this point of history.

The migration numbers debacle continues

Australia’s political leaders have finally discovered who’s responsible for the housing crisis, overcrowded hospitals, congested roads and falling living standards. Migrants!

Labor’s decision to drive net overseas migration down to 225,000 by 2028 is being presented as careful calibrated management of population growth but, politically, it’s a lot more cynical than that: it flows directly into this idea that Australia’s problems can be solved by turning migration into race to the bottom between the government, the opposition, and One Nation.

This is how the game goes: the Coalition says Labor’s numbers are too high. Then One Nation then says the Coalition’s numbers are too high. And just like a silly little game in the school playground, the downward bidding continues until Australian politics becomes a ridiculous competition over who can produce the smallest number and most punitive system, without providing a reason why.

Conveniently disappearing from this argument are the governments that failed to build enough public housing, allowed property speculation to distort the housing market – thank you, John Howard! – underinvested in infrastructure and services, and constructed an economy increasingly dependent on insecure migrant labour.

It’s not like migrants sat down and created a committee to design this system: elected governments did, and it’s what they’ve done over the past 30 years or so. If there’s problems with the migration program, blame them, and not the migrant.

There are perfectly legitimate arguments for lowering migration numbers when housing and infrastructure can’t deal with rapid growth in population. But that’s very different from pretending migration has caused all the problems after the many decades of political failure.

The bigger political issue is that Labor’s accepting the central premise of the arguments presented by One Nation and the Coalition. And once migration is presented as the big scary villain, every rent increase, traffic jam and hospital queue becomes yet another argument for cutting it even further.

And Pauline Hanson doesn’t even have to open her mouth anymore – the Labor government and the Coalition are doing all the hard work for her, even though they collectively hold 136 seats in the Parliament of 150 – or 90 per cent of the seats – and One Nation holds… oh, just the two. It shows all the signs of a weak government spooked by the first sign of a mirage.

Education standards declining? Put a flag in the classroom

Australian schools have genuine problems: there are many teacher shortages, there’s declining educational outcomes, staff are exhausted, there are unequal resources across the country, and a public system that is increasingly expected to do more with less funding.

These are big concerns and we do need to work out the solutions. More funding for teacher education? More educational resources? Higher funding for public education, instead of funnelling most of it into private schools? No, forget all of that, the Liberal Party has discovered the solution: more flags in classrooms and more “Western values”.

The shadow education minister Julian Leeser has proposed a “root and branch” overhaul of education system – stronger discipline, reducing excessive screen use, improving civics education, the Australian flag flown in every school, and pushing that old conservative catch-all theme, Western civilisation. Setting aside the fact that no-one has really asked for any of this, all of these been bundled together with the familiar conservative argument that Australian education has somehow lost its way because students hear too much about Indigenous history, sustainability and Asia, and not enough about Britain’s contribution to Australian institutions. And, of course, it’s too woke.

It’s the steady old hand of politics and vote chasing, and will do nothing at all to improve educational standards in Australian schools, or provide teachers with more support. One Nation is increasingly competing for conservative voters, and the Liberal Party needs to show the world that it too can fight the culture wars over national identity, history and supposedly progressive institutions.

Sure, there’s nothing wrong with teaching students about democracy, Western political traditions, or British colonisation in 1788. But Australia’s history didn’t begin there: we need to know about the time before that, and the invasion and destruction of Indigenous people and culture from 1788 onwards. We need to understand all the values and communities that make up Australia, not some half-arsed garbage that a conservative politician wants to use in his battle against One Nation.

And putting up another Australian flag in the classroom or preaching jingoistic nonsense in our schools won’t teach a child to read or equip them to deal with an increasingly complex world in the future.

A $560 million infrastructure program that directed roughly three-quarters of its funding towards Labor-held electorates before the 2025 federal election has revived the politics of “sportsrorts”, while an invitation-only $6 million grant to Marrickville Golf Club in Anthony Albanese’s electorate raises further questions about how public money is allocated and who gets access to government funding programs.

The central issue is not simply whether these decisions technically comply with existing rules. There needs to be transparent selection processes, independent scrutiny and confidence that taxpayers’ money is being distributed according to public need rather than political advantage. Labor understood this principle perfectly well when it attacked the Morrison government over sportsrorts, commuter car parks and politically targeted grants. Is it now prepared to apply the same standards to itself?

This controversy also points to a wider problem in Australian politics: a political culture in which questionable behaviour can be defended because it has been declared or falls within parliamentary rules. Transport Minister Catherine King’s acceptance of a lifetime Qantas Platinum membership shows the weakness of that defence. Declaring a corporate benefit does not resolve the underlying question of whether ministers responsible for regulating powerful companies should be accepting valuable benefits from those companies in the first place – if the rules permit relationships that undermine public confidence in government, then following the rules is not enough, and the rules themselves need to change.

Changes to the National Disability Insurance Scheme from 1 October bring another familiar argument back into Australian politics: that social programs must continually demonstrate affordability, sustainability and value for money. When disability services, Medicare and other social programs are discussed, restraint and value for money always dominates the conversation. When defence spending is announced, those restraints seem to disappear completely.

The contrast is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. Another $2.4 billion has been committed to Australian air and missile defence, with tens of billions more expected over the coming decade, while the enormous long-term cost of AUKUS continues to expand Australia’s military commitments. Social expenditure is treated as a budget problem requiring restraint; military expenditure is always a place where money can always be easily found.

The big issue now is whether Labor is meeting the standards it demanded when it was in opposition, on pork-barrelling, political integrity, corporate influence, transparency and responsible government. If Labor condemns one set of political practices when the Coalition uses them, but finds reasons to defend similar practices once it controls the money and the machinery of government, the problem is bigger than hypocrisy. It suggests that changing governments has done much less to change the political system than voters were promised.

Kostakidis spent almost two years dealing with complaints and litigation arising from social-media activity concerning Gaza and Israel. The Federal Court proceedings ultimately ended without a judgment after the Zionist Federation of Australia discontinued its case, meaning there was no judicial finding that Kostakidis had breached any laws at all. Yet the length and cost of the process matter politically as much as the eventual legal outcome. When prominent journalists, academics, artists or activists see somebody subjected to prolonged litigation over their political expression, the consequences go far beyond the person involved, encouraging others to work out the potential cost before speaking publicly about Israel, Gaza, Zionism or Palestinian rights, and decide whether it’s worth it.

After bringing his outspoken support for Palestine to enormous audiences during Ed Sheeran’s US tour, Macklemore faced condemnation and pressure from pro-Israel organisations and influential figures within American business and philanthropy. He was subsequently removed from the remaining dates of the tour but whatever combination of commercial, contractual and political considerations resulted in that decision, the message received by other performers is also difficult to ignore: political advocacy will have consequences for access to stages, audiences and income.

The comparison becomes more bizarre when compared with the entertainment industry’s treatment of Kanye West, whose record includes outrageous antisemitic statements, praise for Adolf Hitler and the use of Nazi images. The inconsistencies surrounding who receives access to major venues – and under what circumstances free speech, contracts or commercial considerations are used – raise legitimate questions about where the Zionist red line is actually drawn.

In a functioning democracy – if that’s what Australia and the US really are – criticism of Israel must be treated like the criticism of any other state: judged according to what is actually said, rather than automatically conflated with hostility towards Jewish people. If journalists, musicians and public figures begin censoring themselves because they fear litigation, professional exclusion or reputational campaigns, the boundaries of political debate have already been narrowed – without parliament passing a single law.

Zionist groups aggressively deny suggestions that they exert excessive influence over politics, media and cultural institutions, yet when prominent people speak out against Israel or in support of Palestine, those same groups will cancel people, force them into long-winded litigations, damage their reputations and proceed to ruin them commercially. Not bad for a group who claim they have little power or influence in society, and are quick to make accusations of antisemitism – usually followed up with even more litigation – when this excessive influence is pointed out to them.

The experiences of former SBS journalist Mary Kostakidis in Australia and the musician Macklemore in the United States are the two most recent examples – different circumstances for sure, but both are examples of how quickly the criticisms of Israel will have severe ramifications for those making the claim.

For Kostakidis, it began with ‘liking’ two social media posts about Gaza and resulted in almost two years of legal proceedings against her. For Macklemore it began with the words of “free Palestine” inside a US stadium and ended up with his removal from the remainder of Ed Sheeran’s American tour.

Kostakidis had shared part of a speech by the late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in early 2024, adding her own condemnation of the Israeli government and describing its actions in Gaza as a genocide, confirming what most of the world seems to accept and can see with their own eyes.

Alon Cassuto, the chief executive of the Zionist Federation of Australia, alleged that these posts breached the Racial Discrimination Act as likely to “offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate” Australian Jews, and also claimed they were “antisemitic”, without ever explaining how this would be the case.

This dispute then progressed from the Australian Human Rights Commission into the Federal Court, and Kostakidis had spent almost two years preparing her defence before the proceedings were eventually dropped by the Zionist Federation, without any legal finding that she had breached that Act, or any other act, for that matter.

Cassuto went on to claim that he agreed to drop the case because Kostakidis had apologised for the hurt and harm (there’s that word again) experienced by Jewish and Israeli Australians and, as a result, his objectives had been “substantially achieved”. But the apology was made some time ago: why did the legal action continue for so long, if Cassuto claims his objectives had already been “substantially achieved”? How are his actions different to any other vexatious or frivolous litigant?

The issue in this case wasn’t so much about who won or lost – it was clear that Kostakidis was going to win the case – or the fact that the case was ultimately dropped, but how this power is used to silence the critics of Israel, and the more prominent the person is, the more likely this type of punishment is going to meted out. Kostakidis wasn’t accused by an individual with limited resources, but by the peak body of the Australian Zionist movement, representing more than 200 organisations and connected financially and institutionally to the international Zionist movement.

This is an important factor, because the claims about Zionist influence within society are always denied and often reduced to the question of whether somebody can prove the existence of centralised or coercive control. But that’s not how most political influence works. These types of networks don’t need somebody at command central issuing the instructions: all they require is the money, access, organisation, relationships and the motivations to mobilise those resources when an issue arises – which is what the Zionist movement has readily available to it – and can then force considerable damage for the person at the receiving end, in this case, Kostakidis.

Of course, a journalist can remain free to criticise Israel in whichever way they wish to – which Kostakidis has continued to do since the allegations against her were first made – but spending almost two years defending that criticism through expensive proceedings sends a message that goes far beyond that one journalist, especially when other writers, broadcasters and academics can see the exact personal cost for themselves.

The Macklemore controversy in the US is an even clearer example of this, because the transition from political commentary made on a stage, to the material and severe consequences for him, happened within a matter of days.

Macklemore has been speaking publicly about Palestine for several years, but his comments during two appearances supporting Sheeran in New Jersey last week suddenly reached an audience on a far greater scale, and that’s the issue for the Zionist movement. Macklemore condemned Israel’s actions in Gaza, displayed images of Palestinian destruction and told this massive audience that he wanted people in Gaza and the occupied West Bank to hear two words: “Free Palestine”.

He also addressed Jewish members of the audience directly, making clear that his criticism is directed at the state of Israel for its actions of apartheid and genocide inflicted upon the people of Palestine, and not a criticism of Jewish people. But providing these explanations didn’t stop the mobilisation of an immediate campaign from Zionist billionaires against him. Zionists destroyed the life and career of Michael Jackson, and it’s obvious they’re prepared to do it again to any performer who speaks up in support of Palestine.

The Israeli American Council called for Macklemore to be removed from Sheeran’s tour, the Stop Antisemitism group attacked his performance, and Robert Kraft, the billionaire owner of the New England Patriots and a major stadium near Boston, confirmed that he wouldn’t allow Macklemore to perform there, referring to his recent appearances and a broader history of commentary that Kraft considered offensive to the Jewish community.

And the next steps showed exactly how this power and influence works, without anyone needing the authority of government to support them. Kraft quickly rallied other stadium owners and told the tour promoter they wouldn’t accept Macklemore on the bill, putting in jeopardy concerts that has already sold hundreds of thousands of tickets. Sheeran – who, along with Pink, has lost so much credibility over this issue – claimed that “he doesn’t take sides” in politics (even though he’s strongly supported the Ukraine resistance against Russian invasion), and agreed to drop Macklemore from the rest of the tour.

Thanks to the actions of Kraft and Sheeran, the person who wants to support a free Palestine and speaking out against a genocide has lost access to the platforms from which he was speaking on. And this is how the supporters of Zionism act to shut down criticisms of Israel and the supporters of Palestine.

There’s also a clear contradiction here as well. One of the venues that has banned Macklemore – the Raymond James Stadium in Tampa – hosted Kanye West and his 150,000 fans earlier this year, despite his extensive history of explicitly antisemitic statements, including support for Adolf Hitler, denying the Holocaust, and selling T-shirts emblazoned with swastikas. At the time, the owners of the stadium resisted the criticism of West’s appearance and claimed they were defending the principle of “free speech” and were legally and contractually tied to hosting the event.

So, what’s the difference between West and Macklemore? Of course, it’s all about Palestine.

West has refused to support Palestine, or even talk about it, stating that he was “scared to talk up against the Zionists again” for fear of having his tours and concerts cancelled. We can see that Zionists will accept Holocaust denial, swastikas, support for Hitler – under the banner of free speech and assorted legalities – but all of that is thrown out the window when Palestine is mentioned, or when Israel is called out for its clear acts of genocide and apartheid. That’s the difference.

Although these incidents have occurred in different countries and are different types of incidents, when taken together, Kostakidis and Macklemore show a far more important issue than the endless argument over whether Zionist organisations possess “control”, which, of course, they do.

Real political power is usually more oblique and a lot more sophisticated. It exists when Zionist billionaires and organisations can mobilise resources against whoever they see as their opponent, gain the attention of decision-makers, create reputational damage, initiate expensive legal processes or create the commercial consequences that are powerful enough to send a message to everyone else who dares to speak out. It’s exactly what happens in Australia, and in the US.

The result of this is that a news article that’s scathing of Israel and supportive of Palestine will be softened up before publication or even removed; the academic who thinks twice before claiming Israel has committed genocide; the musician who decides that Palestine is not worth jeopardising a tour – just like Sheeran; a broadcaster who decides avoiding the subject altogether will create fewer problems for them; or the politician who understands that speaking forcefully about Israel will create a backlash against them or their family, that very few other foreign-policy areas seem to produce.

Kostakidis had her legal battle end without a finding against her, while Macklemore will always be capable of performing elsewhere and continuing to advocate for Palestine. But where is he going to perform?

This is how the Zionists and pro-Israel supporters operate and use their power so ruthlessly to achieve their political goals. In Australia, it was a coordinated and vexatious legal process against a well-known journalist; in the US, it was the commercial pressure and heavy-handed tactic – drop this guy, or else – but the message received by everyone else is pretty much the same: you’ll always be free to speak about Israel and Palestine, but if you do, there are severe consequences for doing so.

It’s a message Sheeran has understood very clearly, even if he has lost all his credibility in the process. It’s something for him to consider when he performs Thinking Out Loud at his next American appearance.

The Albanese government is coming across that uncomfortable rule of politics: a rort doesn’t become acceptable and respectable, just because it’s your side that’s doing it. The $560 million Major and Local Community Infrastructure program is becoming a serious integrity problem, with analysis showing around three-quarters of its funding flowing to electorates held by Labor before the 2025 election, while 45 electorates received nothing at all.

The $6 million promised to Marrickville Golf Club makes the optics of this program considerably worse. The club is in Anthony Albanese’s electorate of Grayndler and had granted the prime minister an honorary membership that he failed to declare. Albanese says he doesn’t play golf, but that’s not the point. The question isn’t whether the prime minister owns a set of nine-irons; it’s why an invitation-only grants process was distributing millions of public dollars to politically advantageous projects with limited competition and scrutiny.

The Labor Party spent years and year – quite rightly – attacking the Morrison government’s “sports rorts” program administered by Senator Bridget McKenzie and promised to end the politics of pork-barrelling. Yet, here it is several years later, implementing the same scandalous and partisan programs it once accused the Liberal Party of.

The Australian Greens are pushing for a parliamentary inquiry in this issue – if the grants were allocated entirely on merit, the government needs to demonstrate this. Otherwise, voters can reasonably conclude that pork-barrelling hasn’t disappeared from within the federal government, it has only changed from one side of politics, to the other.

Pressure on Labor for real action on Palestine and Israel

Australia’s recognition of Palestine continues to be a diplomatic pantomime, with the government actively undermining the Palestinian state that it claims to recognise as an independent nation.

The foreign minister Penny Wong says further targeted measures against illegal settlements and settler violence are being considered, yet the government remains reluctant to embrace restrictions on trade associated with those settlements. The contradiction is becoming impossible to hide from: if the settlements are illegal – as stated by the government on many occasions – and Palestinian sovereignty is genuine, why should economic relations connected to that illegality continue?

Senator David Pocock is urging the government implement “red lines” legislation to ban Australian goods from being used by the Israeli military – it makes sense if Australia claims to uphold its international human rights obligations, especially on a day when Israel has killed another 10 Palestinians near Khan Younis, including a pregnant women. So much for Israel’s so-called “cease fire” agreement.

Meanwhile, the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion is working towards the release of its December report, in the midst of an argument that goes far beyond definitions of antisemitism. The critical question for the Commission is where legitimate action against genuine anti-Jewish hatred ends and restrictions on anti-Zionism, Palestine advocacy and criticism of Israel begin. These are important distinctions and ones that need to be clearly separated.

Taken together, these debates expose the central dilemma for the Labor government: it wants recognition of Palestine without a disruption to its relationship and military trade with Israel, and wants to have a strong opposition to antisemitism without appearing to suppress political dissent. But, so far, it’s taken the more unscrupulous path, one that will end up pleasing no one at all – except Zionist interests, of course – primarily because it failed the basic test on supporting human rights for Palestinian people, when they have been clearly breached by Israel.

One Nation shows who they really are

The most significant story on the Australian conservative right is no longer One Nation’s rise during this year, but the political pull it’s exerting over the Liberal and National parties. Pauline Hanson doesn’t need to become prime minister to transform Australian politics – she’s in the wrong chamber of parliament for a start – but all she needs to do is for the Coalition to keep adopting the territory on which she wants politics fought.

And it’s a spectacle that’s becoming increasingly chaotic. Andrew Hastie has called Hanson and Barnaby Joyce “lying cowards” after being branded a “traitor” in a juvenile cartoon – best described as Politics for Two-Year Olds – while Hanson’s comments about Anthony Albanese’s late mother and public housing show the mindset and the inner thoughts of this grotesque woman.

Yet the Coalition’s response to Hansonism remains strategically confused. Migration, tobacco excise, government spending and the familiar culture-war complaints all offer opportunities to chase those voters who are drifting off towards One Nation. But every time Angus Taylor shifts in Hanson’s direction, he reinforces the argument that she identified the real issues first. And why vote for the imitation when the original is available?

The alternative – confronting Hanson front on and calling out this fool whenever possible – carries its own electoral risks of creating sympathy, irrespective of how much bile she sends out the other way. And that’s always going the trap. Of course, there’s also many people who are supporting One Nation because they’re being totally turned off with both Labor and the Coalition, and want to send a message that the business-as-usual politics that’s presented by mainstream politics isn’t enough anymore.

But the surprise will arrive when they realise that while One Nation wants to rattle the cage, it’s not there to change the system: under One Nation, there’ll be more neoliberalism, not less; more control by corporations; more support for big business and less support for workers; more fascism, not less. And definitely less public housing.

Cost of living, housing and the opinion polls

Behind almost every political argument sits the same old reality: too many Australians feel they are working harder simply to stand still and, in many cases, going backwards. Housing, mortgages, rents, energy and groceries are consuming household incomes, and voters are becoming increasingly unimpressed by assurances that the economic fundamentals are sound and everything is going to be alright.

The political consequences for Labor are becoming – to borrow a few phrases from Penny Wong – very concerning.

In the latest opinion polls, Resolve has Labor on 28 per cent of the primary vote, with One Nation just behind on 27 per cent, while confidence in the government’s economic management has deteriorated. Around 74 per cent of people are concerned about federal debt and 48 per cent want spending cut. Whatever economists and the Reserve Bank board might say about the complexities, voters are delivering a far simpler message: the economy isn’t working in their favour.

That frustration within the electorate creates the perfect conditions for populist economics. One Nation’s proposal to let workers divert compulsory superannuation into mortgage repayments, rent or current income is seductive: it’s easier to forget about that retirement in 30 years’ time when the electricity bill is due this Friday. But raiding future retirement savings to compensate for today’s unaffordable housing just transfers the failures of the economy from one decade to another.

Labor’s problem is that structural reform takes time, while the patience within the electorate is quickly evaporating right now. But this is where that cliché of the political narrative comes into play: if the electorate can see that while the circumstances are not favourable right now, and they develop an understanding that there is the template for creating better circumstances for the future, they will reward the government.

But this is a government that’s been in office for four years, and it’s had enough time to create the narrative – and the policies to support this – but hasn’t done enough in these areas. A weak Housing Australia Future Fund just isn’t really going to solve anything. As a result, economic insecurity is becoming political insecurity, and One Nation is keen to exploit this gap.

NDIS cuts are about to become real

Nothing reveals a government’s priorities quite like the things it decides Australia can afford, and those that it cannot. From 1 October, the harsh NDIS reforms will become real for many participants, with support budgets changing – more than likely, decreasing – as their plans are reassessed.

Labor insists that the expenditure growth needs to be controlled to preserve the long-term viability of the NDIS. Of course, that’s a reasonable objective, but “sustainability” becomes considerably less abstract when an individual with a disability loses the financial support that their lives actually rely on.

And at exactly the same time these cutbacks are coming in, another $2.4 billion has been found for air and missile defence, contributing to the $30 billion planned for an integrated system over the next decade.

Add the ridiculous AUKUS deal and Australia’s broader military expansion, and suddenly the language of budget restraint that’s applied to the NDIS, becomes remarkably flexible when it applies to military spending.

Apparently, social programs of any nature must continually demonstrate their affordability, eliminate waste and justify individual expenditure, because it always has to represent value for money for the taxpayer, while defence projects involving astronomical amounts of public funds are unavoidable strategic necessities that need to be paid to support the industrial military complexes in the submarines dock of the US and UK.

The involvement of Lockheed Martin Australia in this military spending also raises another obvious question: as defence spending increases at this astronomical rate and without limits, how much public money will ultimately become revenue for multinational weapons manufacturers?

Governments will always say that budgets involve the difficult choices. But it seems that there are certain areas that are far easier to cut, especially when it comes to the most vulnerable people in society.

Recognition was supposed to support Palestinian sovereignty, self-determination and the right of Palestinians to remain on their land. Yet Australia has imposed no meaningful sanctions on Israel, introduced no restrictions on trade with illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, and made no change to the military relationships that help sustain Israel’s occupation.

Instead, Australia remains embedded in the international F-35 production and support network. Senate estimates have revealed dozens of deliveries of Australian-made F-35 parts to Israel since October 2023, exposing the weakness of Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s argument that supplying weapons components is somehow different from supplying weapons.

The unresolved killing of Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom is also another contradiction. Frankcom was killed by the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza in 2024, yet her death has produced few lasting diplomatic consequences. Australia has recognised the Palestinian state in which she was working, but remains reluctant to confront the occupying power responsible for killing her.

Another contradiction: West Bank. Australia accepts that Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory are illegal under international law, yet continues to allow trade connected with those settlements. If the settlements are illegal, why should the economic activity sustaining them be treated as legitimate?

Meanwhile, far-right Israeli minister Itamar Ben-Gvir is promoting the supposedly “voluntary” evacuation of Palestinians from Gaza. But removing a population from its homeland under conditions of military destruction, deprivation and coercion is not voluntary migration. It’s a forced displacement – and ethnic cleansing.

The double standard is just as visible at home. Since the Bondi attack, the Australian government has committed hundreds of millions of dollars to antisemitism, education and social-cohesion programs. At the same time, Palestinian communities and critics of Israel face political marginalisation, while proposals associated with antisemitism envoy Jillian Segal threaten to extend their ideological oversight across universities, cultural institutions and public broadcasters such as the ABC and SBS.

This is a a test of Australia’s democracy, political independence and the Albanese government’s willingness to resist powerful vested interests. With public opinion on Israel shifting so decisively, unconditional political support for the Israeli state may also carry growing electoral consequences.

Recognition of Palestine was still an important step for Australia to take last year, helping to break the inertia on Middle East/West Asia policy, and finally joining the overwhelming majority of United Nations members that recognise Palestinian statehood. But recognition should have been the beginning of a new policy, not the end of it.

Taylor’s proposals to criminalise the burning of the Australian flag and legislate January 26 permanently as Australia Day reveal the familiar petty tactics of conservative populism: identify an offence, amplify the outrage and promise the punishment. It’s politics designed to provoke an emotional response rather than improve people’s lives. While Australians struggle with housing affordability, stagnant wages, healthcare pressures and widening inequality, the Liberal Party is offering flag laws, patriotic hand-on-heart symbolism and another argument about the date of Australia Day. Are you bored yet?

The Coalition has also reopened its campaign against Respectful Relationships education in schools. Nationals leader Matt Canavan has attacked programs teaching consent, equality, mutual respect and non-violent relationships as “woke” indoctrination that makes boys and men feel inferior. It is another calculated tactic where efforts to reduce domestic violence, sexual violence and harassment are repackaged as attacks on men. The people experiencing violence disappear from the discussion, while those being asked to examine harmful behaviour are presented as the real victims.

This is not simply a collection of disconnected conservative talking points – it’s a political strategy based on resentment, division and the constant manufacture of cultural enemies. But it also exposes the Coalition’s fundamental weakness: it no longer seems confident that it can develop a distinctive economic or social program capable of winning broad public support.

The latest Essential polling places Labor and the Coalition level on 26 per cent of the primary vote, with One Nation close behind on 23 per cent and Anthony Albanese recording his lowest approval rating as prime minister. Labor’s weakness should provide the Liberal Party with an opportunity to establish its own agenda. Instead, the Coalition keeps validating Pauline Hanson’s. History suggests that “me-too” politics rarely rewards the imitator and voters attracted to One Nation’s nationalism and grievance politics will always vote for the original, while moderate voters are pushed further away from the Coalition.

Nowhere is this race to the fringe more obvious – or more dangerous – than tobacco policy. One Nation proposed cutting tobacco excise by 75 per cent, only for the Liberal Party to go further and propose an 80 per cent reduction. Taylor claims cheaper legal cigarettes would undermine the illicit tobacco market, but organised crime can also cut prices, accept smaller margins and continue operating. What is certain is that dramatically cheaper cigarettes will benefit Big Tobacco, increase access to nicotine and risk creating a new generation of smokers – and a new generation of cancer patients.

It’s coming up to a year since Australia recognised an independent and sovereign Palestine, ostensibly to “support the aspirations of the Palestinian people”, and “advance prospects for peace and stability in the region”. Of course, this was a momentous decision, and signalled a shift in diplomatic thinking but what, if anything, has changed?

It didn’t change Australia’s relationship with Israel – not one bit – and this is from a Labor government which continues to facilitate the illegal occupation, violent colonisation and settlement of the West Bank, where the military partnerships with Israel have actually become stronger, humanitarian access to Gaza is still blocked, and no action has been taken to force the Netanyahu government to retreat.

Almost a year after recognition, the disconnect between the symbolic and the substantive is already proving to be very embarrassing for this Australian government.

Still no justice for Zomi Frankcom

Nothing highlights this more than the case of Zomi Frankcom. As we’ve reported before, her killing and those of her six colleagues were committed with impunity, despite Israel’s initial admission that the incident occurred while the aid workers were in an official convoy under the protection of the IDF.

Their convoy was repeatedly targeted by Israeli drones while attempting to transfer from one vehicle to another, and Israel’s military responded by suspending two officers and taking disciplinary action against others. But Israel’s military advocate general then ruled in August 2026 that there wouldn’t be any criminal prosecution and this is where the matter would end.

The Australian government responded by saying that was “far too lenient”, with Wong and Albanese taking umbrage at the lack of accountability, but once again Australia’s diplomatic protests failed to produce results, and they always will fail to produce results until the government decides to support these words of condemnation, with meaningful action against Israel.

The issue was then further exacerbated during the week when former IDF reservist Nochi Mendel – the one who gave the order to strike Frankcom’s convoy – told the ABC that he had no regrets and would make the same decision again if he had the chance. He also accused Frankcom and her colleagues of being Hamas agents, which was the purported reason for the attack, and, of course, there’s no evidence to support this claim.

And people such as Mendel are so vile, that they can’t even be bothered to go to the effort of public relations and attempting to hide their offensive actions and attitudes. They’re showing us exactly who they are, yet the Australian government continues to accept these standards.

The recognition of Palestine didn’t produce an independent Australian inquiry into the killing of Zomi Frankcom. It didn’t result in targeted sanctions against Israel, nor did it result in the expulsion of its ambassador or a reciprocal recall of the Israeli ambassador to Australia. And above all, it hasn’t affected Australia’s broader strategic and military relationship with Israel: in fact, it seems to have strengthened it.

Military assistance and illegal settlements

While officially denying direct military assistance to Israel, Australia’s government position hides a far more complicated reality.

Australia is currently in possession of an unusually high number of F-35s planes, when compared to other countries in its region, and Israel has unrestricted access to the joint production and support network for these aircraft. Reports tabled during Senate estimates named at least 68 deliveries of F-35 parts to Israel from Australia between October 2023 and September 2025, and there’s no doubt that there would have been many more over the past year.

Despite repeated calls for them to do so, the Australian government has stopped well short of officially restricting this trade, arguing that these are military parts, not armaments. But this totally misses the point. If Australia manufactures components for F-35 jets that are used by Israel to strike Gaza and kill civilians, how can this be described as anything but military support? The government’s position is also evasive when it comes to Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank, which of course, is in the heart of the Palestine that Australia recognised last year as an “independent and sovereign” nation.

After Britain announced its intentions to impose direct trade restrictions on Israel, including bans on the import of goods and services from illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, former Labor minister Ed Husic called on Australia to follow suit.

Minister Wong then responded by announcing that Australia is “not at this time pursuing a blanket-style import ban” on these illegal settlements, claiming that would hurt Australian business interests (somehow), but suggested that she would take further steps to restrict the expansion of settlements and the violence directed against Palestinians, which we can assume would be more words of outrage.

If Australia regards illegal Israeli settlements as inherently unlawful, why should trade with them not also be banned? By continuing to allow imports from these settlements, Australia accepts Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and facilitates this through trade and technology. If most other people can recognise this contradiction, why not Wong?

It’s a policy of insufficient consequences, and it has damaging implications for Australia’s diplomatic and moral credibility, especially when the minister speaks so easily from both sides of the mouth. And once again, the question has to be asked: how have the minister’s actions changed in the year since Palestine was recognised as an independent state?

“Voluntary” exodus and forced displacement

Israel’s latest proposals for Gaza provide us with a further insight into why its military and political leaders believe they are entitled to treat Palestinians in this horrendous way.

These draconian measures – which most of the world would consider to be ethnic cleansing and further evidence of Israeli war crimes – have been pushed by far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has proposed a “voluntary” evacuation of Gaza, beginning with 250,000 Palestinians in the first year and eventually removing the entire Palestinian population, not even hiding these fascist Zionist intentions.

And it’s not just Ben-Gvir: with a general election just around the corner, many other Israeli MPs and officials have advocated the forced removal of Palestinians from Gaza, actions which violate a range of international laws.

The logical response to such policies would be for Australia to take stronger diplomatic and economic action. Instead, Australia finds itself in the same position as before: recognising the right of Palestinians to self-determination while supporting policies that facilitate the ethnically cleansing of Gaza. How does that equate to “support the aspirations of the Palestinian people”? Clearly, it doesn’t.

Antisemitism, anti-Zionism, and criticism

While the government’s attitude towards Palestine has been duplicitous and reprehensible, there have been no such problems when it comes to supporting the state of Israel and Zionist interests within Australia. Whatever is asked for from Australia, the government will give, and there’s certainly been no shortage on this.

The Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, has an annual operating budget of $131.1 million and over the next four years, the government will provide $604 million as part of the “Bondi response” package of ongoing safety, education, and counter-terrorism measures, and it’s safe to say that most of this “education” component will be used to gaslight the public about the virtues of the state of Israel, produce even more pro-Zionist propaganda and close down any debate of the perspectives that might be contrary to this.

Already, there have been demands from pro-Israel and Zionist groups to extend the position of the Special Envoy for Antisemitism, Jillian Segal, past the July 2027 expiry date of her tenure – and we assume that it would be for more time to bed down the contentious International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism – which threatens to conflate antisemitism with anti-Zionism – implement her recommendations of conditional university funding, cultural spending reviews and monitor ABC/SBS broadcasts, with the grand aim of eliminating the legitimate criticism of Israel.

At the time, Albanese did claim that the recognition of Palestine was to “advance prospects for peace and stability in the region”, which would then further the prospects for domestic stability and result in equal treatment for all communities within Australia, but so far, he’s provided everything that’s been asked for by pro-Israel and Zionist groups in Australia – whether it be reasonable or not – but for the Palestinian community, it’s been the total opposite.

Since 2023, Australia has rejected 7,111 visa applications to Palestinians but only rejected 235 Israeli applications during the same time. Australia created a special three-year humanitarian visa for thousands of Ukranians following the invasion by Russia in 2022, but no such program was created for Palestinian refugees, and the very few who managed to arrive in Australia had to seek accommodation, food, transport and legal support through mosques, charities and community organisations.

Family reunifications for Palestinians were made exceptionally difficult, were subject to intense security and character checks, and ad hoc cancellations of visas were made on spurious grounds, usually at the last minute. And, suffice to say, none of the green light processes that were applied to the 39 former IDF soldiers which allowed them to run in the Sydney Marathon a few weekends ago, have been applied to Palestinians.

The recognition of an independent state must have meaning

Australia’s recognition of Palestine wasn’t totally meaningless. We can see now that it hasn’t changed anything at all, but at least it broke the policy inertia that has afflicted Australia for many decades, and sent a small signal to the international community that Australia was willing to take some kind of principled stand on an issue of global strategic importance, even if it did only move the dial by a few millimetres and is barely perceptible.

But if recognition doesn’t serve to force Australia’s policy hand on sanctions, trade with illegal and violent settlements and colonisation, or affect the military trade of F-35 parts that are being used to kill Palestinian civilians, then it will ultimately amount to nothing more than a symbolic gesture that created an impression that something meaningful was being done for a people that have suffered for far too long at the hands of a brutal Israeli government when, in fact, it was just going to be more of the same and nothing much has changed at all.

We know that it’s no longer a question of whether Albanese and Wong will take action against Israel – they simply won’t, for as long as the pro-Israel and Zionist groups funnel massive donations into the coffers of the Labor Party – but how long can they kid themselves that Israel is acting in Australia’s best interests? And how long will they continue to accept Israel as a trusted ally, while the illegal occupation, ethnic cleansing and the murder of Palestinian people continues?

Recognition should mean accepting the existence of Palestine – what else does it mean – that its people are entitled to their own country, and that those rights should be delivered without exception or qualification. Like an insecure child, Israel always asks others to confirm that question of whether it has the right to exist but it never bothers to consider whether Palestine also has that right, even though 157 of the 193 UN member states agree that yes; Palestine does have a right to exist.

Australia is one of those 157 countries, but in our case, it’s all lip service and unprincipled: the recognition of Palestine has been written down on an official piece of paper held somewhere in Canberra, but the recognition won’t mean anything at all until the government starts to match its rhetoric with action. Unfortunately, we may be waiting for that moment for some time to come.

Marching to the beat of One Nation’s drum

One Nation might be slipping in its opinion poll numbers – now that more people are looking at who they are and what they represent – but it’s still setting the agenda for conservative politics. Angus Taylor’s answer isn’t to differentiate the Liberal Party from Pauline Hanson, but to chase her further into the deep rabbit hole of the culture wars.

Taylor’s latest proposal to criminalise the burning and desecration of the Australian flag and entrench 26 January as “Australia Day” is pure political theatre and a classic conservative diversionary tactic: identify an offence according to the laws of culture war – real or imagined, it doesn’t really matter – then exaggerate the importance of the issue, and promise severe punishment for the culprits. It’s not exactly the tail wagging the dog, but it’s along the lines of the dog chasing a car and not knowing what to do with the car once it gets there.

And of course, it does nothing to address housing issues, wages, healthcare or inequality, but it does provides a cheap and easy performance art piece of hand-on-heart patriotism.

The same approach with the Coalition attacks on the Respectful Relationships education package, this time it’s coming from National Party leader Matt Canavan. These programs are intended to support education on consent, equality and non-violent relationships – commendable objectives, one would think – but are, according to Canavan, “woke” indoctrination that supposedly makes boys and men feel inferior. Rather than confronting the attitudes that contribute to harassment and gender-based violence, critics like Canavan manufacture these political-correctness-gone-mad grievances among men and then offer themselves as its political defenders of the right-wing faith. They’re insufferable.

In the most recent opinion polls – from Essential – Labor and the Coalition are now level on 26 per cent of the primary vote, with One Nation at 23 per cent, and Anthony Albanese recording his lowest approval rating ever as prime minister. This might give some encouragement for the Liberal Party but it seems that they just can’t help themselves: they keep chasing the agenda of One Nation but every time they do this, it sends the message out to the electorate that maybe One Nation was right all along.

And this doesn’t really ward off or defeat One Nation, it just validates it and shows that it’s becoming more difficult to discern the differences between them and the Coalition.

Lighting up for big tobacco

And if the Coalition is marching to the beat of One Nation, why stop at criminalising the burning of the Australian flag, when there are other things to burn, such as cigarettes?

The Coalition is promising to cut tobacco excise by 80 per cent – outbidding One Nation’s proposal to cut it by 75 per cent – and this is being sold as a way of targeting organised crime. Angus Taylor’s argument is that cheaper legal cigarettes will destroy the illicit cigarette trade, even though there’s no strong evidence to support this claim, not that this has ever been a problem for the Liberal Party.

The black market is in any sector is going to be a problem but the Coalition’s proposal looks very similar to the policy tobacco companies have been after for decades: cheaper cigarettes, a weaker price deterrent and a brand new market for nicotine. And if this proposal was ever implemented, it would be a nice return on investment the tobacco industry provides to the National Party – $225,500 in the most recent political donations year.

Cutting this excise would not remove the enormous profit margins available to criminal suppliers, who can then go on to lower their prices as well. And it would also make legal tobacco far more profitable and undermine Australia’s most successful public health policy ever. When Australia began its campaign to reduce smoking levels in 1976, the daily smoking rate among people aged over 16 was 38 per cent: that level today is around 6 per cent. It’s an amazing statistic that has prevented 500,000 premature deaths, and has saved billions of dollars over the past 50 years in societal, health and economic costs associated with tobacco. Even today, with low rates of smoking, the costs are estimated to be $155 billion per year and if these measures had not been introduced in 1976, that cost would be close to a trillion dollars each year.

Under Taylor’s proposal, these costs would rise and filter through to the health care system, while the tobacco companies – of course – would bank the immediate profits. After years of being treated as a discredited industry – which is fully deserved – big tobacco has returned to Canberra as a respectable policy adviser. This is exactly how this insidious corporate influence works: exploit a crisis, redefine the problem and offer a supposedly “obvious” solution that, by the way, just happens to improve the profits for the industry.

What was the recognition of Palestine all about?

Palestine is likely to return to Question Time as the pressure builds on Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Prime Minister Albanese over Australia’s response to Israel’s conduct in Gaza, and the totally unresolved issue of the attack that killed Zomi Frankcom in 2024.

Israel keeps rubbing the dirt – and the genocide – in Australia’s face, and the federal government keeps asking for more. This time, it was former Israel Defense Forces reserve colonel Nochi Mendel said he would do “exactly the same thing” again and that Frankcom and her World Central Kitchen colleagues were “not innocent”.

This is the commentary of an extremist and rogue state – as it has been since 1948 – and Wong and the rest of the federal Cabinet just sit there and take it all in, sending meaningless words of “outrage” and swatting away calls for stronger action against Israel. And as time goes by, we can see that Australia’s recognition of Palestinian statehood in September 2025 is a meaningless as it ever was.

Sure, it was symbolically important, but it was also politically convenient symbolism: in cases like this, it’s Palestine that’s treated like the pariah state – even though it has been recognised by Australia – when all the actions should be against the state of Israel.

Australia’s recognition of Palestine hasn’t resolved any of the questions about sanctions against Israel, the military exports of F-35 parts, humanitarian assistance and support for Gaza, or Australia’s relationship with the Netanyahu government.

Nor has it stopped the destruction and dispossession of Palestinian communities, or stopped the proposal by senior Israeli politicians for the supposedly “voluntary emigration” of Gazans, which should be recognised for what it is: ethnic cleansing of a population whose homes and society have already been devastated, and clearly in contravention of international law and any semblance of humanity.

These are the realities and truths that the Australian government will need to face up to: recognition means something, or it means nothing at all. And at the moment, it’s clear that Palestine means nothing at all to the likes of Wong and Albanese.

The migration blame game

Migration continues to be the convenient explanation for almost every Australian policy failure: if there’s unaffordable housing, congested roads, overcrowded hospitals, stagnant wages or deteriorating public services, it’s never the fault of poor policy development and implementation by government, blame the migrant: it’s all their fault. Always.

Labor, the Coalition and One Nation are now in this undignified competition to promise lower migration numbers – and that’s understandable: most of these MPs are undignified people – while being vague about which migrants could be excluded and how the economic consequences of lower numbers would be managed.

It’s a debate that always confuses permanent migration, temporary visas and net overseas migration – and all rolled into a massive number that is always misused and misquoted, provides a very alarming news headline, and create the impression that it’s a simple as the government turning a tap off, and with no flow-on effects.

Migration does increase demand for housing and infrastructure, there’s no denying that. But migrants aren’t the ones who decide policy: they’re not the ones who privatised essential services, suppressed or removed public investment, turn housing into a speculative asset, or allow employers to exploit insecure temporary labour. These are political choices made by successive neoliberalist governments over many decades, and there are very few solutions that are on the table.

The Labor Party is exposed on this issue because it allowed migration to rise without providing a serious plan for the housing and services that are needed to support such a rise, preferring to boost housing through incrementalist policies and housing development funded through a close-to-useless Housing Australia Future Fund.

The Coalition attacks migration numbers even though they were largely responsible for creating the economic model that is highly dependent on higher levels of migration. One Nation offers dramatic reductions in numbers without explaining the effect that these reductions would have on universities, aged care, agriculture, construction and government revenue.

It’s united approach and an auction through to the bottom of the pile which has one sole purpose: it creates public anger towards migrants and deflects from the governments and corporations that designed the system in the first place.

Scientists are still examining the sequence of events, but the danger is very clear. Rising temperatures are melting glaciers, degrading permafrost and destabilising the frozen ground that helps hold Himalayan slopes together. Climate change does not need to be the sole cause of every avalanche or flood to make these disasters more frequent, more destructive and more difficult to predict.

The political response is painfully familiar. Prime Minister Albanese has concentrated on condolences, rescue efforts and support for affected Australian families – which, of course, he should do – while resisting the calls to discuss the climate change issues surrounding the disaster. And it’s the formula used by Scott Morrison and other political leaders after floods and bushfires: now is not the time to discuss climate change.

But if climate change cannot be discussed when the risks are so visible, when exactly is the right time?

Nepal contributes only a tiny fraction of global greenhouse-gas emissions, yet it carries an extraordinary share of the consequences created by the industrial development and fossil-fuel consumption of wealthier nations. This is climate injustice in its starkest form: those least responsible are often the first to lose their homes, livelihoods and lives.

The rapidly changing Himalayan environment is also a global security issue. The region contains the largest concentration of frozen water outside the polar zones and supports river systems upon which almost two billion people depend upon. Accelerating glacial loss threatens not only mountain communities but water supplies, food production, energy infrastructure, migration patterns and political stability across a vast part of Asia.

For Australia, the disaster exposes a fundamental contradiction. The Albanese government wants to present Australia as a renewable-energy superpower and an indispensable security partner to Pacific nations, even as it continues approving new coal and gas projects and expanding fossil-fuel exports. Pacific leaders have repeatedly identified climate change as their greatest security threat. Australia will therefore be judged less by its speeches at the Pacific Islands Forum than by the emissions and fossil-fuel developments it enables at home.

The government’s progress also remains far behind the scale of its promises. Australia’s emissions in the year to March 2026 were only 25 per cent below 2005 levels, leaving a substantial distance to travel before reaching Labor’s legislated target of a 43 per cent reduction by 2030. At the same time, the proposed expansion of energy-intensive AI data centres will add further pressure to an electricity system already struggling through a difficult renewable-energy transition.

The question is no longer whether governments understand the danger. It is why, despite everything they know, they continue protecting the economic interests that are making that danger worse.

Western Australia’s economy is strong, and the state government has delivered visible infrastructure over nearly a decade in office, but none of that mattered in Secret Harbour. Voters are increasingly judging governments through the lens of their own household pressures: unaffordable housing, high rents, stagnant wages and public services that feel stretched thin. A win for One Nation isn’t necessarily an endorsement of One Nation’s policy platform, which remains thin and would likely unravel under scrutiny. It’s better understood as a protest against establishment politics as usual, and a signal that populist momentum, previously confined to the Coalition side of politics, has now crossed over to claim a seat from Labor for the first time in Western Australia.

Labor risks legitimising One Nation’s rhetoric by chasing its agenda on immigration and other issues, and they’re displaying the disconnect between government communication efforts and the seriousness of the cost-of-living crisis.

Despite this victory by One Nation, there needs to be some perspective. One Nation holds just one seat in a 59-seat WA parliament, and byelections are a low-stakes way for voters to register a protest without changing a government. But the pattern is becoming harder to dismiss: wins in South Australia, the seat of Farrer taken from the Liberal Party, and now Secret Harbour taken from Labor suggest opinion polling is starting to translate into real electoral results.

With the next state election in 2029 and the next federal election in 2028, Labor has time to change course – but only if it treats economic dissatisfaction as the core problem, rather than treating Pauline Hanson as the problem itself.

The weekend saw something disturbing on the streets of Sydney, when 39 Israeli soldiers and military veterans – many of whom had been involved in the military campaigns in Gaza, West Bank and Lebanon – were granted visas to enter Australia and allowed to run in the Sydney Marathon.

The Australian Centre for International Justice had provided information to the federal government indicating that some members of this group may have been involved in war crimes, crimes against humanity, torture and genocide, and argued that instead of granting them visas, these people should have been referred to the Australian Federal Police. Yet the Department of Home Affairs ignored this information and proceeded to grant visas to the group, a decision that was widely criticised by many people within the Australian community.

There were also reports that Roy Oryon, a former lieutenant in the infamous Golani Brigade, was a member of this group, which had been involved in an incident where 15 paramedics and rescue workers were deliberately targeted and killed in Gaza last year, as well as involvement in many other military operations since October 2023.

The timing of this event made the government’s lack of concern even more galling because, only eleven days before the marathon, Israel Defense Forces announced that no-one was going to be charged over the April 2024 attack that killed Zomi Frankcom and six other World Central Kitchen workers. These aid workers had been travelling in clearly identified vehicles after delivering food to a warehouse in Gaza, when they were repeatedly struck by Israeli drones.

Israel has long accepted that this was a serious operational failure, its initial investigation found breaches of orders and operating procedures, and senior officers were disciplined. But now the IDF is saying that the decisions of the commanders did not create a reasonable suspicion of criminal misconduct and, as a result, no further investigations will be forthcoming.

What’s made this decision even more unacceptable is the officer responsible for the attack – Colonel Nochi Mendel, who had been removed from his position for breaches of rules of engagement and ignoring standard operating procedures – had the gall to appear on Australian national television and almost gloat about it: “I’m the commander”, he said, “and I’m the one who gave the order to carry out the operation. I didn’t run away from the situation … I gave the order; don’t look for anyone else.” And to add further insult to injury, Mendel went on to say “I’m not sorry for what I did.”

It’s not clear if anyone in the federal government watched this exchange – after all, according to foreign minister Penny Wong, it is difficult to “judge from afar” – but here was an Israeli commander acknowledging that he had ordered the operation that killed an Australian citizen and six other humanitarian workers. On national television.

His own military had concluded that serious operational failures occurred, and he lost his position as a consequence, yet more than two years later, nobody is going to face criminal charges, while the commander responsible is telling an Australian audience that he had no regrets about his actions.

Wong did describe Mendel’s comments as “utterly disgraceful” and said the Frankcom family deserves accountability, but accountability is not something that magically appears from the ether – it’s something that has to be forced. Her response, which has ultimately achieved nothing and certainly not the accountability that she’s been calling for, also exposed the central problem with Australia’s policy towards Israel: words of outrage have become a substitute for action, and the government has no intention at all of holding Israel to account.

The Albanese government has repeatedly expressed “concern”, demanded explanations and called for accountability throughout the Gaza war, but when Israel’s own processes produce no criminal prosecution over the illegal killing of an Australian citizen, nothing meaningful occurs. And if there’s no consequence, the same actions by Israel will be repeated, as we have seen time and again.

The Frankcom case is especially concerning because these types of incidents can remove the excuses that are normally available to governments when needing to confront the atrocities that occur in other countries. Zomi Frankcom was not an anonymous victim like the over 71,000 names in Gaza the government can easily forget about: she was Australian citizen, working for a major international humanitarian organisation, and her movements were in a zone that was meant to be open so the desperately needed food supplies could be delivered to a starving population. When the Israeli military is so in the wrong, this is the moment that the Australian government can actually do something.

Israel accepted that its forces killed her and accepted that serious failures occurred, yet there’s still no prosecution. The Australian government can continue to tell the Frankcom family that it’s seeking answers, but after more than two years, the course of action is no longer about asking Israel for explanations, it’s about implementing actions that will force an adequate response – such as expelling the Israeli ambassador, Hillel Newman.

This is what makes this Sydney Marathon controversy far more than a long run around the city, or even the participation of military personnel in an international event. It’s the duplicity in what the Australian government decides to scrutinise, who it allows into the country, and how it treats these allegations of international war crimes. And Australia has got a very uncomfortable history when it comes to acceptance of war criminals, alleged or otherwise.

Journalist and author Mark Aarons documented much of that history in War Criminals Welcome: Australia, a Sanctuary for Fugitive War Criminals Since 1945, outlining how many people implicated in Nazi atrocities entered Australia after World War II, while government after government failed to investigate them properly, even when they had clear knowledge and information about these atrocities, and exactly where to locate these people.

Some of this was due to political indifference, but in other cases, people with known extremist or violent backgrounds were considered useful to Western intelligence agencies during the Cold War because of their anti-communist stances – Nazis, for example – while in the post-war era, war criminals connected with the Khmer Rouge, Afghan, Chilean, Argentinian security forces were also tolerated.

The historical circumstances are obviously different, but the parallels are exactly the same: Australia has a strong reluctance to investigate suspected war crimes when it’s politically inconvenient to do so, and rarely calls them to account anyway.

Israel also has form when it comes to protecting its own when it comes to disputed killings and investigations in Palestine. The Israeli human rights organisation Yesh Din recently produced research that indicated that the chances of a member of the Israel Defense Forces being prosecuted for unlawfully killing a Palestinian is around 0.4 per cent, if not less.

The most notorious of these incidents in recent times was the killing of five-year-old Hind Rajab in January 2024, where she was trapped inside a car containing members of her dead family while desperately communicating with Palestinian emergency workers. Two Palestine Red Crescent paramedics were dispatched to rescue her after their route had been coordinated through Israeli authorities, but they too were deliberately targeted and killed.

Despite the ample evidence of satellite imagery, audio recordings, physical and forensic evidence that confirmed that the three were killed by Israeli tanks, Israel Defense Forces denied responsibility. Two years later, the Israeli military finally acknowledged that its troops had actually opened fire on the vehicle and announced a criminal investigation into the incident, but we can see that whenever Israel investigates itself, nothing of note will ever come out of it.

And if it’s not bad enough for Palestinian civilians, it’s even worse for foreign nationals: historically, no Israeli solider has ever been jailed for the unlawful killing of a Western citizen, and any investigation follows the same process: an initial denial, then claims of “accidental misidentification” and even in those rare occasions where military personnel are found to be responsible, it results in a reprimand, rather than a criminal charge.

Given this history of the total lack of accountability when Israel investigates its own, the Australian government faces the choice that it has avoided for much of the Gaza genocide. It can continue treating Israel as an exceptional case – the very chosen people – condemning serious incidents with ineffective words of outrage, while protecting the broader relationship with Israel, or it can finally stand up for itself – and its citizens – and apply the standards it claims to support under international law.

Until then, Australia will continue to behave like a weakling on the world stage, a pissant that no-one will take seriously, because it’s not even serious enough to stand up for its own citizens. And this is all because of the shameful behaviour of this Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, Foreign Minister Wong, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke – in fact, the entire Cabinet – who will go down in the history books as the people who had the opportunities to stand for something meaningful when it mattered the most but ended up standing for nothing at all.

The Netanyahu government is heading towards an election in October against the background of the Gaza war, the occupation of the West Bank, attacking almost every country in the West Asia region, and within an increasingly polarised Israeli political system.

Of course, Australia can’t control Israeli politics, but it can control Australian policy – or, at least, we think it can – and decide what standards it will apply within its diplomatic relationships, and apply a lot more pressure on Israel than just the selective use of a few meaningless angry words of outrage.

This is ultimately why the issue of the killing of Zomi Frankcom is so important. Her death is not just another footnote in the enormous list of casualties in Israel’s unjust war on Gaza; it’s yet another test of whether citizenship means anything when an Australian is killed by the military of a state that Australia – for some strange reason – regards as a friend and an ally.

The Albanese government will continue to say that it wants accountability and Wong will shout at the clouds and insist that she’s outraged, but more than two years after Frankcom’s death, Israel says nobody will be prosecuted, the commander who ordered the operation says he’s not sorry, and Australian policy towards Israel continues to be largely intact. And then, to top it all off, the Australian government opens the door and allows Israeli military personnel and veterans run through the streets of Sydney, as if everything is normal and nothing untoward has occurred. It’s really rubbing shit in our faces.

The government will be hoping that the Frankcom case will soon be forgotten about and recedes from the public view – and if it ever does resurface, it will have its vast lexicon of weasel words that it can use to attack the government of Israel. But the Australian public won’t forget – it’s an incident that will long reside in the pantheon of Australian diplomatic cowardice – and the question will always be not just about why Zomi Frankcom was killed, but why the Australia was prepared to do nothing about it.

The political charade with Israel continues

The Sydney Marathon controversy – where around 40 Israel Defence Forces personnel from the infamous Golani Brigade and Unit 8200 participated – presents the Albanese government with that same old question it has repeatedly avoided for almost three years: when will condemnation of Israel actually produce some consequences?

There were protests surrounded the participation of these Israeli runners, including people connected to Israeli military operations in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, and the Australian Centre for International Justice did call on the government to investigate these runners but those calls were ignored, and the sportwashing of Israel’s genocide was allowed to continue.

Some of these IDF soldiers, including First Lieutenant Roy Oryon, were involved in the killing of 15 Palestinian paramedics, rescue workers and a UN employee, and are complicit in war crimes, human rights abuses, and genocide. Their visit to Sydney and participation in the Sydney Marathon was sponsored Zionist Council of NSW and the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, and the timing is absolutely abysmal.

A few days earlier, Israel’s military cleared its personnel of criminal wrongdoing over the strikes that killed Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom and six World Central Kitchen colleagues in 2024. The foreign minister Penny Wong responded with the usual “outrage” but it’s a pantomime that’s becoming Australia’s cheapest form of diplomacy: strongly worded, repeated at a regular cycle, but ultimately meaning nothing and achieving nothing.

There is real outrage within the Australian community about the lack of clear of response to the killing of Zomi Frankcom and the complete lack of accountability for the Israel Defense Forces and responses from our political leaders, even when the commander who ordered the attack, Colonel Nochi Mendel, proudly announced to the Australian media “I’m not sorry for what I did”.

This is Zionist arrogance at its regular and extreme levels: appearing on national television in the country of the citizen who was killed, not to apologise, but display all the behaviours that has made the state Israel one of the most despised countries in the world. It’s rubbing dirt into the faces of the Australian public.

And the government’s response? Keep on going with the weasel words, invite soldiers who have been complicit in a genocide to run around the streets of Sydney – even affording them a police escort and protection – and make it seem like this is normal behaviour. It’s the best advertisement to suggest that Australia is a capture state. It couldn’t be made more obvious.

Labor keeps misreading the surge of One Nation

One Nation’s emphatic victory in the Secret Harbour byelection in Western Australia on the weekend should worry the Labor government, but not for the reasons Anthony Albanese seems to think. Calling Pauline Hanson’s politics “dangerous” and “divisive” might be the message that the party faithful needs to hear – and saying this over the past 30 years doesn’t seemed to have worked – but it does nothing to explain why an electorate that’s been held by WA Labor for 37 years had an 18 percentage point swing against it.

There are many issues going on here: WA Labor has been very successful for almost a decade, and despite being a long-term government of nine years, it doesn’t show the signs of decay that have been apparent with the Victoria Labor government. The economy in Western Australin is strong, and has the benefit of a very favourable GST deal instigated by the Morrison government, which it has used to build infrastructure right across the city.

So why does a safe Labor electorate swing so drastically against a strong government that’s doing relatively well?

It’s the business-as-usual approach that’s the problem: the public is demanding different response from all governments, even voting for a party that is just a culture of complaint and offers no solutions at all, to send a clear message. And that’s the message that the federal government is failing to understand.

Housing remains unaffordable for many, rents are punishing, wages have struggled to keep pace, public services are stretched and economic insecurity has become normalised. The Albanese government has made attempts at many of these issues, but it’s been piecemeal and so insignificant that it’s hardly made any difference at all.

When governments fail to attend to these problems adequately, populists will always arrive with a simpler explanation: the problems exist because of immigration, the elites, bureaucrats, multiculturalism, Canberra, everything going woke, or far worse – communism!

It’s a cynical approach and deliberately inflammatory but it works: just ask Nigel Farage in the UK, who has turned this level of stupidity into an artform. And, essentially, it works because the underlying dissatisfaction is real.

Labor faces that dangerous path which it has already started going down: chase One Nation into an argument about immigration, rather than focus on the economic conditions, which then allows Pauline Hanson to set the agenda. And allowing a political idiot to set the agenda ends up getting us into this vicious and endless cycle of doom and despair that can never be remedied.

But there’s also an opportunity here, once the Labor government can work out what the message is. One Nation is discovering that winning seats is easier than governing and, of course, at this state, it doesn’t have to worry about governing.

But David Farley’s recent dispute with Hanson and Barnaby Joyce over migration numbers exposes the gap between slogans and workable policy, where Farley realises that regional economies – such as one in his seat of Farrer – need workers; that the infrastructure needs to be carefully planned; housing needs investment. None of this can be solved by shouting from the rooftops that everything is a disaster, and placing a bumper sticker on the back of a ute in the back streets of Albury.

Obviously, Secret Harbour was victory for One Nation, but it only holds one seat in a parliament of 59. That needs to be put into perspective. But the greater message is that it was a vote of no confidence in establishment politics, and that’s the issue that needs to change.

Climate catastrophe is no longer waiting for politics

The catastrophe across Nepal and Tibet is another reminder that climate change doesn’t act according to election cycles, opinion polling or the whims of governments. Global warming is destabilising glaciers, permafrost and mountain slopes across the Himalayas, increasing the risks that already vulnerable communities are expected to somehow idly sit by and just let it all happen.

The political cycle is painfully familiar and pretty much always the same. There’s a disaster that strikes – whether it’s floods or fires – leaders express sympathy, scientists explain the growing risks, governments promise to do something about it – but the economic system of unlimited growth that produced the problem continues undisturbed.

This contradiction will be difficult for Australia to avoid at the Pacific Islands Forum in Palau. Pacific governments have spent years trying to convince larger Western countries that climate change is their biggest security threat, while these far wealthier countries have been very good at producing communiqués – and organising the next international climate change conference – than providing the finances and support to reverse climate change that’s threatening to swallow up the whole world, not just the communities at the Nepal–Tibet border.

Australia’s position is problematic and hypocritical. The government wants to be regarded as the indispensable security partner in the Pacific region, while remaining a massive fossil-fuel exporter and opening up new mines. It keeps warning Pacific nations about China’s expanding influence but then is surprised when those countries look at what Australia does on climate change and then decide that their future is better guaranteed through the support of the Chinese government.

The events in Nepal provide the disturbing background to this situation and is a clear example of what climate scientists have been predicting for well over 50 years. The climate emergency isn’t something that’s approaching over some kind of distant horizon: it’s already here.

The AI comes with an enormous power bill and more greenhouse gases

According to the Prime Minister, Australia wants the investment, productivity and technological prestige that’s being promised by artificial intelligence. But what he seems to be far less enthusiastic about is discussing is the extraordinary amounts of electricity required to make the AI boom possible, where it’s going to come from, and who ultimately pays for the infrastructure behind it.

The federal government is proposing that these new data centres offset their enormous electricity demands with additional renewable generation – and wouldn’t it be great if Australia could do this by being the “renewable energy superpower” that Albanese promised in 2022 but has failed to deliver – but pressure from the Queensland and the Northern Territory governments has pushed the policy towards “technology agnostic” – a very convenience piece of terminology that keeps coal and gas as a part of the deal without politicians having to explicitly say so.

And, once again, we have more inherent contradictions within government policy, that is all about the politics and very little about community.

The public has been told many times that decarbonisation of the economy requires changing cars, their household appliances and energy consumption, while the government is doing its best to attract multinational technology companies that will add enormous new loads to the electricity grid. And guess who will be paying for it: it won’t be the government, and it won’t be the multinational tech companies. It will be the public that takes up the bill through higher retail energy prices. Perhaps sometime soon, the Labor government will understand why they are in line to lose more seats to One Nation.

Of course, there is a legitimate economic case for expanding Australia’s data-centre industry, and many countries are looking at developing domestic AI systems and software that can or will result from these data centres. But there are equally legitimate questions about the conditions that will be attached to these data centres.

Why shouldn’t companies creating massive new electricity demand be required to fund new renewable generation, storage and necessary infrastructure rather than pushing those costs and pressures onto consumers?

Australia can’t declare that climate change is an emergency, promise an energy transition and then quietly loosen the rules whenever large corporate investments arrive.

The reported involvement of several senior players makes it difficult to dismiss the incident as one individual behaving badly, and it also raises questions about entitlement, group behaviour and why existing education about sexual consent, drugs, alcohol and respectful relationships is failing to prevent serious incidents across elite sport.

Professional football clubs are powerful public institutions. They receive government support, use community facilities and help shape how young men understand masculinity, loyalty and acceptable behaviour. When clubs protect talented players or treat scrutiny primarily as a threat to the team, they suggest that sporting ability can provide insulation from ordinary accountability.

The media responses are also important as well: the coverage focused on lost careers, finals prospects and reputational damage can make accused players the principal casualties, while the women become background figures whose conduct and credibility are publicly dissected.

Standing down players might be necessary, but it can’t be the end of the response. Clubs must support complainants, cooperate with investigations and confront the culture surrounding their teams. Until football places women’s safety ahead of premiership calculations and brand protection, the mythology of the “good club” will remain little more than marketing.

Pro-Israel organisations always argue that language about “political capture” brings up those antisemitic conspiracy tropes about Jewish control but McKim’s position is that political Zionism and the organisations advocating for Israel must be open to the same scrutiny that applies to mining companies, defence contractors, pharmaceutical companies, unions and every other organised interest seeking access to government.

Australian politicians, journalists and other opinion-makers have travelled to Israel through organised programs which provides these participants with direct exposure to Israeli political, security and social perspectives – “re-education” programs. And this political access and sponsored travel then influences the policy positions of the people who partake in these programs.

This issue has become more urgent as Australia’s relationship with Israel has come under pressure over the issue Gaza, the occupied Palestinian territories, the killing of Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom, and policing cooperation, military relationships and the broader connections between Australia and Israel.

Governments cannot credibly insist that these relationships have no political consequences while simultaneously treating scrutiny of the organisations advocating for them as somehow beyond acceptable debate.

But there’s another problem that lies behind the scene: money, and lots of it.

Australia’s political donation system has allowed substantial amounts of political funding – $138 million – to remain outside immediate the view of the public and with a high disclosure threshold and reporting delays, the public cannot easily see who is financing political parties, what interests those donors represent, or whether these donations relate to certain policy outcomes.

McKim’s intervention might ultimately become significant, not because everyone will agree with his language, but because he has brought an argument that’s usually conducted quietly behind closed doors, and into the mainstream political debate.

If lobbying is seen to be a legitimate course of action, scrutiny of lobbying must be legitimate as well. And if Australian politicians want the public to trust that policy is being made independently, the strongest response is to have more scrutiny and not less transparency.

Senator Nick McKim is not the first Australian politician to challenge the pro-Israel or Zionist influence in Australian politics, and he probably won’t be the last, but his comments made in the Senate and subsequent refusal to apologise to a prominent member of a pro-Zionist organisation might be a crossing of the Rubicon that might be difficult to turn back from.

This began from a relatively innocuous exchange in the Senate last week, where McKim was questioning new powers being granted to ASIO – an organisation that has not covered itself in glory in recent years – which includes secret questioning of people who have not been accused of committing a crime. He continued to argue that these laws were coming from a Labor Party that had “completely lost its way, captured by fossil-fuel interests, captured by Zionist interests, captured by the Five Eyes security establishment”.

Predictably, the president of the Zionist Federation of Australia, Jeremy Leibler, turned this parliamentary debate into a public fight, where Leibler published an open letter demanding that McKim must withdraw the allegation and apologise unreservedly to the Australian Jewish community.

In his letter, Leibler argued that accusing a government of being “captured by Zionist interests” was an antisemitic trope of Jewish people secretly manipulating governments and public institutions, making a spurious link to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Nazi propaganda, the Holocaust, the Bondi attack and the growth of antisemitism in Australia.

In response, McKim condemned the Bondi attack and denounced antisemitism, but rejected Leibler’s argument that criticism of Zionism is inherently directed against Jewish people – which is the legally and morally correct position – going to say that “conflating ‘Zionist’ with ‘Jew’, as the Zionist Federation does, is fundamentally dishonest”.

As many other people also argue, McKim went on to say that Zionism is a political ideology and that the organisations that are pushing a pro-Israel agenda are legitimate subjects of political debate, in the same way as fossil-fuel companies, pharmaceuticals, or any other lobby group should be.

And these are important points. Opinions about Israel within the Jewish community are wide and disparate, and not all Jewish Australians identify as Zionists, and there some Jewish organisations who publicly oppose Israeli government policy, such as the Jewish Council of Australia. The AIJAC and Zionist Federation are obviously political advocates, but neither can claim to represent every Jewish person in Australia.

McKim has made these claims now, but he’s not the first. Former Labor MP Julia Irwin was one of the earliest federal politicians to speak about the Zionist influence within the Labor Party and in 2005, she criticised Israeli policies of “ethnic cleansing” and accused it of holding Gaza as a concentration camp, supported the rights of Palestinian people and suggested that debates about Israel within the Labor Party were restricted by organised pressure and funds coming in from the Zionist lobby in Australia.

Former NSW Premier and federal Senator Bob Carr is perhaps the most prominent politician to have spoken about this issue. After leaving Parliament in 2013, Carr said the pro-Israel lobby had exercised “extraordinary” and “unhealthy” influence over the prime minister at the time, Julia Gillard, outlining his frustration at the government’s reluctance to issue even a small amount of criticism of the illegal construction of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, settlements that are continuing to grow today – illegally.

Current Australian Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi has also provided similar critiques in the past – in 2022, she said the “Israel lobby is in overdrive” in response to the inordinate amount of federal parliamentarians who had received sponsored trips to Israel, as part of the so-called “study tours” which are primarily designed to remove criticism of the state of Israel within Australian politics.

So we can see that McKim is not the first parliamentarian to call this out, but he is the first to make the allegation of political capture, and then explicitly refuse to apologise when it was demanded by a Zionist organisation.

The political capture in full view

If McKim is alleging that much of Australian politics is captured by pro-Israel and Zionist interests, what does this actually look like? Of course, the most visible form of this is the access to politicians.

The AIJAC is a public-affairs organisation and is very open about its contact with politicians, journalists, officials, advisers, academics and a wide range of community leaders. Its signature program is the Rambam Israel Fellowship, which it uses to target specific current or aspiring leaders in a wide range of fields, and provides them with access to Israeli politicians, military and security officials, commentators and journalists. It’s not the riff-raff or the people who they believe don’t have the influence – that would be a waste of time and energy – it’s only the people within society that they feel have enough leverage for them to spread this information to a wider audience, or to enforce it upon the minions of the organisation that they lead.

This is then reinforced or “topped up” after they return from these “study tours” – follow up meetings with ministers and opposition leaders, private briefings, political functions, media commentary, submissions to inquiries and campaigns against the recognition of Palestine, influencing university policies, school curricula and monitoring the news coverage by the ABC or SBS.

The money flowing into political parties from pro-Israel and Zionist groups is difficult to trace and substantiate, and there’s no evidence to suggest that the AIJAC or the Zionist Federation are direct donors to the Labor Party or to the Coalition. But there is so much money flowing into politics that is unaccounted for that makes it difficult to rule it out.

Australian current donations laws provide a flood of anonymous funding from those groups who have the resources and coordination to keep it that way and maintain their political influence. The current federal disclosure threshold is $17,300 and a small group of well-funded individuals – for example, ten people – could easily create a coordinated campaign to fund a political party through nine federal, state and territory divisions, and there you have it – $1.5 million, no questions asked, but certainly a conversation that can be brought up at the next private meeting with the prime minister.

And that’s just through undisclosed donations – there’s fundraising dinners, there’s access to senior politicians and another anomaly which is classified as “other receipts” – whatever that might be – but the upshot is that the public has no way of knowing where this money is coming from, who’s behind it, and what type of political influence is gained through this.

In 2025, $138 million was made in undisclosed donations – “dark money” – and this is roughly a third of all political donations. Taking these large sums of money into account, it would be possible for political operatives – or a political advocacy group – to make considerable donations while flying completely under the radar of donations laws and remaining completely anonymous. That’s not to suggest that it would only be coming in from pro-Israel or Zionist interests but given human nature and the political structures and behaviours as they exist at the moment, it would not be surprising at all, if this was actually the case.

This funding then produces a circular process – acceptance of money influences preselection issues in both major parties, dependent on which faction is accepting the money; it affects the messages that political parties put out and, ultimately, politicians quickly learn which positions on Israel provide them with promotions – for example, NSW Premier Chris Minns and Foreign Minister Penny Wong – and which positions will make them languish on the backbench and never to be promoted again – for example, Labor Party backbencher and former minister, Ed Husic.

How the flow of dark money affects political parties

The Labor Party faces many internal problems over its parliamentary stance on Israel and Gaza. Most of its membership and voter base has become highly critical of Israel, while its senior leadership is all in with the US alliance, defence matters and the relationships with pro-Israel organisations which, is anathema to Labor’s membership and contradicts the national Labor Platform. And it’s very clear that any Labor MP who challenges any of these positions is not going to be promoted or heard from any time soon, and possibly facing a preselection challenge at the next election.

For the Liberal Party, the internal issues might be different but it ends up with the same result: a clear alignment with United States policy and pro-Israel influence through the politics of national security, conservative media and evangelical Christianity. Any unlikely challenging of this position coming from a backbencher is guaranteed to end in political isolation, although a bigger question would be how they ever became a member of the Liberal Party in the first place.

The Australian Greens are far less restricted in what they can say: their members and supporter based are far more critical of the state of Israel, far more supportive of Palestinian rights, and the hostility coming from the conservative mainstream media and pro-Israel groups is already to be expected.

And their perspectives are more closely aligned to mainstream opinions about Israel – the often quoted research from the Pew Research Center suggests that 79 per cent of Australian hold an unfavourable view of the state of Israel, and this is a consistent number in the 36 other countries that Pew included in their survey.

McKim has opened up a political debate that has existed for many years but has usually been conducted on the quiet in hushed whispering tones, in private, or when a politician has left office. It’s just a question of whether this represents a genuine turning point and others will muster up the courage to join him, or if he’s silenced in other ways and his colleagues decide that standing up to these powerful interests is just a bridge too far.

If they do find the courage, it could result in a long-overdue inquiry – perhaps another royal commission to compete with the farce of the current inquiry into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion – and find out who exactly it is that influences Australia’s foreign policy matters and how far up the chain it extends.

That’s why this exchange between McKim and Leibler could be a critical point where the Australian political system – and the rest of society – starts asking the questions about where everyone’s loyalties lay, the questions that should have been asked many years ago.

The killing of Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom in 2024 should have produced a major crisis in the relationship between Australia and Israel. Instead, two years after Frankcom was killed by Israeli drone strikes – along with six other World Central Kitchen workers – the Israeli military has cleared itself of any wrong-doing and its repulsive ambassador is still defending the indefensible and unapologetically churning out his pro-Israel propaganda.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong has said that she is outraged and has “no confidence” in Israel’s investigation but these are the same weasel words that she’s used over the past two years which resulted in no action at all against Israel. Ambassador Hillel Newman has indicated that he won’t be offering an apology to Frankcom’s family and will continue to support the actions of the Israel government.

If Australia – and Wong – genuinely regarded the killing of Frankcom as unacceptable and were seriously “outraged” about it, Newman would already have been booted out of the country and on his way to Tel Aviv. At the very least, the Australian government should be pursuing a high-level independent investigation and pressuring the Netanyahu government, release all available evidence and review its military arrangements with Israel, which includes sales of weapons parts.

Instead, Prime Minister Albanese will probably make yet another announcement after yet another futile consultation. It’s an official outrage which the government has no intention of forcing Israel to accept the consequences of its actions.

And this follows on the usual behaviour and acquiescence of this government: defence-industry relationships, the likely flow of dark money and the fear of a backlash from Israel always hampers Australia’s responses, even when it’s so obvious what their responses should be. We all know what the responses would be it if was any other country, but when it comes to Israel, power and political cowardice always go together.

Another legal victory against the forces of Zionism

There was a peculiar case in New South Wales where anti-Israel graffiti painted in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney by Mohommed Farhat was wrongly identified as “antisemitic”. Farhat was paid by “unknown foreign actors” (usually code for Mossad) to perform these acts – and also provided with the exact text to use – and Justice Desmond Fagan found that evidence of his sole financial motivation (and not ideological) was not provided in earlier court hearings, and this resulted in a serious miscarriage of justice.

Fagan’s findings also challenged the IHRA working definition of antisemitism – which is not applicable in any legal system in Australia – where he described it as “verbose and imprecise” and rejected the proposition that hostility towards Israel and opposition to Zionism is automatically a hostility directed towards Jewish people. This also follows on from Justice Angus Stewart’s findings in 2024, that criticisms of the state of Israel and Zionism cannot be deemed to be antisemitic.

As a part of a pro-Israel and Zionist Labor government in New South Wales, the Attorney–General Michael Daley is now taking steps to launch an appeal – of course he is – and pro-Israel groups in Australia have denounced the findings. Apparently, the independence of the judiciary is always sacrosanct, except for when they make a decision the Israel lobby doesn’t like.

Antisemitism is real and must be reduced – we always have to keep pointing that out. But expanding its meaning to stop the criticism of the state of Israel or Zionist zealots won’t do anything at all to protect Jewish people. In fact, it will only do the opposite.

A royal commission in search of the right answers

Justice Fagan’s recent rejection of the IHRA definition within the legal system will hang heavily over the final hearings of the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, which are due to wrap up this week.

The Commission has adopted the IHRA definition, and it will be interesting to see how this affects its final findings, which are due in December. It’s also coming under more pressure from Coalition figures and Jewish organisations to extend its hearings, call on more ministers and community leaders to appear, and also interrogate the organisers of pro-Palestine actions and protests.

But those who are making these demands don’t want to find out what’s happened in the past, but wish to overwhelm the Commission and get the main conclusion they were always expecting to receive: that any criticism of Israel and Zionism is antisemitic.

These demands should be ignored: an inquiry that purports to inspect the issue of “social cohesion” can’t lump the advocacy of Palestine, criticism of Zionism or opposition to Israel’s genocide as inherently suspicious, and then relegate Islamophobia, anti-Arab racism and threats against Palestinian Australians and push it over to the margins.

A real royal commission should test all of these viewpoints and arrive at conclusions that benefit all the community, and not just allocate special privileges to a select few at the expense of everyone else.

Gambling reform: Terms and conditions apply

The Labor government wants take credit for taking gambling out of sport but, as usual, there are many terms and conditions that do apply – and these seem to be taking more precedence, because it’s giving the gambling industry six more years to keep selling the same product to the same audience, and then give it ample time to target new and younger groups of people.

Gambling logos will remain on many sporting jerseys – mainly within the National Rugby League – until 2032 because existing sponsorship agreements have been granted a remarkably generous transition period.

The legislation does introduce some worthwhile restrictions on advertisements during sporting events, inside stadiums and to children online, but waiting for six years before the impacts come fully into effect is an indication that the government has caved in to vested interests, as it usually does.

The package offered by this government falls short of the much stronger recommendations made by the cross-party parliamentary inquiry that was led by the late Labor MP, Peta Murphy. In the meantime, media companies have already started complaining about age verification, compliance costs and the proposed national opt-out register, as if protecting corporate revenue is far more important than a clear public-health objective.

This is the familiar pattern of the modern Labor Party: announce a position based on principle and promise to do everything possible; then negotiate extensively with the industries causing the harm and arrive at solutions that do as little as possible, and then provide them with several years to get to this point of doing not much as all.

Gambling advertising will eventually be restricted – just a little bit – but only after everyone who needs to profit has gained their filthy lucre, and people who are susceptible to gambling, have been harmed.

The distress experienced by survivors of the Bondi Beach terror attack must be acknowledged and treated seriously but this cannot become a veto over material available to an entire community.

Public libraries don’t endorse every book they acquire. Their purpose is to provide access to knowledge, conflicting perspectives and uncomfortable ideas so readers can reach their own conclusions. If the possibility of offence becomes sufficient grounds for removing a book, libraries cease to be independent public institutions and begin functioning as political gatekeepers.

In the current political climate, this risks creating a system of pre-emptive censorship in which librarians avoid books critical of Israel or Zionism – not because those books are inaccurate, unlawful or outside collection guidelines, but because institutions fear organised complaints and reputational controversy.

The controversy also demonstrates why the word “genocide” has become such a contested part of the debate over Gaza. It’s a confronting word because it describes the destruction of a people, and its application to Israel’s conduct has been supported or investigated by human rights organisations, international legal experts, genocide scholars and United Nations officials.

At the centre of this dispute is the increasingly aggressive attempt to blur criticism of Israel and Zionism with antisemitism, often through promotion of the IHRA working definition. Australian court decisions have reinforced the importance of protecting political criticism of Israel and Zionism.

A public institution worthy of the name should help communities confront difficult ideas – not hide those ideas when politically influential groups object.

Six months into his leadership, Angus Taylor has failed to establish a clear political identity, impose discipline on the Coalition or persuade voters that the Liberal Party understands why it lost office. Instead of beginning the long process of rebuilding, the party is fixated on devising a strategy for forlorn hope of winning the 2028 federal election – an ambition that looks increasingly detached from reality.

Labor’s weaknesses should be creating opportunities for the opposition, where Anthony Albanese remains vulnerable on housing affordability, the cost of living, productivity and declining living standards. But voters can be disappointed with the Labor government while still regarding the Coalition as an unacceptable alternative.

The Liberal Party is also being squeezed from both directions, where One Nation is attracting parts of its conservative base, and Labor, the Greens and community independents have captured many moderate and metropolitan voters. What remains is a diminished organisation struggling to decide whether its future lies in the political centre or in the conservative populism associated with Donald Trump and the US Republican Party.

These divisions are being intensified by strained relations with the Nationals, dysfunctional state branches and the growing influence of the religious right. Evidence presented to Operation Rosny at the NSW ICAC has drawn attention to the Reformers, a conservative Christian network seeking influence over Liberal Party branches, preselections and policies concerning abortion, voluntary assisted dying, transgender rights and same-sex marriage.

The Coalition’s response to Australia’s housing crisis reveals the same underlying confusion. Shadow housing minister Andrew Bragg has proposed reducing requirements in the National Construction Code and suggested that lower-income Australians may have to accept lower-quality housing. But poorly built, inefficient homes do not create genuine affordability: they transfer costs into higher energy bills, greater maintenance expenses and worse living conditions.

Bragg’s description of compulsory superannuation as “repressive”, communist and neo-Marxist also reflects the Liberal Party’s growing reliance on imported American culture-war rhetoric. Language that may animate sections of the US Republican base offers little practical response to the economic pressures facing Australian households.

The Victorian state election will provide the next major test. The Liberals may benefit from dissatisfaction with an unpopular government, but winning because the other side is rejected is not the same as rebuilding political relevance. In an increasingly fragmented two-party system, Australian elections risk becoming contests over which party voters consider least unacceptable – not which offers the strongest vision for the country.

The Liberal Party is no longer going through a short-term and cyclical downturn – it’s facing a continuing crisis of political identity, it’s lacking organisation skills which makes it more susceptible to extremist interest groups and, most importantly, its relevance is fading within the electorate. Despite losing two consecutive federal elections – badly – it’s still unable to decide whether a turnaround in its electoral fortunes will need moving closer to the centre of mainstream voters, or going further into the right-wing ideological pipe hole that has driven them away.

Recent opinion polling has the Coalition’s primary vote hovering between 17–24 per cent, with Newspoll currently showing 18 per cent, after a record low of 17 per cent in the previous month. This compares with its 41 per cent primary vote recorded at the 2019 federal election, just over seven years ago.

If a political party doesn’t offer anything meaningful to the public, it’s obvious that the public will start looking somewhere else and, even on this most basic level, the party hasn’t managed to work this out yet. One Nation has replaced the Coalition within the conservative part of the electorate, while Labor, the Greens and community independents have been able to take votes from the metropolitan seats that were previously held by the Liberal Party, and it’s unlikely that these seats will be returning any time soon.

There’s also leadership issues. Angus Taylor was installed as the Liberal leader in February this year, with the task of rebuilding the Coalition after its second consecutive federal defeat. Six months later, there’s almost no evidence that he’s established a viable political identity for himself or gained much traction with the national debate.

His personal ratings have been poor for a relatively new opposition leader, with the most recent Newspoll suggesting 34 per cent of the electorate approves of his performance, while 46 per cent disapprove. Prime Minister Albanese’s net satisfaction ratings are actually worse, but the problem for Taylor is that the dissatisfaction with the government hasn’t translated into support for the Coalition. And it also shows that voters can be both unhappy with the Labor government, while also knowing that the Liberal Party is failing to offer a credible alternative.

The current political environment should be providing the opposition with many opportunities. Housing affordability is still a big problem, cost-of-living issues are continuing, productivity is weak and public confidence in the government seems to be lukewarm, at best. Despite this, the Liberal Party is indulging itself in the internal factional battles and culture-war debates that very few people are interested in and engaging in facile arguments about issues that have little in common with the immediate concerns that are facing most people.

And this is on top of all the organisational problems that it’s currently going through. The relationship between the Liberals and Nationals continues to be strained, and their state divisions are divided between moderates, conservatives and an increasingly extremist religious right.

In South Australia, Senator Alex Antic’s right-wing campaign for the state presidency has become a battle over embracing a more populist and unhinged brand of populism that is trying to appeal to the people who have left the scene and defected over to One Nation. And here in New South Wales, the federal party has intervened in a chronically dysfunctional division which is now also being examined for possible corruption.

The corruption for the NSW Liberals keeps on going

The NSW ICAC, through Operation Rosny, is investigating allegations of corruption involving people associated with the NSW Liberal Party, former Catholic Schools NSW chief executive Dallas McInerney, property developer Jean Nassif, hotelier Michael O’Hara, and several Strathfield councillors – among others – for possible breaches of electoral funding laws, including whether prohibited or undisclosed donations were channelled through to the Liberal Party.

Although Angus Taylor is not a subject of the investigation, he’s been drawn into the purview of the inquiry through the conservative Christian faction known as the Reformers, a group which is attempt to take over the control of the Liberal Party in New South Wales.

Evidence that has been aired during the hearings is likely to create a substantial political problem for Taylor, with messages sent between Reformers figures suggesting that Taylor had agreed to an initial contribution of $15,000, followed by payments of $3,000 a month.

Taylor has categorically denied that he paid any money, and others at the inquiry have suggested that the claims were part of internal Liberal Party bravado and exaggeration but, whatever the case is, it’s the politics of that matter that’s critical for Taylor, even if there isn’t a legal consequence at all.

Even if Taylor does survive, the bigger problem is how to deal with this Reformers faction, because their ambitions go far beyond fundraising efforts for the Liberal Party. It’s a group that’s recruiting large numbers of conservative Christians into the party, attempting to gain control of branches and state council positions, influence preselections and move the NSW division further to the right on the issues of abortion, voluntary assisted dying, transgender rights and same-sex marriage, issues which most people in the community would assume had been decided some time ago.

The problem for the Liberal Party isn’t just this situation of conservative religious activists wanting to move it further to the right – that is a big problem in itself – but the fact that too many Liberal figures continue to firmly believe that the pathway back to government lies in attracting these kinds of groups to the party and fighting the same cultural battles that have caused then to lose election after election.

Pro-business, anti-low income people

Even when the Liberal Party turns to an issue of immediate public concern, it continues to remind voters why they rejected it. Housing in its current state all around Australia should be one of its biggest opportunities for a political party – it’s the link between the pressures of population growth, migration, intergenerational inequality, construction costs, insecure renting and the broader cost-of-living issue.

Yet shadow housing minister Andrew Bragg used a major National Press Club address to propose reducing the National Construction Code from more than 2,000 pages to an 80-page “Basic Australian Standard”, as the solution to the problem, and then going on to suggest that people on lower incomes will need to accept “substandard” housing.

This, of course, means that developers gain the up-front benefit, while the purchaser of the house – the low-income purchaser – then has to deal with the longer-term costs associated with an energy inefficient house, something that needs regular repairs as it ages, primarily because standards that would have improved its quality, have been removed. It’s a false economy, but it’s in tune with modern-day Liberal Party philosophy: deregulation that supports big business and slams the consumer, especially those on lower incomes.

It’s this type of ideology that has cost the Liberal Party electorally – as well as an ideology that’s being shunned by the public – but one that the party keeps returning to and insists that it’s the correct formula that will bring electoral success.

And it didn’t end there: Bragg then went on to say that compulsory superannuation is a “repressive system” based on “communism” and “neo-Marxist” Labor policies, a system that is under the “control of unions” – even though there are no superannuation funds legally owned or controlled by trade unions. But why spoil a good story with the facts…

Bragg is from the Liberal Party’s moderate and liberal wing, but it shows how far backwards the party has gone when he espouses this sort of nonsense, and imports Trumpian rhetoric and conspiracies from the US Republicans that most Australians would have no clue about.

The Liberal Party continues to be squeezed from several directions at once – One Nation is taking its support from its populist right; community independents have captured parts of its former metropolitan moderate base; its state divisions are consumed by factional battles; the relationship with the Nationals is unstable; and senior frontbenchers continue to behave like an undisciplined rabble, instead of presenting themselves as an alternative government.

The danger for the party isn’t just another election defeat – federally at least – but becoming incapable of assembling a broader coalition of voters that they need, first of all, to win elections, and then, gaining the skills that are required to govern Australia.

The state of Victoria is considered to offer the Liberal Party the next best chance of winning an election, with recent polling putting Coalition ahead of Labor in the lead up to the November election, on a 55–45 per cent two-party-preferred lead. But even there, there’s no guarantee of an election win – the party needs to win 17 seats, is led by an inexperienced leader in Jess Wilson, and is still strongly influenced by a cabal of religious extremists.

It seems that everyone knows the trouble the Liberal Party is in – except for the Liberal Party itself. If they feel that reducing regulations is the solution to housing and social issues, or every problem in society can be resolved by making accusations that everything is “communism” or “neo-Marxism”, then there is no hope for the party.

It really needs to decide who it intends to represent in the electorate, what practical problems it intends to solve, and whether it wants to be a broad party of government, or just a rabble of aggrieved and combative ideological factions, better suited to an isolated debating club that no-one really wants to attend.

Until it answers those questions, every scandal, inquiry, factional takeover and frontbench gaffe will reinforce the same public conclusion: the Liberal Party has learned remarkably little from its many defeats and is still not fit to govern.