Ed Husic says politicians ‘underestimated' Australia's outrage about Gaza as Albanese pursues call with Netanyahu

The Guardian

17 hours ago

Labor MP Ed Husic says Australian politicians have 'underestimated how strongly Australians feel' about Israel's conduct in Gaza after a pro-Palestine march across Sydney Harbour Bridge, with Anthony Albanese to pursue a call with Benjamin Netanyahu this week.
Police said around 100,000 people walked across the bridge, double the estimated turnout and described by New South Wales police as the largest protest to descend on the city in recent memory. March organisers the Palestine Action Group put the crowd size at 300,000.
Images of the event were broadcast around the world.
He said he would love the federal government to immediately recognise Palestinian statehood, a move Labor has flagged could come as soon as next month at the United Nations general assembly.
'I think it's an important signal to send,' he said.
'But it's up to the PM, obviously, who's juggling a lot of different considerations before making that call, but I think he would get massive support out of Australians if he did it today.'
'I think Australian politics has underestimated how strongly Australians feel about this issue … I think this is a moment, a sort of wake-up call for Australian politics.'
Following the march, Albanese was seeking to press his Israeli counterpart about the devastation in Gaza in an upcoming phone call.
Guardian Australia has been told Albanese hopes to speak to Netanyahu as soon as a phone call can be locked in.
The assistant minister for immigration, Matt Thistlethwaite, told Sky a conversation between Albanese and Netanyahu was 'being pursued' this week.
News Corp's The Australian reported on Monday that one protester held up a picture of the Iranian dictator, shown standing with a rifle, which was displayed behind high profile marchers including Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, former foreign minister Bob Carr and human rights campaigner and footballer Craig Foster.
Husic told Sky News the Ali Khamenei image was not in the spirit of the event.
'I'm obviously here as a member of parliament, not the chair of the Australian chant regulator authority,' he said.
'There are, when you have so many people present, you won't agree with everyone, and clearly people will pick out some things that were objectionable to other people, and I completely understand that.
'That's democracy, but I just think, I would hate for it to detract from the images of that aerial view of the Harbour Bridge, with so many people on it, that just want the hostilities to end, and particularly impact on kids.'
It comes as the foreign affairs minister Penny Wong said on Monday Australia would provide a further $20m in aid for organisations to deliver food and medical supplies into Gaza.
The funding will be distributed through organisations including Unicef, the United Nations World Food Programme, and International Committee of the Red Cross.
On Thursday, Wong met with Israel's ambassador to Australia, Amir Maimon, to express concern about Israel's conduct in Gaza and call for it to urgently comply with international law and increase the supply of food to Palestinians.
Last week, Albanese said there was 'a humanitarian catastrophe' unfolding in Gaza and that too many innocent lives were being lost.
The social services minister, Tanya Plibersek, said the march was driven by community anger at the suffering in Gaza.
'I think Australians do want to send a message that there has been too much death, too many people have lost their lives and we want to see the hostages return, we want to see humanitarian access to Gaza,' she said.
'We particularly don't want to see children starving to death as a result of this conflict.'
The opposition leader, Sussan Ley, criticised the decision to march across the bridge, noting the disruption to Sydney's transport flows.
'I respect the right of free speech and protest, but this is taking it to another level ... the protest could happen elsewhere,' Ley said on Sunday.