Hundreds protest PM’s “complicity” in Gaza attacks
Anthony Albanese may have been silent on Gaza during his address to the NSW Labor conference in Sydney’s Town Hall, but hundreds who gathered outside to protest were anything but.
The prime minister used the conference on Saturday to promote Labor’s handling of domestic issues such as tax cuts and the protection of Indigenous heritage sites.
But while it was not on Albanese’s agenda, Israel’s invasion of Gaza is what drove the loudest response on the day, with Sydney’s Town Hall surrounded by crowds flying Palestinian flags.
The party conference was a chance to draw attention to the government’s complicity in the violence in Gaza, Students Against War member Luke Ottavi told AAP.
“Albanese continues to send parts of the F-35 fighter jets that Israel uses to rain bombs on Gaza,” Mr Ottavi said.
“These parts are made in Australia, and are not made anywhere else, continuing the flow of those means that Israel is able to continue its massacre of Palestinians.”
Chris Breen, a school teacher with Teachers and School Staff for Palestine, said that “real” democracy was not happening inside the conference.
“There’s been thousands of children (operated on) without anaesthetic and it needs to stop.”
“And the Labor government could play a role in that.”
Mr Breen called out NSW Premier Chris Minns and the state’s education department, claiming he could not speak openly about the conflict in his role as a teacher.
“There really is an effort to clamp down on any show of human sympathy for the victims of the genocide in Gaza in our schools,” he said.
“On Harmony Day … students were told not to wear the keffiyeh, not to wear the Palestinian flag, not to do any of that.”
Israel’s war on Gaza continues to dog the Labor government and the party itself as it comes under fire from protests from around the country and seeds division in its ranks.
Paul Harridge of the Palestinian Action Group, who organised the protest on Saturday, has been attending Sydney’s pro-Palestine protests since they began last October.
“All the eyes in the world are on them, and it would be a lot worse if we weren’t holding them accountable,” Mr Harridge said.
Israel began its invasion of Gaza after Palestinian militant group Hamas, which governs Gaza, launched an attack on southern Israel that killed over 1,100 people in October 2023.
Since the invasion began, over 35,000 Gaza residents have been killed, about half of them children.
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