He is right to an extent, The Greens would have pushed ahead with the vote knowing full well that it would suffer a near unanimous defeat. For them it would have been partially strategical in the sense that they can point to this result in the future as a clear point of moral difference. It was also clearly a sincere motion though, so Watts and Leeser trying to frame it as anything else is pretty stupid. Particularly when neither them nor their respective parties are doing anything to help the situation here or in Gaza.
Disagree. I understand what you’re getting at, but I don’t think it accurately represents what he said. If he had said “the Greens set this up to fail because Labor has no interest in supporting Palestinian statehood”, he would have been right. But he didn’t say it would fail because they don’t support it, he said it would fail because “it’s procedural”.
If Labor had decided to amend it to be more clear in what it would accomplish (because it would not, of course, actually result in the nation of Australia recognising Palestine, just the House of Representatives, a mostly meaningless gesture), or if the Labor Foreign Minister had turned around and recognised it officially through their powers, he would have a point. Heck, I’ll allow Labor to the end of the week for me to say “hey, actually, Labor did the right thing here”. But as it stands right now? Labor has no defence. Anything they try to say is a transparent attempt to avoid saying “we don’t support Palestinian statehood” while holding exactly that position.
He is right to an extent, The Greens would have pushed ahead with the vote knowing full well that it would suffer a near unanimous defeat. For them it would have been partially strategical in the sense that they can point to this result in the future as a clear point of moral difference. It was also clearly a sincere motion though, so Watts and Leeser trying to frame it as anything else is pretty stupid. Particularly when neither them nor their respective parties are doing anything to help the situation here or in Gaza.
Disagree. I understand what you’re getting at, but I don’t think it accurately represents what he said. If he had said “the Greens set this up to fail because Labor has no interest in supporting Palestinian statehood”, he would have been right. But he didn’t say it would fail because they don’t support it, he said it would fail because “it’s procedural”.
If Labor had decided to amend it to be more clear in what it would accomplish (because it would not, of course, actually result in the nation of Australia recognising Palestine, just the House of Representatives, a mostly meaningless gesture), or if the Labor Foreign Minister had turned around and recognised it officially through their powers, he would have a point. Heck, I’ll allow Labor to the end of the week for me to say “hey, actually, Labor did the right thing here”. But as it stands right now? Labor has no defence. Anything they try to say is a transparent attempt to avoid saying “we don’t support Palestinian statehood” while holding exactly that position.