After the federal election on 3 May, dissection of the Liberals’ turmoil received top billing.

But there has also been a “get the Greens” movement. Everybody has been piling on. The Greens are too extreme on everything. The brawl is of deeper significance.

Gaza as Exhibit A. The Greens have been too extreme on Gaza, say the Libs and Labor and their acolytes and the pundits.

The Insiders’ host David Speers interviewed Adam Bandt on 20 April. Speers put it to Bandt that “we don’t hear any more from the Greens on Gaza”. Didn’t the Greens call Albanese complicit in genocide and wasn’t that beyond the pale?

Bandt replies that a lot of people are disengaged from politics, given that it’s ‘a battle of the bandaids – the timid versus the terrible (touché!) … Speers intervenes: But why silent on Gaza? Was the Queensland election last year a bad result for you? Brandt repeats that people are turning away from the major parties and it was appropriate to seek to engage this detached segment.

Speers intervenes: You’re not laying as much blame on Albanese. Did you overreach? Bandt: No. Things are getting worse. Australia was outspoken when Russia invaded Ukraine. No comparable response occurred with Israel’s devastation in Gaza. Speers replies that the relationship between Australia and Israel has been testy, implying that the Albanese Government has not been acquiescent on Gaza. Speers omits that Israel under Netanyahu and his fanatics (Israeli and local) brook not a fraction of deviance from Israel’s barbarous agenda, and that minute fraction is precisely what Albanese’s Government has offered to date. Hence Bandt’s and the Greens’ disdain.

Speers intervenes: Are you still claiming that Australia is complicit in genocide? Bandt: Australia is exporting arms to Israel (i.e. yes). Speers intervenes: Do you stand by your earlier claim that Australia is complicit in genocide? Speers immediately changes the topic, moving to the innocuous issue of the Greens’ seat-campaigning.

With Bandt subsequently dismissed, Speers returns to his journalists’ salon, to opine that Bandt and the Greens were damned as serious political players by their “overreach” on Gaza.

Speers has his “gotcha” moment, as if it’s a matter of word play. This “serious” weekly discourse by the “switched on” is just a parlour game – to be forgotten when next week’s episode consigns the previous to oblivion. Prattle and moral vacuity substitute for big issue commentary, analysis and judgment.

David Crowe’s post-election “obituary” for the Greens (Sydney Morning Herald, 7 May 2025) begins with, “The party of protest has just discovered it protested far too much.”

Crowe claims:

“Finally, the Greens spent much of the last term campaigning furiously on the war in Gaza. This was personal: Bandt claimed in parliament that Albanese and Dutton _were complicit in genocide__. This was hyperbolic and offensive.”_

On the contrary. Albanese and Dutton are complicit in genocide.

Crowe continues:

“At the same time, the Greens backed public protests that became platforms for antisemitism.”

The public protests did not become platforms for antisemitism. This claim is hyperbolic and offensive. The Greens have no responsibility for any rise in antisemitism. Which in any case is almost all ersatz, as denunciation is directed at Israel and its unquestioning supporters (i.e. every “official” Jewish organisation in Australia).

More:

“Bandt seized on the war in Gaza to accuse Albanese of knowingly aiding Israel in a genocide. There was no such support for genocide; the Australian Government wants a ceasefire and a two-state solution.”

The Australian Government wants a two-state solution? What has Albanese Labor (or any Australian government) done towards that end? Nothing. They are presumably cognisant that it will never happen – because Israel is committed to preventing it and has, through encroaching settlements and destruction of Gaza, made it impossible. Ergo, Labor’s de facto support for the ongoing genocide remains operative.

Crowe (and his ilk) imply that the Greens jumped on the Gaza bandwagon for electoral purposes and that this gambit failed spectacularly. Rather, the support for Gaza was, and is, out of principle. Principle is so rare in politics that Crowe has forgotten that the category exists.

Crowe again:

“Most importantly, most Australians knew their government did not have the power to stop the war.”

This canard is perennially reproduced, but it is a furphy. It was repeated by political analyst “expert” John Black on ABC’s 7.30 Report on 16 May. Rather, Australian Governments could have a global impact, but they choose not to exercise that capacity. Albanese could throw out the Israeli ambassador and recall the Australian ambassador; he could up the ante against the hectoring from Israeli sources and their Australian cheerleaders. Such actions would reverberate around the world and would enliven wavering governments to follow suit.

On 13 November 2023, the prime minister’s own Labor Party branch voted to “utilise all avenues of diplomacy to stop the bombing”, and to assert that, in Israel’s acts of retribution after 7 October, it had breached international law.

The next day, Albanese claimed that there was little that his government could do to influence hostilities. His claimed main concern was to reduce tensions in Australia, tacitly accusing the Greens of inflaming tensions. Concern for “social cohesion” is code for molly-coddling Jewish Australians possessed of a pathological attachment to a rogue foreign country. Two days earlier, 12 November, Penny Wong claimed herself hesitant about supporting a ceasefire that she designated as “one-sided”, having as priority the release of Hamas’ Israeli hostages while ignoring the long ravages of the illegal Israeli occupation on Palestinian lives.

Do our senior Parliamentarians read any history?

On 16 November 2023, Bandt tabled two petitions in Parliament, led by cross-party backbenchers and health workers, condemning Israel’s military operations and calling for an immediate ceasefire. Albanese and Wong were unmoved. They were concurrently being fiercely attacked by the Opposition and the Murdoch media for not being 100% supportive of Israel’s barbarism, so they escaped into a “balance of pressures” which facilitated a do-nothing avoidance of the nature of the crisis.

This was at precisely the time that Francesca Albanese, the courageous UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Israel and the Occupied Territories, was in Australia. This Albanese accused the other Albanese of giving “leeway” to Israel, noted the ethnic cleansing presently in train and highlighted the prevalence of the “weaponisation” of antisemitism.

It is in this environment that the Albanese Government finally joined with 152 other countries in a UN General Assembly vote on 12 December 2023, demanding an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire”. Australia had previously (28 October) abstained (with 44 other countries) on a resolution, drafted by Jordan (an Arab country, hence unreliable), urging a ceasefire. The Australian UN ambassador highlighted that his government’s predominant preoccupation was not the deaths and desperate needs of Gazans but the primary necessity to condemn the “terror group” Hamas, with the underlying premise that Israel “has the right to defend itself”.

This stance was a continuation of the government’s motion in Parliament on 16 October 2023 condemning Hamas. Albanese defended (apartheid) Israel’s right to defend itself while urging Israel to “operate by the rules of war” (joke). The House approved the motion save for the opposition of the four Greens MPs, with Bandt observing that “[t]his is now moving beyond self-defence into an invasion”, foreseeing a “looming humanitarian catastrophe”. Which, of course, transpired.

After the December 2023 UN vote, Wong reproduced her government’s ongoing reservations about ceasing the carnage (by that time at least 20,000 deaths) by claiming: “Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel [erroneous] and to harming the Jewish people. Hamas has no place in the future governance of Gaza [none of her business].”

Exactly a year later, 12 December 2024, Australia voted (with 157 other countries) for an “immediate, unconditional, and permanent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip” for a year, as well as for “the release of all [meaning Israeli] hostages”. While the resolutions also supported the UNRWA, explicitly rebuking Israel’s ongoing attacks on its activities, the Labor Government continued to lament the lack of a predominant condemnation of Hamas.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.