Palestine Action Group Sydney protested the NSW Labor Conference held at Town Hall this Saturday, July 27.
The annual NSW Labor Conference brings together hundreds of Labor members including MPs, Union leaders, and branch presidents to vote on policy and elect members of the executive.
PAG’s demands include Boycott, Divest, Sanction regulations, ceasing of all military, economic, political and diplomatic ties with Israel, and support for Palestinian refugees to seek safety in Australia.
The protest, building from 11am this morning, saw approximately 2000 in attendance with heavy police presence barricading Town Hall and directing protestors.
The wet weather did not deter protestors as chants were heard throughout proceedings: “Labor party you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide” and “Albanese your hands are red! 50,000 children dead!”
Labor delegates wearing keffiyehs were spotted leaving the hall at the Druitt St exit, and one union delegate member exiting the conference told Honi that there was “not a lot of noise inside but a lot of silent anger”.
An observer-member wearing a Palestinian flag pin echoed the sentiment that some people inside “were not happy” but said that people in the party “were focused on winning the election.”
Honi overheard one state MP dismiss the chants as they left the building, telling a staffer “they really think we are responsible for killing babies.”
During Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s speech a Palestinian flag was waved before his eyeline by conference attendees.
Some members of the Electrical Trades Union and allies of the CFMEU — which has recently been kicked out of the Labor party due to allegations of corruption — walked out during the speech and heckled.
Archival recordings of Anthony Albanese’s past pro-Palestine speeches were played before the speak-out followed by sirens.
Protestors stood at the front of the speeches and blindfolded themselves with keffiyehs, holding up signs that read “Gaza has the largest number of child amputees in the world”.
The protest was chaired by Palestine Action Group members Jana Fayaad and Josh Lees.
“We know that the global north leaders are racist,” Fayaad said, “they see us as subhuman. This has become crystal clear with the West and their continued baking of Israel and the genocide.”
It’s been 294 days of horror and terrorism,it has been almost a year of the most devastating genocide in modern history.”
“We have learned how morally bankrupt the Australian Labor Party is,” Fayaad continued, “we have learnt how many war criminals are inside that building.”
Fayaad said chants of “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” were intended to be heard by “every Labor politician sitting comfortably in that room.”
“We need more than words,” Lees said, “we need actions, we need sanctions.”
“You can see what the Labor party really stands for by how they treat their members,for more than a hundred years the Labor party has been working against the working class.”
“They’re not made by us, they’re not made by you or their members, they represent the millionaires,” Lees continued. “What we need in this country is a real working class movement that will stand up against genocide.”
There was a heavy police presence across the protest with officers stationed at every corner and entrance to the event. Police ushered in delegates and redirected protestors and pedestrians away from the entrances.
At points during the protest, police moved on demonstrators who got too close to delegates leaving the conference including pushing back activists yelling “shame” at exiting members on Druitt St.
One of Honi’s reporters was confronted by police at one of the Town Hall exits and their bag was searched and ID ran through the system for any past interactions with the police. This was after they identified themselves as a journalist covering the protest and conference.
A police officer told the reporter that it was “concerning that they were standing there for so long,” and threatened to move them on if concerns were raised again about their presence. .
Police presence continued, directing protestors with shouts of “let’s go or we’ll start putting hands on you and moving you”.
Speaking at the rally, First Nations activist Ethan Floyd claimed that the Labor party “will not be remembered for reconciliation or workers rights as they would like, but for their support of Israel, for the extinction of Palestinians.”
NTEU USyd Branch President Nick Reimer spoke to the “witch hunt” against the pro-Palestine support “by the Zionists in Australia”.
“The wind has changed, the support for Palestine significantly exceeds the support for Israel [in Australia],” Reimer said, “it couldn’t be clearer, there is no electoral logic preventing the people in that building from supporting Palestine.”
Australians have said “no to this nightmare, not to genocide, no to apartheid,” Reimer claimed, “no to the murder of over 180,000 ordinary Palestinians.”
“We’ve been saying that no for months, but what do we hear from Albo and Penny Wong?”, Reimer continued, “a few feeble half measures. There is an unwavering refusal to do even the slightest real thing to stop this genocide in Palestine.”
Reimer singled out Federal Member for Sydney and Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek as someone activists “shouldn’t forget,” claiming the Minister had escaped the condemnation placed on Albanese and Wong. “It’s so hard to worry about genocide when you’re too busy approving coal mines,” Reimer said.
Reimer finished by stating that “we will not win at the ballot box” after which he asked the crowd to come to another protest on August 7 at 5:30 pm outside NSW Parliament.
Academic Randa Abdel-Fattah claimed that the conference represented a “crystal clear reminder that… western democracy depends on and is sustained by genocide, colonialism and brutal violence.”
“This is Netanyahu’s genocide as much as it is Joe Bidens, as much as it is Kamala Harris’, as much as it is Albanese’s,” Abdel-Fattah said, “as much as it is every MP in the Labor party who think their melanin and second language will save them.”
“Labor is not the alternative to fascism and genocide,” Abdel Fattah continued, calling Penny Wong’s sanctions applied to individuals involved in Israeli settler violence in reponse to recent ICJ and ICC rulings lacklustre and “a standing ovation to the genocide.”
In reference to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, she said “progressives” such as Penny Wong “condemn the bombing of a school only if the victims are white.” She went on to state that both the Labor and Liberal party are “showing that their policy is underpinned by White Supremacy”, and that “the lesser of two evils is still evil.”
Abdel-Fattah finished by saying that while ultimately “the Global South pays the price”, that the “tactics and methods [used in Gaza] will come back here as part of the imperial project.”
Finally, Abdel-Fattah stated that “we will survive”, imploring the crowd to “believe another world is possible.”
