{"id":117194,"date":"2025-08-04T03:27:13","date_gmt":"2025-08-04T03:27:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/117194\/"},"modified":"2025-08-04T03:27:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-04T03:27:13","slug":"ed-husic-says-politicians-underestimated-australias-outrage-about-gaza-as-albanese-pursues-call-with-netanyahu-labor-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/117194\/","title":{"rendered":"Ed Husic says politicians \u2018underestimated\u2019 Australia\u2019s outrage about Gaza as Albanese pursues call with Netanyahu | Labor party"},"content":{"rendered":"

Labor MP Ed Husic says Australian politicians have \u201cunderestimated how strongly Australians feel\u201d about Israel\u2019s conduct in Gaza after a pro-Palestine march across Sydney Harbour Bridge, with Anthony Albanese<\/a> to pursue a call with Benjamin Netanyahu this week.<\/p>\n

New South Wales police estimated about 100,000 people walked across the bridge on Sunday. March organisers the Palestine Action Group put the crowd size at 300,000. Images of the event were broadcast around the world.<\/p>\n

Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/a><\/p>\n

Husic 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s an important signal to send,\u201d he said on Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it\u2019s up to the PM, obviously, who\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think Australian politics<\/a> has underestimated how strongly Australians feel about this issue \u2026 this is a moment, a sort of wake-up call for Australian politics.\u201d<\/p>\n

Labor member for Chifley Ed Husic called the protest a \u2018wake-up call\u2019 for Australia\u2019s policians. Photograph: Lukas Coch\/AAP<\/p>\n

Following the march, Albanese was seeking to press his Israeli counterpart about the devastation in Gaza in an upcoming phone call.<\/p>\n

Guardian Australia has been told Albanese hopes to speak to Netanyahu as soon as a phone call can be locked in.<\/p>\n

The assistant minister for immigration, Matt Thistlethwaite, told Sky News a conversation between Albanese and Netanyahu was \u201cbeing pursued\u201d this week.<\/p>\n

News Corp\u2019s 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 affairs minister Bob Carr and human rights campaigner and footballer Craig Foster.<\/p>\n

Husic told Sky News the Ali Khamenei image was not in the spirit of the event.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m obviously here as a member of parliament, not the chair of the Australian chant regulator authority,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are, when you have so many people present, you won\u2019t agree with everyone, and clearly people will pick out some things that were objectionable to other people, and I completely understand that.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Julian Assange joined the march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Photograph: Flavio Brancaleone\/AAP<\/p>\n

It comes as the foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, said on Monday that Australia would provide a further $20m in aid for organisations to deliver food and medical supplies into Gaza.<\/p>\n

The funding will be distributed through organisations including Unicef, the United Nations World Food Programme, and International Committee of the Red Cross.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, Wong met with Israel\u2019s ambassador to Australia, Amir Maimon<\/a>, to express concern about Israel\u2019s conduct in Gaza and call for it to urgently comply with international law and increase the supply of food to Palestinians.<\/p>\n

Last week, Albanese said there was \u201ca humanitarian catastrophe\u201d unfolding in Gaza and that too many innocent lives were being lost.<\/p>\n

The social services minister, Tanya Plibersek, said the march was driven by community anger at the suffering in Gaza.<\/p>\n

\u201cI 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,\u201d she said on Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe particularly don\u2019t want to see children starving to death as a result of this conflict.\u201d<\/p>\n

The federal opposition leader, Sussan Ley, criticised the decision to march across the bridge, noting the disruption to Sydney\u2019s transport.<\/p>\n

\u201cI respect the right of free speech and protest, but this is taking it to another level \u2026 the protest could happen elsewhere,\u201d Ley said on Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Labor MP Ed Husic says Australian politicians have \u201cunderestimated how strongly Australians feel\u201d about Israel\u2019s conduct in Gaza…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":117195,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4740,50],"class_list":{"0":"post-117194","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114968372417288755","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117194\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}