Netanyahu lashes out and Tony Burke fires back

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In terms of the claim of strength versus weakness,

strength isn't measured by how many people you can blow up or how many children you can make go hungry.

That's the Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke's response to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, describing Anthony Albanese as a weak politician who betrayed Israel and abandoned Australia's Jews.

As the war of words escalates, what are the implications of the deteriorating relationship?

And day two of the economic roundtable is underway in Canberra, but the Prime Minister isn't there.

He is instead hanging out in South Australia, facing a barrage of questions about why it's taken him so long to get there.

Welcome to Politics Now.

Hi, I'm Patricia Carvelis.

And I'm David Spears.

David, great to have you back.

It's safe to say that overnight and this morning, tension in the relationship between Israel and Australia has reached a new level.

I think that the word unprecedented is very much overused, but I'm going to use it.

For this, it is unprecedented.

We have never been in this situation.

It follows a social media post and letter from Benjamin Netanyahu to Anthony Albanese,

who in a doorstop just said that he doesn't take these things personally.

I don't take these things personally.

Yeah, I engage with people.

But it was pretty personal, David.

It was really personal.

Well, you don't often get in diplomacy, PK, leaders slagging off at each other in social media posts unless you're in the Donald Trump era.

That's what struck me.

It just felt a little bit trumpy, didn't it?

Benjamin Netanyahu taking to social media to to publicly accuse Anthony Albanese of being weak and abandoning Australian Jews and the state of Israel.

Look, you mentioned Tony Burke's comments on Radio National this morning, where I don't think he was doing much to dampen things down, dial the temperature down either.

That line about you don't show strength by how many people you blow up or how many kids you starve.

I mean, he's basically suggesting here that Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to show how strong he is by doing these things.

So, you know, that's not going to go down well in Israel either.

The Prime Minister, who just spoke as we record this, in fact, he's still on his feet as we record this, but the comments he's just made, I thought they were a bit more even, a bit more measured.

I don't take this personally.

I deal with respect, sticking to his position when it comes to why he's decided to take this step on two-state solution.

I don't think he wants to inflame this any further.

But it's pretty well inflamed right now.

It's really inflamed.

And I think it's good cop, bad cop.

That's what we're seeing here.

Tony Burke is playing a particular role.

He's being sent out to send a pretty tough message.

It is a message for a domestic audience as much as it is an international one.

Not dissimilar to the messages that Benjamin Netanyahu is also sending to his domestic audience, that he's standing up to these, you know, so-called weak Western leaders who he says are capitulating to Hamas and their populations and are anti-Semitic.

That's the claim.

Now, Tony Burke, bad cop in this case, playing the role of being able to go further than the Prime Minister, and the Prime Minister playing, yes, a more tempered language.

You know, he's the grown-up in the room.

You know, he likes this image of himself.

He does things properly.

He called Benjamin Netanyahu, who, of course, had a very long phone call with him, to tell him we were going to change our foreign policy position on Palestinian.

And just on that, PK, I'll jump in there because I think that is significant.

That's not an easy call to make.

right to have that conversation before announcing that you're going to do this knowing that netanyahu who has has blown up at the French and the British and the Canadians when they've done it.

But to make that call is not necessarily an easy thing to do.

And clearly Australia knew there was going to be a backlash.

We saw it in relation to those others who've taken the step on recognition.

The public spray, you're a weak leader, that's a little further than we heard in Netanyahu's response to the others.

But I don't think there's a lot of surprise about this.

And just coming back to what Anthony Albanese has just been saying in the last few minutes, he's again surrounding himself with others who are taking this step.

He's trying to suggest that Australia is part of a coalition of like-minded countries taking this step, that it's not an unusual step, in other words, to take, even though it is facing political opposition here at home from the coalition and this pretty fierce response from Benjamin Netanyahu.

You look at the contrast between what Tony Burke says and Anthony Albanese, it's really one of emphasis too, right?

Anthony Albanese is saying he treats other leaders from other countries with respect, engages with them in a diplomatic way.

He's also contrasting himself to Benjamin Netanyahu's style.

Must be said, must be said, that when Benjamin Netanyahu took to social media to call our prime minister weak,

I just thought, are you trying to give him a boost in news poll?

Like, what are you doing here?

That was the take of

the opposition in Israel as well, that the best thing you can do to help another leader at the moment, somewhere around the world,

is to be,

you know to accuse him of this stuff because Benjamin Netanyahu himself is becoming an international prior.

That's his political opponents saying that about it.

It is, and they would say that, but objectively he is too

objectively.

I don't think in terms of domestic politics, this, well, we're not seeing any evidence that it's hurting Anthony Albanese.

You know, his poll numbers are pretty healthy right now.

In terms of where this leaves the relationship, though, I mean, let's leave the domestic politics.

I don't think that's a big concern for Anthony Albanese looking pretty comfortable politically.

But in in terms of the relationship with Israel, it does matter.

We have intelligence cooperation, we have business investment,

whether it's all sorts of, you know, not so much defense ties, the government is keen to stress.

We don't sell them weapons, but on medical technology, on all sorts of other fronts, it is an important and long relationship.

I thought Tony Burke was also along the way there this morning keen to stress that that, or hint at least, that intelligence sharing isn't being being disrupted by this.

Whether it is or who knows?

But look, there are reasons why this all matters

because this has been a deep relationship over many years.

Right now, it's not looking that way.

Yeah, it's a very damaged relationship.

I asked Katie Gallagher, admittedly, it was before this outburst of Benjamin Netanyahu.

She said it's not broken.

But look, everyone concedes

it's, you know, it's not in good shape.

And And I suspect that will continue until the war ends, until Israel takes a different position, which is a diplomatic one, not a military solution.

That's the objection our government has.

I just want to put to you, though, if we can, the way that the opposition has dealt with this, because I think that's really interesting, too.

My view is that they're a little at, and it's my favourite saying I'm about to use, they're at sixes and sevens on this.

And I'll tell you what I hear.

I heard Andrea Hastie this morning, for instance, speaking about it.

And he said, you know, it's very critical of the Prime Minister, but then ends the interview sort of saying, but I will always stand up for our Prime Minister.

I'm an Australian and I'll always back my Prime Minister in a situation like this.

But it does.

Well,

am I backing the Prime Minister?

I'm not going to lean into Mr.

Netanyahu's comments and pick a side here.

I'm simply making the case that the relationship shouldn't be

Prime Minister, just so I I understand.

No, no, I said, as an Australian,

I will always back my own government.

They know

that

back to the politics, because there's a lot of politics in everything, that they don't want to be looking to stand up for Benjamin Netanyahu.

They want to criticise Anthony Albanese, but then also suggest we defend our Prime Minister, i.e., we're on Team Australia.

But it is a convoluted message.

Look, I thought Andrew Hastie was actually quite nuanced this morning in that interview on RN.

Clearly, they're wary of being on the wrong side.

If Australia's having a stouch with Israel, they want to be on Team Australia.

And I think that was the point he was making.

Susan Lee made a similar point.

The PM should be respected, she said, then went into the relationship deteriorating.

That's regrettable and so on.

But Andrew Hastie this morning,

look, he's clearly saying I don't agree with the stuff that

this Israeli MP Rothman has said, but he is a member, a democratically elected member of a democratic government.

As a member of parliament, member of the Knesset, his line was there should be more leeway applied here.

He pointed to the Iranian foreign minister who came to Australia some time ago and having meetings with him, you don't agree with them, but there should be more leeway for elected members of parliament.

I thought that was a nuanced response, but I think you're right that there is some degree of caution on the coalition not to be siding, particularly with those far-right members of the Israeli government who are at the

heart of this dispute, whether they've been denied a visa or not.

It's interesting to see also how the Jewish community is responding in Australia.

Here we have Netanyahu saying that Albanese has abandoned Australia's Jews, but some parts of the Jewish community are not happy really with Netanyahu either.

And I think that's interesting that they're starting to distance themselves from him.

So one of those leaders, Alex Rivchin, his comments, I think, are really interesting because, yeah, he's criticising still the Albanese government, which is consistent with what they've been saying, but not exactly a ringing endorsement of Netanyahu either, which shows that Australian Jews are also really concerned about Netanyahu and are worried about how this affects them here too, David.

That is significant.

Yeah, I think he's basically just saying, let's all dial things down a little, okay?

Let's not.

see things getting worse and worse and worse from here.

And that kind of goes to those other elements of the relationship that I mentioned earlier that are important, that we want to keep.

And I think, yeah, Alex Ribchin's comments reflect that.

You know, no one who cares about that relationship between Australia and Israel wants to see this, and they certainly don't want to see it getting any worse.

Now, you know, where do things go from here?

It's hard to see.

As I say, I don't think the Prime Minister today was trying to dial things up any further.

You know, he didn't retaliate with any, well, here's what I think of Benjamin Netanyahu.

You know, he said, I don't take these things personally.

He likened it to the sort of response we saw from Israel towards others who've taken the step on recognition.

Whether we see the government now starting to ban more MPs who might be planning to come here for speaking tours, I guess it depends if more applications come in.

Well, will they try it on, right?

Because

that's how the government sees it too.

I've spoken to people who say, well, this is a bit of a try-on too.

So they see it as a, you know, to even have the speaking tour, it's a bit of a provocation.

So will there be more of them?

Watch that space.

Look, David, we've both got to run off and do things because this day is nuts.

It's a bit going down.

There's lots.

So a couple of things.

In a moment, in fact, because we record in the middle of the day, we will have Mark Butler, the health minister, outlining what we believe are pretty significant changes and visions for the NDIS and getting its spending control.

Watch that space, the party room.

We'll get into more of that detail tomorrow.

At the same time, we are on day two now of the economic reform roundtable.

Big question.

And I don't think we can have a final conclusion yes, but

are we ready to call it a fizzler?

I'm not.

No, I'm not.

You never are because you want it to be not a fizzler.

Look, I'm still, you know, I think having debates, opening the doors, letting, you know, different ideas come in and get kicked around is never a bad thing.

I don't think we can judge this until we see exactly what.

comes out of it at the end of tomorrow and then in the days and weeks that follow what the government's going to pick up.

But look, what do we know so far?

I think there was some

good signals yesterday on skills and recognizing skills qualifications for migrants and moving into state and so on.

Today they're talking about product, it's productivity day actually, tomorrow's tax, but today's productivity.

And they have, here's what I've been told.

They're talking about the road user charge.

You know, we've talked about this before, moving away from fuel excise to a road user charge.

A lot of support for that.

Matt Common, the Commonwealth Bank boss, has said that's pretty uncontroversial.

Ken Henry has said it's a fantastic idea.

Let's just do it.

Yep, they've also been talking about regulation.

Jim Chalmers has told the room, the regulators, many, many regulators in Australia.

They've written in with various things that they can clean up, but it's not enough.

He wants them to be, what was his line, he wants them to

be even more ambitious in cutting regulation.

It gives us a sense of the Treasurer's thinking on,

he wants to go a whole lot further on cutting red tape.

The big one they're talking about today, I think, they'll get to AI this afternoon, but this morning, was the environment laws, the EPBC Act, and the government we know tried in the last term, didn't get there in fixing it.

They're desperate to do it this term.

I think you are going to see some consensus around this, and this might give the government a bit of a boost to get on with landing a deal on fixing environment laws so the big projects, be they renewable projects or housing, whatever it is, can just get cracking instead of these incredible delays that so many of them face.

Then, tomorrow, tax.

I don't think we'll see anything immediate coming out from the government on big tax changes.

But

I'm not as cynical about the whole exercise here.

In fact, they should do this at the start of or at the end of every term, PK, I reckon.

Just get everyone together.

I'm not cynical.

I think it should happen.

Very, I want to very, and fizzer in so much as expectations.

Now, is how I frame that word or use that word

because I agree with you, but I think this is meat and potatoes and should happen.

So I kind of, do you know what I mean?

I'm in that column, which is, yep, good.

Government business should look like this, should happen like this.

Good on you.

But like elephant stamp time, I'm not sure if I want to give an elephant stamp to, you know, do you doing the work?

Like, oh, we're bringing people together.

Well, so you should.

Like, you literally represent people in the country and you're trying to find consensus.

That is literally the description of what a government is.

So it's like, it's like saying, oh, we're really good because we came to work today and we spoke to each other about politics.

Like they pay us to do that.

The proof of the pudding will be in the eating.

We've talked about, you know, better recognizing migrant skills for, gosh, since John Howard was here.

So

a lot of these ideas aren't new.

Some of them are new.

Road user charge, again, we've talked about that for years.

If it all happens, if we start to see some movement on this, sure, some of it's small stuff, but the small stuff can add up to productivity gains.

I think it was Danielle Wood or someone else in the room said, you can only do the big stuff like floating the dollar once.

It is all the small stuff that really matters.

And it might not be headline grabbing.

But if they can actually get some of this done, it could mount up to something

better on our productivity performance than we've seen for far too long.

Yeah.

So what do you make of the Prime Minister not being there?

Is he just trying to give the Treasurer the floor?

He's a busy man.

Yeah, look, I don't know.

I didn't really know.

He's the Prime Minister.

The algal bloom really matters as well.

There's always something that really matters when you're the PM.

Can you spend three days sitting?

Yeah, look, I was expecting him to be there for the full three days.

I don't know.

Does it matter that he's not?

Jim Chalmers, I'm sure, won't mind running the show and

we'll handle that role pretty comfortably.

Yeah, and when you say the algal bloom, we're not going to get into lots of the detail, but it is a big deal.

And

I would have thought that you'd get a few questions on that in Adelaide, and then it would move to the Netanyahu stuff.

But whoa.

Not in Adelaide.

No, it went on and on and on.

And I'm not, you know, they are fired up about why is it taking you so long to get here.

The Prime Minister was getting a bit spiky, wasn't he, David?

Because he, you know, he did the, you know, when he lists how many times he's been somewhere.

He's announced some extra measures and ways to deal with this, but ultimately, I think one of his lines was: you know,

all this pressure on us to do more, what exactly can the government do to stop this marine heating?

It seems to be his response here.

So, yeah, he was a little defensive on that, but

look, finally, we're seeing a visit and we're seeing a bit of movement from the government on this.

Bit of movement.

Well, I've enjoyed a bit of movement in this conversation.

We've moved around quite a few topics.

David, thank you.

Tomorrow, I've got the party room.

Mel Clark is my co-host.

Well, Fran is on a break, and we will take your questions to the party room at abc.net.au.

You can send them to us in a voice note.

See you, David.

Thanks, Pico.

Bye-bye.