We might be watching Albanese's 'big moment'

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As soon as you cross those big concrete walls and you go into Gaza, it's just destruction everywhere.

And in the middle of that chaos.

We've just woken up.

The whole place is shaking.

Something unexpected.

There's the look.

I knew she was interested though.

I didn't expect it during the war, but it happened.

Dr.

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Foreign Minister Penny Wong says there is a risk there will be no Palestine left to recognise as the government faces pressure to recognise Palestinian statehood.

At the same time, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke says he's in the business of stopping hatred from being imported to Australia after revealing he's blocking visas to protect social cohesion.

So, are we watching an organised effort from Labor for permission to put their foot on the accelerator on action on Gaza, from statehood to the way we talk about this issue in Australia?

And Japan will build the Australian Navy's $10 billion fleet of warships, more money for defence, with questions a little still unanswered on AUKUS.

Welcome to Politics Now.

Hi, I'm Patricia Carvellis.

And I'm Brett Worthington.

And Brett, Foreign Minister Penny Wong, this morning and last night has used some very strong language on action on recognition of Palestine.

To ensure peace and stability in the Middle East is for there to be two states.

And the reason for urgency behind recognition is this.

There is a risk that there will be no Palestine left to recognise.

Words that I believe do take forward the kind of timeline the government is working towards and I can sort of say in a very well-sourced way that the government will recognize Palestinian statehood before or at that September meeting of the UN.

It is not maybe, it is happening, my friends.

And the language that she used should give it away, but I'm also telling you because I think I'm pretty certain about it.

Now, it all happens after Sunday's rally on the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

She spoke of a broad Australian community horror of what's been going on in the Middle East and a desire for a peace and ceasefire.

Okay, I think she's absolutely correct.

They're talking now very clearly about,

you know, if you don't do it soon, sense of urgency, there will be no Palestine to recognize.

They're right on that, because if you look at the...

actions of Israel and the language coming out of the Netanyahu government, they're looking at accelerating the war, not decreasing it.

It's like at odds with where the world wants them to go.

So Australia in some ways will be pushed along even further to take this action, won't it, Brett?

Yeah, I think that's right, Pika.

And where you see, this is where the divergence in the approaches that the Coalition and Labor are taking, where the coalition is still saying no recognition until the end of a peace process.

And that line that you said, that Penny Wong said this morning was she is fearful that there will be no Palestinian territory to recognise if things continue continue on the trajectory that they're on here.

And there is this foreshadowing the way in which the government is very much preparing people for the step that they are about to take.

I think knowing all too well that once you take that step, there is no backward step that comes here.

This will be a big moment for Australia.

And to view it in a bigger perspective, Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong, they come from Labor's left.

Supporting recognition of a Palestinian state has long been something that they personally believe, but now faced with having to implement it at a political and government level, it is a big step.

And we think back, Penny Wong was sort of changing the way in which this government was talking about this region even before October 7th.

So re-adopting terms like occupied Palestinian territories, taking steps to push back about what's happening in the West Bank.

As much as Gaza is very much the focus of the here and now, and the government's trying to respond to that, there is a broader sense about what this moment is for Middle East peace is ultimately what they're trying to achieve.

And I'd be curious to get what you think about this, PK.

The way in which the Foreign Minister's language was sort of pushing back on what Ed Husick was saying yesterday, where Ed Husick was saying that rally across the Sydney Harbour Bridge was about middle Australia being there as well.

A lot of what the Prime Minister was saying early on about recognition was trying to push back on, you know, the woke progressive left flank that was trying to push him too far for recognition for point scoring.

Ed Husick trying to say this is middle Australia and the political class has misunderstood how deeply felt these scenes of Gaza are being felt within normal, typical Australians that the Prime Minister likes to talk about.

I think Ed Husick's line about Middle Australia was a very politically savvy line

and I think

partly true.

I don't know if we can sort of give you a sort of comprehensive survey on the demographics of that rally other than just looking at people.

What is Middle Australia?

Like, you know, anyway, let's not get all university tutorial on this.

I mean, you know, yes.

We'll have some PhDs by the end of this.

Some hardened activists, some people that may have come to a rally for the first time ever, some people really engaged on this issue, some others who don't think starvation is a very nice thing to do to,

you know, little kids, which is, I think, a lot of Australia's reaction.

So it was a bit of a column A, column B, right?

Like, you know, a mix of people.

Look, the Prime Minister's critique of the activist movement,

is about the movement, the people organising the rallies historically, not about these people who are turning up.

So there is a distinction there.

And

look, I've spoken to people who say, you know, they'd be concerned about sort of...

continuing to be aligned with it because there are some elements of this protest movement that I do think diverge from the sort of mainstream Labour view.

I think some of this movement, Brett, doesn't believe in a two-state solution to start with, right?

It doesn't.

And so Labor wants to make sure that they reinforce that concept of a two-state solution.

But at the end of the day, when that many people come out on the streets, who cares who the hardened activists are or not?

It's a mass response.

which tells the government about a feeling in the community.

And the government, like, why is Penny Wong doing all those interviews?

She's trying to send the message that they are listening, reinforcing that they are actively considering all these things.

It's a message, you know, if you could give it a subtitle, like under, it should say, hey, guys, we've got you, we get it, we're on it, don't you think?

Yeah, that we are, we hear you and we are responding.

It's no surprise that the aid package was going out in the hours after that march.

And this is imagery that is being sent around the world.

It was a savvy location to hold a protest because of the attention that it attracted.

Now, we see with a lot of elements, you know, even with the Prime Minister at Garma for the fourth time as Prime Minister, there is an element of symbolism and that is very important.

And let's not underestimate the value that symbolism can have, but there does come a point where people want to see action and what steps you're taking.

And I think what was notable also about this, how this ties into some of the other ways in which the government is responding more broadly to what is happening in the Middle East is the way in which when the Prime Minister was talking about the protests, he's had this obvious conversation about social cohesion and the impact that the war is having in communities here in Australia and really paying tribute to the fact that people that were there and were rallying were doing so in a safe and democratic way where people were conscious of everyone else around them and not wanting to see some of the uglier parts of this discourse, which we have clearly seen over the last couple of years.

So let's go to ugly discourse because there is it's almost like two streams.

I call them the domestic and the international.

And then there's the domestic stream and that's where Tony Burke enters the conversation.

Now he has come out and said he has been denying visas on character grounds on the basis of trying to ensure that the Middle East grievances and hatreds are not brought here to Australia.

He wants people to know he's been doing this at high numbers.

He's proud of it.

He's proudly suppressing free speech.

Now that's a pretty radical thing to say in some ways.

I'm proudly suppressing free speech.

Like I'm kind of paraphrasing.

Don't go get angry with me.

But that's the vibe of what he's putting out there.

He wants that that known.

I mean, he came on afternoon briefing and said Kanye West had been cancelled and that sort of made the world go mad.

Like, what's happening?

There is others too.

Candace Owens, a podcaster, former Israeli minister.

But apparently there are lots of others too that we don't even know about that have been denied.

And his argument is, I don't want to bring all these hatreds here.

Now, why is he telling that as well?

Because they're saying we want to do all of this recognition.

We want to do all of this solidarity with the starving Gazans, the people who are suffering immensely.

But at the same time,

we're not buying into the hatred and the rhetoric of the extremism on both sides here.

I think it's a clever way of handling what is a delicate situation, actually, not emboldening the extremes.

I'm not saying I'm endorsing

no free speech.

I'm not going on that bus or any of the buses around it.

I don't think hate speech is ever acceptable.

But you reckon that's what they're trying to straddle here, send these messages that we are pro-Palestinian, but we're not okay if you think that you can say anything.

Yeah, that's right.

And I think that the government has been

pretty clear on this idea of free speech doesn't mean it's free of consequences.

And this is the consequence side, is the fact that the government is opening itself up to criticism, that it is getting to the consequence before it's even allowing the speech to potentially happen.

Now, we are in a globalized world that this speech can be carried out in any way, shape, or form.

But the power of the home affairs portfolio that Tony Burke has is he has that ability to deny entry to people.

And he's been really frank with, I think one of the lines is, like, do not care, was his quote about criticism that he is facing about, you know, stifling the freedom of speech.

It is in that element where you've got people like Tim Wilson from the Liberal Party, you've got the Human Rights Commissioner, Lorraine Finlay, who are raising some level of caution and concern at the prospect of people being denied entry around freedom of speech grounds.

But it is clear that when you hear the Prime Minister in particular, I think you notice it in him more than anyone else within the Federal Labor Party, his sort of

outrage and annoyance that it is getting to the level where typical debate is unable to be held in this country without there being some levels of violence or the graffiti or the damaging of electorate offices.

He really is frustrated that his electorate office

keeps getting closed.

And he will talk about people are unable to get electorate business carried out as a result of this.

It is a bit where the government is opening itself up for criticism, but I just don't think they care that much to think the broader objective what they're trying to achieve, they're willing to take a bit of heat on it.

Well, back to the Middle Australia line.

What they're doing is it's a perfect pitch to Middle Australia, right?

Think about the lines they're using.

People are sick of the killing.

People just want people to stop killing each other, like these sorts of language, each other.

I'm just, I'm being very, you know, meta linguistic analysis is coming out of me here about the way they're framing.

And then at the same time,

rebuking the extremes is again a pitch to Middle Australia.

Like, you don't have to agree with this crazy stuff is the message.

It's just end the killings, let's get on with our lives.

It is pretty smartly, you know, framed around where most people would agree, I think.

Yeah, Anthony Almanese's Middle Australia is not that dissimilar to Scott Morrison's Quiet Australians.

And at the core of what you call what you're trying to achieve there is, I'm not getting caught up in these wings.

I'm just here in the middle.

You just want to go about your life and you're concerned about what's happening in the Middle East, but it's not determining your day in, day out.

And I, as the Prime Minister, whichever one you want to drop in there and focused on you and the issues that you're facing, and I don't want to get carried away and caught away.

And that's why the Albanese early on was talking about recognition as point scoring.

We want to achieve outcomes.

We want to have real things that will affect people's lives.

It's not dissimilar then to the approach that they're trying to take here.

So what they're trying to do is

have this all out in the public sphere, get the public ready.

Everyone's ready.

We've all heard it.

We've heard it every day.

They're not running away from this conversation.

They're leaning in.

They're trying to have it.

They're trying to engage.

They're not sort of getting cranky about it.

Is the balloon being flown, PK?

Is it being sent up?

Is that what we're seeing?

Oh, I just think they're getting ready to announce it.

Yeah, I think they are.

I think

they're really, it's cooked.

I think they've cooked this plan and it's a coordinated plan with the world, inside the government,

that this must happen.

And the Prime Minister's strategy for a long time has been, don't shock the public.

Don't shock anyone.

Explain it all.

And that's what I think he's done.

Without a level of sourcing on this PK, it's just the vibe that I'm kind of picking up.

So we've seen overnight, Anthony Albanese has spoken with the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas.

He has made clear clear he wants to talk with Benjamin Netanyahu.

Now, that is clearly going to be a more terse conversation than when we've seen with other world leaders.

Benjamin Netanyahu has made very clear the criticisms he's got of Anthony Albanese and the Labour government and anti-Semitism within Australia.

But if you look at the way in which Anthony Albanese has approached foreign affairs more broadly, it is about respectful dialogue at a leader-to-leader level, having it behind closed doors and then looking to make things public.

You get the sense that he maybe wants to flag it in advance, one-on-one with Benjamin Netanyahu, and then the decision happens.

Now, maybe the call won't happen, and maybe I'm misreading and misunderstanding what is happening here.

But it wouldn't be too far away from the Albanese doctrine, for want of a better phrase, that he does view this as a big moment and he wants to take all the steps and have everything in a row so when they make the move, they make it clearly and it only happens in one direction.

And that he's going to meet with Mahmoud Abbas on the sidelines of the UN conference in September really fuels into what you're telling us right now that this is happening.

It's happening.

It's just a matter of hours, days, weeks, it is happening by the time September rolls around.

Yeah, it's all happening.

And the Netanyahu

call and getting out to the public that they want the call is part of that.

That's not a mistake.

It was an accidental leak.

They want everyone to know that he's trying to seek that call.

It hasn't been scheduled yet.

I know that.

Now we're recording this middle of the day Tuesday.

I don't know if it will be

actually scheduled.

I don't know if Benjamin Netanyahu is rushing to have this conversation with the Prime Minister, but the Prime Minister figures and his people figure, well, we've registered an interest.

That's right.

You've made the effort.

You've tried to be diplomatic and statesman and all those things.

And obviously.

You know what, Engage?

You don't have to.

But what's going to happen?

In that phone call, he's going to say,

stop the war.

And we will be your friend only for two states.

That's the message, right?

We're not going to stop being Israel's friend.

We believe in Israel's right to exist, but as two states, as originally planned.

We know Netanyahu, who's not a fan of that idea, and he says this is just about rewarding terrorists.

Well, the Prime Minister's answer on that would be, and you've heard it from his various ministers out there speaking, is, well, Hamas doesn't believe in a two-state solution, and Hamas doesn't.

Like, Hamas is not about sort of going, hey, Israel, I want to recognize you.

I mean, that is not what we're talking about here, right?

This is a very, very dangerous terrorist group, and we should not mince our words.

That's what it is, which is why Australia's conditions are about them not being able to be part of the sort of solution or the government or, you know, part of that sort of peacemaking process, because they are not about peace, these guys.

Yeah, so I reckon all the ducks are in order now.

They are very much there.

And I do think they are willing to

call it even earlier than, you know,

if Netanyahu takes increased action into Gaza this week.

That's just

from my own conversations.

I think they will call it if he does that.

So watch that space.

Now, I want to pick your brain because I know you know lots about this and it's a bit of a dry subject, but you know us here at Politics Now, we will never ever deliver you a dull take.

So Defence Minister Richard Miles has announced Mitsubishi Heavy Industries wins.

And man, do they love a contest.

These countries and their industries get very active because, man, there's a lot of money to be gained.

They won over the Germans.

So this is a $10 billion fleet of warships over the next decade.

More on defense.

Sorry, Germans.

But why are the Japanese in the box seat?

Yeah, it's a fascinating one where it's $10 billion.

So it's no small change of money that's floating around here.

And we're going to hear a lot about Western Australia with this story.

So part of it is the first three will come from Japan and the rest will be built then in Western Australia.

And you've seen a lot about government and defence procurement is all about domestic manufacturing, that Anthony Albanese views this as a job for someone.

And if it's in Western Australia, even better for him and the labor cause over there.

But I think that it's not without risks that come with this.

The sourcing suggests that the Defence Department, when it's assessed this, the Japanese product was more expensive and riskier.

It's riskier because the boat that Australia is getting is not currently in the water in this form.

A version of it is, yes, but this is an upgraded model.

Why then does the government go with it?

Well, you need fewer people, and we've heard a lot about Defence's inability to recruit and retain.

Now, there are some inroads that are being made there, but half the number of people required for a bigger boat than what you've currently got.

more firepower.

And when you saw what was happening with the circumnavigation of Australia earlier this year with the Chinese warship, open questions about is Australia underdone in terms of having a frigate fleet like this.

I think there's something also in the fact that the US were on board with this as well, apparently, PK.

And when you've seen the quad, so Australia, Japan, India and the US, under Donald Trump, it's much more of a defense and military pact than it is necessarily some of the elements of cancer moonshots that Joe Biden wanted to get into.

If the US are on board and you've got closer strategic ties between Australia and Japan than over defence, what do we say?

You know, I'd like to say China is part of that conversation that is happening there.

It is clear that there are closer ties being forged between Australia and Japan and Europe and Australia might get closer, but it is a reminder about our region and the closeness with which Australia is keen to work with Japan here.

And they offered us a better deal?

Because we spent a lot of money.

Well, I mean...

And it blows out all the time.

Procurement is a red-hot mess.

Defence, renowned, it's famous for coming under budget and quickly meeting inside the time frames, isn't it?

Famously.

Name me a defence project which has met either of those requirements.

It is so much money and it's this thing about defence where you sort of glaze over when you think about it.

Now, Australia, of course, needs a well-equipped military, but it is interesting to me that we are in an era where there is no second guessing or questioning of the amount of money that can be spent on defence at a time when, say, you've got last week and politicians were keen to run around and say, how good is Australian music?

We've got, this is great, but they've got this caution with wanting to put money into a domestic industry like live music, which the Prime Minister loves, which the Arts Minister loves.

And you've got owners of live music venues saying, we are on our knees and we need people to come and it's a big creative industry.

That caution about not wanting to put money into that, but rivers of gold for defence, it just goes unquestioned.

And I've never quite understood why.

Do you reckon it's got an aucus implication, though, this one?

I don't know that it has because I haven't been able to establish that in the sort of random phone calls I make all morning trying to get ready for this pod.

I'd like to be on those calls today, just to listen in.

They're mainly hilarious.

But I do now and then find out some nuggets of information for my loyal listeners.

Look,

ultimately, AUKUS is the main game for us in terms of how much money we're spending, how important it is.

So yeah, it has to have some implications that are AUKUS-led.

There were some questions to the government about whether this was the defence recommendation, because obviously, you know, there's a lot of backroom dealing and wheeling and recommendations.

You were were there.

Did you feel like the government was sort of saying, yes, this was, you know, I noticed that Pat Conroy really pointed out, I was reading between the lines, which is the job of a journalist.

What are they really trying to say?

Because they speak in political speak.

when he said on the three metrics, on cost, on strategic, like on everything, this met the criteria, right?

Yeah, I think that the government is very keen to point to where they're going into the future.

And they think that, yes, the German option might have been cheaper, but there are a whole lot of more options that you need to consider than just the cost side of it.

But I think also what is interesting is this Japanese

offer that seems that Japan is saying that Australia will get these new ships even before its own Navy will get it.

Now, as someone who is, they're saying what the timeframe is 2029 is when they hope to have the first ships, frigates here.

I tell you what, if the government's whopping majority is as big as it is, again, this goes into that bucket bucket of possible things that labor will be around for when delivery starts to occur orcas is so far into the future that we just can't even comprehend that but that they are going to be able to point to something and say we're pretty confident that we're going to actually get this seemed to be something that was able to win them over so much money all right well keep paying your taxes my friends because we are out of time tomorrow i will be back with david spears for all of the latest newest latest and remember thursday is the the party room where we take your questions.

Frank Kelly is looking forward to your questions.

I might give a few additional comments to the party room at abc.net.au.

We will try to answer them.

See you, Brett.

See you, PK.