Australia's Quds Ploy Fails to Avoid By-Election Beating, Risks Muslim Backlash
The results, with about a fifth of the Wentworth electorate switching their vote away from Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s government, are on track to plunge the ruling conservative coalition into political chaos and a parliamentary minority.
Its Israel gambit could unravel further.
Morrison’s unexpected announcement last week that he was open to Australia moving its mission from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, as the United States did in May, ended some 70 years staying out of one of the Middle East’s thorniest issues.
It delighted Israel, infuriated Palestinians and was seen locally, where he trails in opinion polls, as a naked grab for votes in Wentworth, the most strongly Jewish electorate in the country at around 13 percent.
It is already showing signs of alienating Muslim voters the government also needs to win over in an election due within months.
“It’s not the proper process,” Ali Shikder, 42, said of the move over sweet milk tea at a cafe in Lakemba, in Sydney’s working-class western suburbs, 18 km (11 miles) inland from the city’s well-heeled east.
The Jerusalem proposal was the latest example of how out of touch the government was with the Muslim community, said Shikdar, a Bangladeshi migrant.
“We have had no say, but we have the power to say yes or no (at the ballot box) and I think it could change the way people vote,” he said.
For Morrison, elevated to prime minister eight weeks ago in a party-room coup, Saturday’s result is a stinging rebuke for him and the chicanery that has turned the national leadership into a revolving door.
Morrison will now likely need to negotiate with Wentworth’s successful independent candidate, Kerryn Phelps, and four other independents to pass laws.
The embassy proposal drew concern from neighboring Indonesia and a sterner rebuke from 13 Arab ambassadors who met in Canberra and agreed to condemn the shift as very worrying.
Across a belt of narrowly held seats in Sydney’s west, Morrison’s Israel policy shift upset many Muslims who could influence the outcome of the general election due before May next year.
“Everyone here opposes it,” Faisal Mohammed, 38, said while holding court with his friends, who agreed, on the outside tables of a biryiani shop in Lakemba in the afternoon sun last week.
