It is almost been a year since the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel. Since then, the conflict in the Middle East has increasingly impinged on our domestic politics, despite Australia having no direct role in it.
Author
Michelle Grattan
Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra
The horrific death toll in Gaza and the increase in both antisemitism and Islamophobia in Australia have focused the attention of the Albanese government. Both Muslim and Jewish communities have criticised the government for its responses to the conflict, as it tries to maintain a sense of social cohesion.
Australian Muslims are one of the fastest-growing minority groups in the country. They are important to Labor in some heartland seats. The recently-formed group Muslim Votes Matter aims to amplify the Muslim voice. The group plans to back candidates who support the issues it says Muslims care about.
Today we’re joined on the podcast by Ghaith Krayem, a spokesman for the group. He is a past president of the Islamic Council of Victoria and formerly CEO of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils.
Krayem says the Muslim community is frustrated over the government’s consultative process in relation to appointing an envoy to combat Islamophobia. There is still no announcement, despite the envoy to combat antiseminitism being in place for some time.
What this process demonstrates is the way in which governments generally engage with our community and why it’s problematic. So there’s been no widespread consultation around what the requirement is and what the role is and how it would operate with the community. So that doesn’t mean government isn’t talking with different individuals or groups within [the] community. But these are very narrow and limited communication channels that they are using. They are missing completely the sentiment on the ground, which is very distrustful of this government right now, given the marginalisation and minimisation of our concerns with respect to Palestine in the last ten months.
For them to not have a very clear and transparent process around the dimensioning of this role and the appointment, means whoever is appointed into that role at the moment will not have the buy-in of the community. And without that, the role is going to fail.
Apart from the Gaza issue, Krayem talks about other issues of concern to the Muslim community:
So our concerns are absolutely social justice, Islamophobia. There’s been an increase in Islamophobia, and it’s disappointing that the government also has now […] backtracked from their commitment to a religious discrimination piece of legislation.
Most of our community reside in areas which would be considered the lowest socioeconomic brackets. And so we’ve got real issues around economic equity and access to pathways to help our community grow and advance themselves.
General societal issues that we’re concerned about. […] Drug and alcohol abuse is a real societal problem.
Climate change is actually, from a faith perspective, a very fundamental issue for us as well. How we’re managing and safeguarding our planet. These are all things which are common across the board.
On how Muslim Votes Matter will gather information on candidates, and if being a Muslim is a requirement for their support, Krayem says:
We have no concern whatsoever what the candidate’s faith is. It’s not even going to be a factor in our assessment. […] What we have seen in the last ten months is once you’re in parliament, your faith makes no difference to whether you are going to be supportive or vocal around the issues that are important to us.
The way in which we will get information about the stance of these candidates is going to be a range of things. We will invite candidates to respond to questions. Some will, some won’t. That’s their choice. We will have a look at any information that they publish on what their policies are.
On the Coalition’s calls for a pause and greater security checks on Gazan refugee intake into Australia:
I mean, whatever the process is, we would expect them to go through whatever the standard process that’s in place. Now, if the security organisations believe that there should be a greater security process in place, then that’s the recommendation that they make. I will take the lead of the security organisations over Mr Dutton’s views on what risk these people from Gaza pose.
On the relationship between the Muslim community and the Jewish community in the wake of the war:
There’s no question that those relationships, at a structural level, have been strained and damaged in the last nearly 12 months. There’s no question about that. I think the fundamental point is we all want those relationships to be strong, robust and healthy.
But it’s not the conflict that’s damaged social cohesion. And we can’t rebuild those those bridges and those relationships in an environment right now where one side, the pro-Palestinian side, feels that it’s been silenced and marginalised. Everybody’s open, including our organisation, to working with anybody who is genuinely wanting to engage and not necessarily agreeing with our position but at least accepting and acknowledging that there is another position here, one which goes well beyond the last 12 months.
Social cohesion isn’t about one side giving up everything to maintain cohesion. Social cohesion has to be based on mutual respect and justice and a feeling that all parties have an ability to come together in a manner that has a sense of equality about it.
