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Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi has faced a disciplinary motion in Senate after she held a sign that read “Gaza is starving. Words won’t feed them. Sanction Israel,” during a parliamentary address a day earlier.
Foreign Minister and Labor’s senate Leader Penny Wong moved the motion on Wednesday. It passed 50 to 11, with the Greens and independent senator Fatima Payman voting against it.
The Opposition had pushed an amendment to suspend Faruqi from the chamber but was ultimately voted down by Labor and the Greens.
“The reality is, this is a very difficult conflict,” Wong said, referring to the Hamas-Israel war. “I have often spoken in this place about the need for all of us to be responsible about how we deal with it here,” Wong said.
During debate on the motion, the Senate broadcast feed was briefly suspended after a pro-Palestinian protester from the public gallery interjected.
The protester reportedly could be heard shouting “Israel is murdering children” and “[Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu is a war criminal”, before being removed from the chamber.
Netanyahu has not been convicted of war crimes but is wanted by the International Criminal Court, having been accused of being criminally responsible for acts including murder, persecution and starvation as a weapon of war as part of a “widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population of Gaza”. The Israeli prime minister has said ruling as being based on absurd and false allegations.
Faruqi’s protest on Tuesday came as parliament sat for the first time since the May federal election. Its opening coincided with the release of a joint statement — signed by Wong and more than 20 of her global counterparts — calling for an immediate end to Israel’s violence in Gaza and condemning the denial of humanitarian assistance to starving Palestinians. Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke described it as Australia’s strongest statement yet. Israel’s foreign ministry criticised it, saying it was “disconnected from reality”.
Faruqi hit back at Wong accusing her of protesting for “attention”, saying she felt she was being forced to “apologise for telling the truth.”
“I will not back down from this call because Palestinians are being murdered, starved and displaced by Israel as we speak, and all you can do is crack down on people who protest, who tell the truth, who hold up a mirror to you all for your silence and complicity,” she said.
“Labor and the Coalition in this chamber wants to avoid the truth. You don’t want to see it or hear it, and now here we are.”
Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi held the sign during Governor-General Sam Mostyn’s speech in the Senate chamber. Source: AAP / Mick Tsikas
Greens leader Larissa Waters also defended Faruqi, saying Wong’s characterisation of her protest was a “disgrace”.
“What a disgrace to say that it was attention-seeking by Senator Faruqi for herself, rather than the issue of starving women, children and men in Palestine,” Waters said. “That says more about Senator Wong than it does about Senator Faruqi.”
The motion expressed “profound disapproval” over Faruqi’s “disrespectful” protest. It said it drew Governor-General Sam Mostyn, who was addressing the chamber at the time, “into political debate which is highly inappropriate and undermines our democratic system”.
Senate president Sue Lines told Faruqi her protest was “utterly disrespectful and showed a complete disregard for the rules, the traditions and the customs of this place”.
