Burns: platform does not represent govt policy

Macnamara MP Josh Burns personally negotiated the wording of Labor’s new Middle East platform with Calwell MP Basem Abdo, and has conceded he did not have the numbers at the party’s national conference in Adelaide to secure a stronger outcome.

Speaking to Adam Slonim on the Behind the Headlines podcast, Burns said he entered the foreign policy debate knowing he was in the minority.

“I don’t have the numbers. I’m in a part of the party where we are not the majority, and the majority of the floor would probably take a view that is different to what many in the Jewish community would want from the government,” he said.

The wording he settled on with Abdo was a compromise, he said.

“Nothing we did was going to solve the Middle East. Nothing we did was going to bring peace. It was just a statement of the Australian Labor Party in Adelaide.”