The real story was not the platform

The headlines following Labor’s National Conference have been predictable. The party’s revised platform on Israel and Palestine has shifted further against Israel, drawing criticism from Australia’s Jewish community while simultaneously disappointing those on the activist left who wanted it to go even further.

From the commentary, one could be forgiven for thinking the conference was simply another contest over who had won and lost. That, however, misses the most important story.

Politics is not merely the resolutions passed on a conference floor. It is also theatre, symbolism and the signals political parties send about the kind of nation they wish to govern. Sometimes those signals matter far more than the text of a motion, because they shape political culture long after delegates have gone home.

For that reason, the defining moment was the speeches delivered by Josh Burns and Bassem Abdo.

Here were two Australians, a Jewish MP and a Palestinian MP, speaking from profoundly different experiences of the same conflict. Neither diluted their convictions. Neither pretended that history or suffering could simply be equalised. Yet both spoke with restraint, empathy and, above all, a shared commitment to Australia. The standing ovation they received was recognition that there remains another way of conducting politics.

Since October 7, Australian Jews have increasingly found themselves judged not as fellow citizens but as proxies for a foreign government. Political disagreement with Israel has too often become suspicion of Jewish Australians themselves. In some quarters, criticism has slipped into demonisation, and demonisation into a form of moral absolutism in which Jewish identity is presumed to carry collective guilt.

The consequences of that shift are no longer theoretical. Bondi reminded Australia that hatred rarely remains confined to rhetoric.

That is why the Burns-Abdo moment was so significant. It suggested that the governing party of Australia understood something fundamental: disagreement over the Middle East must never become licence to fracture Australian society.

It also explains why Ed Husic’s intervention felt so discordant. The issue was never that delegates should be prevented from criticising Israel. Israel itself is one of the most argumentative democracies on earth. The problem arises when criticism gives way to moral absolutism – when complex conflicts are reduced to narratives of absolute innocence confronting absolute evil, and when political virtue is measured by the escalating intensity of condemnation.

Moral absolutism is seductive because it relieves us of the burden of thinking. Once convinced that only one side possesses virtue, there is no longer any need for curiosity, humility or even evidence. Opponents cease to be people who may hold part of the truth; they become obstacles to justice itself. I heard it in the banal platitudes of the “Gaza protesters” I engaged outside the conference hall.

Social media has accelerated this instinct. Politics is transformed into a perpetual morality play in which one’s own side must always occupy the role of the righteous.

Yet that is not how democratic politics has ever functioned. Politics is almost always incremental. It advances through compromise, persuasion and imperfect victories. Those who imagine every political contest as a zero-sum battle between right and wrong rarely build lasting coalitions. More often, they deepen division while congratulating themselves on their moral clarity.

Several people responding to my reflections after the conference made the obvious point that the struggle inside Labor is far from over. They are right. There remain influential voices with significant voting blocs determined to push the party towards ever harsher positions on Israel. Nobody should imagine that one standing ovation has resolved those tensions.

That is why so many Jewish Labor members continue to remain engaged. We understand that democratic parties are living institutions whose direction is never fixed. Political culture is shaped one conference, one debate and one conversation at a time.

The Burns-Abdo moment pointed towards a politics of coexistence. It recognised that Australians can disagree deeply while refusing to deny one another’s humanity. That lesson speaks directly to the health of Australian democracy itself.

The real achievement of this conference, therefore, was that, for a brief but significant moment, Labor finally demonstrated that it understands the difference between criticism and demonisation, between political conviction and moral absolutism.

In a post-Bondi Australia, that may be the most important signal Labor could have sent.

Adam Slonim is an ALP Life Member, podcaster and businessman.