Ed Husic on election day 2025. He was safely returned in the seat of Chifley, but was soon relegated to the backbench. Photo: Ed Husic.
An outcome of the federal election washup is that Ed Husic has been unshackled from the constraints of cabinet solidarity and is speaking more freely in condemning the atrocities in Gaza and Labor’s response to it.
While easily retaining his seat of Chifley for Labor at the 3 May election, Mr Husic was subsequently dumped from Anthony Albanese’s front bench, and was forced to swap his Industry and Science ministry for a seat on the backbench.
It was a messy and ruthless factional play that allowed Husic and Mark Dreyfus, who was the Attorney-General, to be turfed from the ministry as Labor began its second term.
The Prime Minister could have stepped in to retain the only Muslim (Husic) and the only Jewish (Dreyfus) ministers in his cabinet, but he didn’t.
That’s the way Labor rolls, and Husic, in particular, was not happy about it.
He immediately labelled Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles a “factional assassin” for orchestrating the manoeuvre to have him dumped.
Mr Marles seems to have lost some standing inside the Labor machine because of the move, but he’s still on the front bench and Mr Husic isn’t.
As effective or otherwise as Husic was as minister, the ‘live by the sword, die by sword’ principle came into play with his return to the backbench.
In Opposition, Mr Husic got into Bill Shorten’s front bench at the expense of a female shadow minister, Sharon Bird, who was sent to the backbench to make way for Husic, who was threatening to shift internal allegiances if he wasn’t promoted.
Between 2016 and 2019, he had a couple of portfolios before having to make way for another woman, Kristina Keneally, to join Labor’s shadow ministry.
He was back on the Opposition front bench by the end of 2020 and became a minister after Labor’s 2022 election win.
Now back on the backbench (because that’s the way Labor rolls), Mr Husic is being more vocal than ever over Gaza and more critical of his own government’s approach to the crisis.
That he is calling for more action and outrage from Labor over this issue is a good thing.
Since losing his ministry (and after getting his criticisms of Mr Marles out of the way), Mr Husic has become the first Labor MP to publicly call for the Federal Government to consider backing Palestinian statehood.
He did that through an interview with SBS in the lead-up to a United Nations conference.
And he threw Labor’s own words back at the Federal Government.
“We’ve said as a party and in our platform that that’s what we would push for. And I think whatever opportunity we can seize, we should,” he said.
In the same interview, he also condemned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government for causing “mass starvation” and blocking the free flow of humanitarian aid.
“That is a conscious decision. It’s not an accident, and the use of starvation is recognised as a war crime under international humanitarian law, and so the Israeli government needs to be held accountable for that,” he said.
Mr Husic has now ramped up his criticism of his own government by penning an op-ed that appeared in the Guardian on Saturday (24 May).
In it, he reminded Mr Albanese that Labor governments have been traditionally led by prime ministers who take a more principled position on international crises than his appears to be willing to do over Gaza.
“Like many on my side of politics, I’m especially proud of the fact that Labor governments have a history of stubbornly defying the feeble-minded; willing to flex our middle-power muscle, even in the face of occasional rebuff,” Mr Husic wrote.
Comparing Labor’s track record (such as Bob Hawke’s forthright position on South African apartheid) to the current inaction would have – and should have – been embarrassing for Mr Albanese.
But it’s how Mr Husic began his piece that was perhaps the most powerful.
“Last Monday the UK, Canada and France deliberately issued the strongest joint statement to date about what they said was the ‘intolerable’ level of human suffering in Gaza,” he wrote.
“It is a further sign that many of our good friends in the international community remain aghast at the treatment of innocent civilians in Gaza.
“It was an important stand by them. Australia could have proudly joined them.
“We didn’t.”
That’s a very good use of Mr Husic’s new role as a backbench member of the second-term Labor Federal Government.
Undoubtedly, the Member for Chifley will keep the pressure on his government.
More power to him in that effort.
