Labor Cheers for a Terrorist — While Melburnians March for Iran's Freedom
Thousands of Victorians rallied at the steps of Parliament House earlier this year demanding freedom for Iran. Yesterday, Victorian Labor voted to free a convicted terrorist. Jane Foreman says the Allan government's party has chosen the wrong side of history.
While thousands of Melburnians — Iranians and Jews standing shoulder to shoulder — have gathered at the steps of Victoria's Parliament House in recent months to demand freedom from the regime that has massacred its own people, Victorian Labor was doing something else entirely at its state conference yesterday. It voted to support campaigns calling for the release of Marwan Barghouti, a man serving five life sentences in Israel for directing the murder of civilians.
And then — in the same breath — it voted down an amendment condemning Iran.
"Thousands of Victorians have marched outside this very Parliament against the Iranian regime. Melburnians watched their synagogue get firebombed by IRGC-linked operatives. And Victorian Labor's response is to vote against condemning Iran. I am lost for words."
This is not an abstract foreign policy debate. Since late 2024, IRGC-linked operatives have carried out arson attacks against Jewish targets in Melbourne and Sydney. ASIO has directly linked Iran to antisemitic attacks on Australian soil. The Iranian ambassador was expelled. Australians know what this regime does — not just to its own people, but here, in our cities.
Yet when Victorian Labor delegates had the chance to say clearly: we condemn Iran's human rights abuses — they said no.
"When Iranians and Jewish Australians are dancing together outside Parliament House because the regime that firebombed a Melbourne synagogue has finally fallen, and Labor can't even pass a motion condemning it — you have to ask: whose side are they on?."
The motion supporting convicted terrorist Barghouti's release is not an isolated lurch. It is part of a pattern inside a Labor Party increasingly captured by factions that romanticise terrorism and treat the Iranian theocracy as a legitimate grievance movement. Premier Jacinta Allan must repudiate this motion publicly and immediately. Silence is not neutrality — it is complicity
"Victorian families — Jewish, Iranian-Australian, and every family that watched the Bondi massacre unfold — deserve to know that their government does not legitimise terror. After yesterday, they have every right to wonder."
Family First's Jane Foreman is committed to demanding the Victorian government formally condemn the Iranian regime's human rights abuses and its IRGC-linked attacks on Victorian soil; calling on Premier Allan to immediately and publicly repudiate the Barghouti motion; and standing without equivocation with Victoria's Jewish and Iranian-Australian communities against political movements that normalise, excuse, or celebrate violence.
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