Gillard Government says no to Durban III
AUSTRALIA will not send representatives to an international conference that is expected to be a hotbed of anti-Israel sentiment.
AUSTRALIA will not send representatives to an international conference that is expected to be a hotbed of anti-Israel sentiment.
The Gillard Government announced on Tuesday evening it would not be attending the High Level Meeting on the Durban Declaration and Plan of Action, better known as Durban III.
The announcement was welcomed by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition Julie Bishop, who had publicly called on the government to opt-out as soon as possible. “I was pleased that the Government has heeded my call to boycott Durban,” Bishop told The AJN. “Given the fact that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a keynote speaker [at the conference], people are entitled to have grave concerns.”
Bishop said she was also calling on the Government to oppose a vote for Palestinian statehood at the United Nations next month.
“There has been a longstanding bipartisan position on the two-state solution and this [vote] will undermine the peace process,” she said.
In announcing the Government’s decision, a spokesperson for Prime Minister Julia Gillard said Australia had been involved in consultations and planning for the United Nations Human Rights Council-led conference as a way of opposing extreme language finding its way into the text of the declaration.
“But we have not been convinced that the high level meeting will avoid unbalanced criticisms of Israel and the airing of anti-Semitic views,” the spokesperson said.
Melbourne Ports MP Michael Danby, who had lobbied the government to withdraw from the conference, praised the Prime Minister for the decision.
Danby called Durban III “a controversial international conference that seems to stir up more passion than it resolves”. Several community leaders echoed Danby’s sentiments. Dr Danny Lamm, president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, said his organisation had been urging the Government to take action since November.
“Since that time, we have written to and met with both the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd and we have said that Australia should take no part in a process that remains irredeemably corrupted by racism and by attacks on Israel’s legitimacy as the state of the Jewish people,” Dr Lamm said.
He added: “When a respected middle-power democracy like Australia decides to stay away from as high profile an event as Durban III it sends a powerful message to the international community that the UN Human Rights Council and related organs of the UN General Assembly need to clean up their act.”
Zionist Federation of Australia president Philip Chester said he was “extremely pleased that the Australian government has once again taken the principled stance and refuses to participate in this flawed and dangerous meeting”.
Dr Colin Rubenstein, executive director of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council called Gillard’s decision “principled and honorable”.
“The Australian Government made the right decision, as it did at Durban II in 2009, in joining other democratic countries … in declining to participate in a conference which, sadly, appears certain to make a mockery of the noble principles it is ostensibly dedicated to progressing,” Dr Rubenstein said.
NAOMI LEVIN
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