Gaza war was ‘that straw on a big camel’s back’, says Burke challenger

When Ziad Basyouny heard about a protest unfolding at Granville Boys High School in Sydney’s west, he felt compelled to join in.

The students were voicing their concern after their support officer Wesam Charkawi was temporarily barred from attending the school for pushing back against the widespread condemnation and “selective moral outrage” of two Bankstown nurses who were captured on video threatening to harm Israeli patients.

Both nurses have now been charged and the school protest that followed the incident was roundly criticised by Jewish groups and some elements of the media.

But Dr Basyouny says the anger of students and parents was emblematic of a sentiment in his own community, which he’s hoping to represent in federal parliament.

“There is double standards and we’re only treated that way because we’re not politically savvy, we’re not politically powerful,” Dr Basyouny says.

“It highlights the double standards, that’s making people feel that injustice, making people want change.”

Within days, the dispute with the NSW Education Department was resolved and Sheikh Wesam returned to school to the cheers of students.

‘Gaza issue just represented that straw on a big camel’s back’

But it hasn’t quelled Dr Basyouny’s frustration. The Egyptian-born GP is now attempting to unseat one of the federal government’s most senior figures, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke, in the safe Labor seat of Watson.

His campaign hasn’t been without controversy. He’s faced criticism for comments he shared on social media following the October 7 Hamas terrorist attacks, which he defends as a show of solidarity for the liberation of the people of Gaza.

Dr Basyouny, who is based in Sydney’s south-west, assesses cost of living pressures and access to better health care as the biggest issues at play in the electorate. But he also believes the government’s response to the Israel-Gaza conflict has galvanised a sense of “injustice” among voters.

“The Gaza issue just represented that straw on a big camel’s back of injustices,” he says.

“That feeling of injustice when you have to wait eight months to have a procedure that would only wait for three months in the hospital 15 minutes away makes people feel ignored … and this is the issue that Gaza highlighted.”

The seat of Watson is considered to be Labor heartland. Tony Burke holds it with a margin of 15.2 per cent after around two decades in office.

It takes in suburbs like Greenacre, Punchbowl, Belmore and Bankstown, making it one of the most diverse in the country.

The electorate is also home to one of the nation’s biggest Muslim populations. Nationally, about 3.2 per cent of residents listed Islam as their religion. In Watson, it’s close to a quarter of the population.

“I’ve lived in the area all my life and some of the people running against me haven’t,” Mr Burke tells the ABC.

The minister concedes that some voters in his electorate are dissatisfied with his government’s response to the war in the Middle East, saying: “There’s no doubt that there’s lots of people in the community who would have liked the government to take a different position.”

He points to the government’s call for Israel to “exercise restraint” following October 7 and Australia’s vote at the United Nations General Assembly supporting an “immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire” in Gaza.

“We’ve had a fundamental change in our voting in the General Assembly, what we’ve done for aid, and what I’ve personally done with respect to providing safe haven for a good number of Palestinians during a horrific time,” he says.

The issue is one of the factors that has motivated some of Dr Basyouny’s volunteers.

Medical student Cian de Bhaldraithe, 28, has lived in Lakemba his whole life. He says he was aghast at Labor’s reaction to the war in Gaza.

“I think it’s been shameful how our government’s enabled such truly indescribable brutality and I think anybody you ask, they’d want to do what they can to make sure we’re not continuing to enable that,” he says.

Teacher and single mother Eppy Narjarrine echoed that sentiment.

“I feel that they’re [the government] complicit,” she says.

“They haven’t been strong enough in their stance, that they just give, it’s like more tokenism. ‘Oh yes, we’ll recognise Palestine as a state’ … is, like, a bit too late.”

Ms Narjarrine says she and her family have always voted Labor, but that will change at this election.

The contest in Labor’s heartland

Unseating a 20-year veteran of a safe seat is no small task — but it’s also not without precedent.

Just ask former prime minister Tony Abbott, who lost his blue-ribbon seat of Warringah after 25 years to independent Zali Steggall.

Election analyst John Black expects Mr Burke to hold Watson, along with fellow cabinet minister Jason Clare in the equally diverse neighbouring electorate of Blaxland.

But he argues voter discontent over the Israel-Gaza war could be more dangerous for the government in a marginal seat like Parramatta.

“It’s going to make a bigger impact, I suspect, in the marginals, more so than the safer Labor seats,” Mr Black says.

He points to the election in the United Kingdom last year, when UK Labour lost a handful of seats to pro-Palestinian candidates and where about 20 per cent of the population identifies as Muslim.

“It all depends on how angry they are and how much loyalty there is to the local member as a long-standing MP for the area where they’ve been able to establish links and so on,” he says.

“What we saw in the UK during their elections were swings against the British Labour Party of up to 35 per cent — they were huge.

“A great chunk of the Muslim vote just broke away from the British Labor Party in protest at what they saw was a lack of support.”

The friends of Tony Burke

Fellow GP and community leader Jamal Rifi agrees with Dr Basyouny’s diagnosis that there is a clear sense of community dissatisfaction at Labor’s response to the war.

But his treatment plan is different. He argues Mr Burke remains best placed to represent the electorate, starting a “Friends of Tony Burke” campaign to help the incumbent’s re-election effort.

“There will be a backlash and there is great dissatisfaction, but people also have been influenced by different parties towards having negativity towards the Labor Party,” Dr Rifi says.

He alleges that independents like Dr Basyouny are conflating the issues.

“Unfortunately, our pain has clouded some people’s judgement, but has not clouded my political judgement. We know what’s best for the community, and we will work for what’s best for the community, not for individuals who are opportunistic.”

Mr Burke also cautions voters to consider the Coalition’s position on the Israel-Gaza conflict before deciding their vote, warning that Labor losing seats could install Opposition Leader Peter Dutton as prime minister.

“For every frustration that some people will feel, Peter Dutton is worse on and demonstrably so,” he says.

“He didn’t think anybody from that part of the world should be coming to Australia at all.

“The day after the election, either Peter Dutton will be prime minister or Anthony Albanese will be prime minister … if they choose not to vote for me, which is their democratic right, then that opens the way for Peter Dutton.

“That’s the mathematical reality of it.”

When the ABC interviewed Mr Burke for this story, he had just presided over one of several mass citizenship ceremonies in Sydney, a move that was criticised by the opposition as a pre-election vote grab in marginal outer-suburban seats.

Mr Burke, who is also the immigration minister, has defended the blitz on the basis that the government was clearing a “huge backlog” of prospective citizens who had been fully processed and were awaiting ceremonies.

Dr Basyouny, himself Muslim, is one of a number of independent candidates running in Western Sydney seats. He insists his religion doesn’t define his candidacy.

“I’m a Muslim. It’s a part of my identity and a part of me. But that has nothing to do with the fact that I’m a Watson candidate,” he says.

While he has received the backing of groups like the Muslim Vote and Muslim Votes Matter, he insists: “I’m not the Muslim Vote or the Muslim Vote Matters candidate.”

He faced criticism last year after he shared a controversial Facebook post in the days following the October 7 Hamas attacks.

The original, translated post reads: “Dreams, my friend, come true for those who seek and work to see them come true!”.

It appears to reference the First Intifada in 1987 with an illustration of a person throwing rocks and the 2023 Hamas attacks with a paraglider firing a machine gun.

At the time, Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chair Alex Ryvchin condemned the posts and suggested Dr Basyouny was unfit to hold office.

“Anyone who takes pride in such acts is a danger to our society and manifestly unfit to stand as a candidate for any office,” he told the Nine newspapers.

Asked about the post, Dr Basyouny says it was not supporting the attack on civilians but instead expressing solidarity against oppression

“As a human, as a doctor, as a Muslim … attacks on civilians is not to be condoned, accepted or in any shape or form,” he says.

“There was a celebration of the liberation of the people of Gaza from that 20 years incarceration in their biggest prison on earth.”

Cost of living still front of mind

With the local campaign already underway, the spotlight on the once-unremarkable contest will only intensify as polling day approaches. Both candidates agree that the cost of living is at the front of mind for voters in the electorate.

“The issues that happened over the past couple of years where you feel that Labor is not listening, cost of living, people are in agony under the cost of living issues,” Dr Basyouny says.

Mr Burke says it is the number one issue brought up with him.

“You’ve got to remember, when people are considering cost of living, they’re not looking at the national statistics. What they’re looking at is what’s happening in their supermarkets and what’s happening in their bank accounts, what’s happening with rent, what’s happening with mortgages,” he says.

“The government’s been fighting, and I’ve been fighting, on every one of those issues for it is at risk.”

For undecided voters like Mohammad Rafiq, it feels like his daily reality has only been getting harder.

Over the last couple of years, the local grocer has struggled with the soaring costs of rent and electricity to run his business in Lakemba.

“Business is very quiet, very low and [I must] spend a lot … Rent is more than $5,000, now more than $8,000,” he says. “It’s too much cost.”