Maybe that's why she seems nervous during lunch. Polite but not warm. There is a solidity in the way one sits upright throughout the meal, even after pouring a glass of wine and clinking our glasses.
Melissa Park and Latika Burke discuss food, war, and politics.credit: Jenny Maggie
She lists Palestine as the primary issue (the others being animal welfare and refugees) she cared about during the “very difficult” period she sat in Parliament when Prime Ministers Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd were at war, forcing MPs to choose between them. .
Park served as the member for Fremantle from 2007 until her retirement in 2016. She also ended any hope she had of a political comeback in 2019, when she ran for the seat of Curtin, when she made comments about an Israeli soldier forcing a pregnant woman. A Palestinian woman was reported to be drinking bleach.
The then Labor leader, Bill Shorten, a staunch ally of Israel, quickly released her and the “star candidate” light went out.
Park often hopes we'll turn the conversation to her work on nuclear disarmament, but then she returns to the war between Israel and Gaza even as I turn to our time in Canberra – me as a journalist at a press gallery and her as a Member of Parliament – Okos and geopolitics.
In her pre-political career as an international lawyer with the United Nations, she worked in Kosovo and Lebanon. But in the early 2000s she lived in Gaza before Hamas was elected to run the Palestinian Authority in 2006.
“I don't think there's another Australian politician who can say that, so I think I have a legitimate point to make,” she said, describing it as her duty to speak out on the issue.
“I feel very sad and afraid for people,” she says now.
Even as Labor today increasingly becomes home to more MPs and members sympathetic to the Palestinians, her views would make life difficult for the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary.
She told me that Israel is carrying out “collective punishments” against the Palestinian people in Gaza, and that the Western media is not telling the whole story when it comes to the conflict as an attack by Hamas, which, although unprovoked, was not without provocation because it occurred in the context of occupation. It lasted for decades.
Melissa Park's mission is to rid the world of nuclear weapons.credit: Jenny Maggie
She criticizes extremism on both sides, naming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's political party, Likud, but agrees that Hamas has made it difficult for Palestinian supporters in the West to defend their cause. “I don't think it's helpful at all.”
But when asked directly whether she classified Hamas, a terrorist organization banned in Australia, Britain and the United States, as extremist, she said: “There are different wings of Hamas. There is a political wing, there is a military wing, and there is a social wing.”
She says extremists on both sides must be ignored if we want to find a solution.
Park's two-and-a-half years in Gaza helped shape her post-political career more than two decades later. She vividly remembers attending a Hiroshima commemoration in 2002 at the Gaza port where hundreds of Palestinian schoolchildren made paper boats, lit them with candles, and then floated them on the water. It expresses its regret that the children of Gaza today are the ones being killed and maimed by bombs.
But Park's mission now is to convince the world to sign up to abolish nuclear weapons.
There's a brief smile and interruption to the heavy conversation when one of the very attractive dishes arrives, and she reflexively grabs her phone to start filming. I promise to send her high-resolution photos of the food carefully taken by our photographer Jenny Magee.
Ending the threat of nuclear war seems an impossible task, given China and North Korea's buildup of their arsenals, Russia's threats to use weapons against Ukraine, and Britain and the United States' justification of their weapons as a vital deterrent against autocrats who use their weapons.
Vegetarian Fare: Melissa Park, a vegetarian-turned-vegan, researched the menu beforehand.credit: Jenny Maggie
Park's Swiss-based organization pressures governments to sign the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
The Labor government, led by her former left-wing ally Anthony Albanese, has not signed up, despite the prime minister's pledge to do so at the Labor conference in 2018. Richard Marles, now deputy prime minister and defense minister, has backed the proposal. minister.
She said Albanese could sign the document tomorrow: “I look forward to his announcement that Australia will join this treaty.
“There is a great deal of anxiety [in the region about AUKUS] …and the possibility that this could lead to Australia acquiring or hosting nuclear weapons.
“Thus, by signing the treaty, Australia will essentially assert its sovereignty.”
Park is confident Albanese will stick to his word but agrees he does not govern like a leftist. “I wish Labor governments in general had more courage to act on these principles.”
Park says none of the governments with nuclear weapons engage with ICAN, but civil society in Western countries such as the United States, France and Britain do. As for Russia and China, they do neither. “I don't expect North Korea to have a civil society.”
She believes Australia is not immune to the effects of nuclear war, even if limited, including its climate impacts.
“We're not just talking about burning hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people,” she says, warning of the possibility of a “nuclear winter” that would block out sunlight and cause widespread crop failure.
Desert to sweeten the day.credit: Jenny Maggie
“Even a limited nuclear war, between Pakistan and India for example, could directly kill 120 million people and put at least two billion people at risk of starvation due to nuclear winter.”
It says AUKUS has increased the threat facing Australia. “And of course with all of our military entanglement that we have with the United States now, we are making ourselves a target.”
Bill.credit: Jenny Maggie
Park says she would not have supported AAU as a member of the caucus, saying it would not do a cost-benefit analysis, and that no one had decided how to deal with nuclear waste.
Perhaps the biggest issue for me is the issue of sovereignty and being so closely entangled with the US military in every way makes us a bigger target and diminishes our voice.
“I think there should be much greater public scrutiny of its merits.”
She doubts that AUKUS submarines are necessary to deter China, saying the money would be better spent on housing and climate change mitigation. The general feeling of “worry about the world” would be better served by diplomacy rather than the “militarized beating of war drums we are seeing in Australia”.
Park speaks softly, but there is an intensity, even brevity, when I ask her if her views are a bit outdated, given the massive shift around the world that recognizes China's increasing aggressiveness.
“What do you mean, sorry?”
I point to China's detonation of water cannons on Philippine ships in Philippine waters as an example.
“Is there any indication that China poses any threat to Australia?” Park responds. “Where's the evidence?”
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She says Beijing's massive punitive tariffs on Australian wine and barley producers and the coal ban were “in response to certain things Australia has also done on the international stage – calling for an investigation into the origins of Covid”.
“I'm not here to defend China,” she says. “We should not make something look worse than it really is, it is completely exaggerated.
“Most of what I saw about China was, yes, they are very regional when it comes to what they consider their country and their country's borders, to a large extent, but there is no clear intention to go any further than that.”
Beijing has engaged in skirmishes with the Philippines in waters that an international court ruled do not belong to China.
When this is pointed out, Park says, “These are all matters of what they consider to be their territorial integrity,” adding that countries should not pick and choose which international laws they want to abide by, and return to where they should abide. The conversation started.
“There is a widespread violation of international law happening in the Middle East right now,” she says.
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