Queensland is not the state where Labor's record on Palestine and migration is best known — that reputation belongs to Sydney's western suburbs. But it is a more revealing test case, because Queensland has historically been the toughest state in the country for federal Labor, and because 2025 scrambled its political map more than any election in a generation. Labor went from five Queensland seats to twelve, gaining seven — two from the Greens (Griffith and Brisbane) and five from the Liberal National Party, including Dickson, held for twenty-four years by then-Opposition Leader Peter Dutton. Only Ryan remains Greens-held, its member Elizabeth Watson-Brown now the sole Green in the House of Representatives. This briefing sets out, member by member, what Queensland's federal Labor MPs and senators have actually said and how they have voted on recognising Palestinian statehood, on the war in Gaza, and on the migration and humanitarian program — sourced to Hansard, division records, dated public statements and the AEC, current as at 26 July 2026. It is an audit of public conduct, not of who anyone is.
Two threads run through it. On Palestine: Treasurer Jim Chalmers became the first federal minister to publicly back recognition, on 31 July 2025; the government announced on 11 August 2025 it would recognise the State of Palestine, and formally did so on 21 September 2025 alongside Canada, the UK and Portugal, conditional on Hamas having no role in future Palestinian governance, Gaza's demilitarisation and Palestinian elections. On migration: the Commonwealth held the 2025–26 permanent Migration Program at 185,000 places (71 per cent skilled, 28 per cent family) and the Humanitarian Program at 20,000 places, both unchanged, amid record global displacement and a domestic housing-affordability debate. No Queensland Labor MP or senator currently holds the immigration or foreign affairs portfolio, so this bench speaks to these questions mostly from cabinet-adjacent, backbench and Senate positions rather than as the ministers who own the decisions.
The strongest case for it
Before that record is tested, the strongest version of the position it describes deserves a fair hearing. On Palestine, the legal and moral case is not a fringe one: roughly three-quarters of UN member states recognised Palestinian statehood before Australia did, and by September 2025 Australia was joining, not leading, a wave that included Canada, the UK, France and Portugal. Recognition's advocates argue that decades of predicating statehood on a negotiated settlement gave neither side an incentive to negotiate, that international humanitarian law was being tested past its limits in Gaza, and that recognition — paired, as Australia's was, with explicit conditions excluding Hamas from future Palestinian government — backs the two-state outcome that has been formal Labor policy for decades, not a departure from it. Graham Perrett's own parliamentary case, made from the backbench years before recognition became government policy, rested on the same premise: that Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank was itself the obstacle to the two-state solution both major parties claim to support, and that Palestinians "do not have their state" seventy-five years after the world first committed to one.
On migration, the case is equally direct. Australia is a country built on immigration, with roughly one in three residents born overseas; family reunion and skilled migration have underpinned two generations of growth, and the humanitarian program — however capped — sits inside a genuine international obligation as global displacement reaches record levels. Queensland's own migration history, from postwar assisted passage to the growth corridors south of Brisbane now anchoring seats like Rankin and Forde, is itself evidence that a functioning migration program is a state-building project, not a sectional interest.
What the members have actually said and done
Some Queensland federal Labor figures have a long public record on Gaza and Palestine; most, including several ministers, do not. Below is what is actually on the record, seat by seat, as at 26 July 2026.
- Jim Chalmers, Rankin (Treasurer). Chalmers became the first federal Labor minister to publicly endorse recognition of Palestinian statehood, telling the ABC on 31 July 2025 — after Canada's Mark Carney announced his country would recognise Palestine — that Australian recognition was "a matter of when, not if," citing Israel's "ongoing failure" to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and continued West Bank settlement expansion. Before that his record was thinner: the scorecard site Muslim Votes Matter, updated 20 March 2024, recorded that Chalmers "has not mentioned 'Gaza' in Parliament since October 2023," rating him "has not" against all eight of its criteria — a snapshot from before his July 2025 remarks, not a claim about his position since. Chalmers does not hold the immigration portfolio, but Treasury's population projections underpin the government's net overseas migration settings each Budget.
- Graham Perrett, Moreton (member until March 2025) and Julie-Ann Campbell, Moreton (member since May 2025). Perrett is the most outspoken Queensland Labor figure on Palestine in this briefing's timeframe, though he retired before the 2025 election. In a Federation Chamber speech marking the UN's International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People (Hansard, Private Members' Business: Palestine, November 2022), Perrett said "seventy-five years ago the world committed to a Palestinian state and Israel" but "seventy-five years later, Palestinians do not have their state," told Parliament that Israeli settlements were illegal under international law and, he argued, deliberately positioned to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and called on Israel to end the blockade of "water, food, power and medical supplies" into Gaza. Separately, in 2011–12, during the push for Palestine's UN observer-state status, he tabled a petition from more than 1,500 Moreton constituents on the issue; he delivered his valedictory speech on 10 February 2025. His successor, Julie-Ann Campbell, won Moreton with a 7.0-point swing to Labor in 2025; no dated public statement on these questions from Campbell has been located as at 26 July 2026 — the honest finding for a member less than fifteen months into her first term.
- Anika Wells, Lilley (Minister for Communications and Sport; Minister for Aged Care, 2022–2025). No dated public statement specifically addressing Palestinian recognition, a Gaza ceasefire or the humanitarian program was located for Wells in the public record for this briefing. She was returned in Lilley in 2025 with a swing to Labor of around 4.0 points (approx.).
- Milton Dick, Oxley (Speaker of the House of Representatives since 26 July 2022). Dick's public record on Israel and Palestine predates his Speakership. In a House speech on 20 February 2019 marking the 70th anniversary of Australia's diplomatic relations with Israel, then-backbencher Dick said he rose "to place on record my strong support of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict so that we may see peace for all people of Israel and the region." Since becoming Speaker — and continuing in that role after 2025, when he was returned in Oxley with a swing to Labor of 7.6 points — no comparable statement from Dick on Gaza or recognition has been located. That silence reflects convention, not evasion: under section 40 of the Constitution the Speaker does not vote except to cast a tied division, and by long-standing convention is expected to remain visibly detached from contested government and opposition positions to preside impartially — a structural feature of the role, not a personal position on the underlying issue.
- Shayne Neumann, Blair. Neumann was returned for a seventh term in Blair in 2025, with the AEC declaring a two-party-preferred result of about 55.7 per cent to 44.3 per cent in his favour — a margin of roughly 5.7 points. No dated public statement on Palestinian recognition, Gaza or the humanitarian program attributed to Neumann was located, and his aggregated voting record shows no history of crossing the floor since 2007 — unlike Perrett next door in Moreton, Neumann has not built a distinct public profile on this question.
- Murray Watt (Senator for Queensland; Minister for the Environment and Water since May 2025, previously Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and, before that, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and Minister for Emergency Management). No dated public statement by Watt specifically addressing Palestinian recognition, a Gaza ceasefire or the humanitarian program was located for this briefing.
- Anthony Chisholm (Senator for Queensland; Assistant Minister for Resources, Assistant Minister for Regional Development and Assistant Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry). Chisholm has the clearest substantive Senate record among Queensland's Labor senators on this question. Speaking on 7 November 2023, he said "some 1,400 Israelis were killed by Hamas on 7 October, the biggest loss of Jewish life on any day since the Holocaust," called on Hamas to "immediately and unconditionally release all hostages," and — while affirming Israel's right to defend itself — said the way it did so mattered and called for international law to be observed and civilian lives protected, noting Australia's humanitarian assistance to Gaza had reached $25 million since 7 October. They Vote For You separately records Chisholm voting consistently against considering Greens motions to bring Gaza-related business on for debate in 2023–24 — a procedural position on timing, not a substantive one on the issue, and presented here as exactly that distinction.
- Nita Green (Senator for Queensland; Assistant Minister for Northern Australia, Tourism and Pacific Island Affairs). At Senate estimates around June 2024, Green raised Middle East and Palestine-related questions with officials, according to APAN's record of her estimates engagement — a record of engaging the issue through questions rather than a first-person policy statement of her own.
- Corinne Mulholland (Senator for Queensland since 1 July 2025). No dated public statement on Palestinian recognition, Gaza or the humanitarian program was located for Mulholland, who is fewer than thirteen months into her first term as at 26 July 2026.
- Other Queensland Labor members — Ali France, who defeated then-Opposition Leader Peter Dutton in Dickson; Rowan Holzberger (Forde); Matt Smith (Leichhardt); Kara Cook (Bonner, gained from the LNP); Emma Comer (Petrie); Renee Coffey (Griffith, won back from the Greens); and Madonna Jarrett (Brisbane, won back from the Greens) — all entered Parliament at the 2025 election and have no dated, first-person public statement on Palestinian recognition or a Gaza ceasefire located as at 26 July 2026. That is the honest finding for a cohort still in its first fifteen months, not evidence either way of what any of them thinks.
"Seventy-five years ago the world committed to a Palestinian state and Israel… seventy-five years later, Palestinians do not have their state." — Graham Perrett MP, Hansard, Federation Chamber, November 2022
The drivers: multilateral, humanitarian, electoral
Three distinct forces plausibly explain the shift in Labor's position on Palestine and its handling of migration, and they are not mutually exclusive:
- Multilateral alignment. Australia recognised Palestine after, not before, most of its traditional allies. Chalmers' own framing made this explicit: his 31 July 2025 comments came directly in response to Canada's announcement, and by September 2025 Australia was following the UK, Canada, France and roughly 150 other UN member states rather than leading them. Australia's brief suspension and swift restoration of UNRWA funding — paused 27 January 2024 after Israeli allegations against agency staff, restored 15 March 2024 once Foreign Minister Penny Wong said the government's advice was that "UNRWA is not a terrorist organisation" — shows the same pattern: moving in step with, and sometimes slightly behind, comparable Western donors rather than acting as an outlier.
- Humanitarian and rights-based ideology. Labor's National Platform has, since well before October 2023, supported "the recognition and right of Israel and Palestine to exist as two states within secure and recognised borders," language the 2023 National Conference left unchanged rather than accelerated. Graham Perrett's 2022 Hansard speech and his tabling of a Moreton constituent petition predate the current war and show that dormant platform position already had an advocate inside the Queensland caucus well before the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza gave it new urgency nationally.
- Electoral incentive. This is the most direct test, and Queensland's results complicate rather than confirm a simple story. Muslim Votes Matter published critical scorecards on both Chalmers in Rankin and (in an earlier term) Perrett in Moreton, and reporting around the 2025 campaign noted the group recommending preferences against Chalmers specifically in Rankin. Despite that, Chalmers recorded a 6.46-point swing to Labor on two-party-preferred votes in Rankin, and Campbell recorded a 7.0-point swing of her own in Moreton — the opposite direction to the double-digit primary-vote defections independents recorded against some government MPs in Sydney over the same period. The plain "seat under pressure, member moves" story that fits parts of New South Wales does not fit Rankin or Moreton on the 2025 numbers. What those numbers do support is a more conventional incentive: outflanking Labor from the left cost the Greens two of their three Queensland lower-house seats in 2025, as Labor won back Griffith and Brisbane, leaving Ryan the Greens' only remaining seat in the House — a straightforward reason for Labor to conclude its shift toward recognition did it no obvious harm in the inner-Brisbane seats where the Greens' 2022 breakthrough was built partly on outbidding Labor on Palestine and asylum policy.
On migration, no Queensland Labor MP or senator has publicly broken with the government's flat 2025–26 settings — 185,000 permanent places and 20,000 humanitarian places, both unchanged, in a housing-affordability climate that has made expanding either politically costly. That absence of dissent is itself a data point: none of Queensland's growth-corridor seats, including Rankin, Forde and Blair, produced a public push from their own member for a larger humanitarian intake.
The national-interest question
The honest question this record raises is not whether Queensland's Labor MPs and senators are entitled to hold the positions they hold — they plainly are — but how much of the shift on Palestine is explained by a considered assessment that recognition serves Australia's national interest, against how much is explained by the three drivers above operating on top of, or instead of, that assessment.
The government's own framing, echoed by Chalmers on 31 July 2025, leans toward the national-interest case: recognition was tied to Hamas's exclusion from future Palestinian government, Gaza's demilitarisation and Palestinian elections — a conditional position, not an unconditional one. Against that, the Queensland electoral data undercut a simple "electorate pressure explains the shift" theory more than they confirm it: Rankin and Moreton, the two seats where an organised scorecard campaign specifically targeted the sitting or outgoing member over Gaza, both swung toward Labor in 2025, not away from it. The more defensible reading is that Queensland's result was dominated by a broader anti-Coalition and anti-Greens swing — visible in the loss of Dutton's own seat and Labor's recapture of Griffith and Brisbane — inside which any Gaza-specific electoral penalty or reward was, on the evidence available, a minor factor at most for this state's Labor bench. That is a genuinely different picture from parts of New South Wales, presented here because the evidence points that way, not because it flatters either side of the argument.
On migration, the national-interest case for holding the program at 185,000 permanent and 20,000 humanitarian places rests on housing capacity and on public consent for immigration remaining high only while the system is seen to be under control — an argument Queensland's growth-corridor members, none on record breaking from it, have implicitly accepted rather than publicly contested. Whether 20,000 humanitarian places is the right number against record global displacement is a legitimate argument on both sides; this briefing does not resolve it, only notes no Queensland Labor voice has publicly pushed for a higher number.
What to watch
Three things will test whether this record shifts further. First, whether the government's own preconditions for recognition — Hamas's exclusion from Palestinian governance, Gaza's demilitarisation and Palestinian elections — are actually met, and whether any Queensland MP or senator speaks to that timeline in their own words. Second, whether the 2026–27 Humanitarian Program round moves off the 20,000-place level held since 2023–24, and whether a member from a high-growth seat like Rankin, Forde or Petrie is first in this cohort to publicly argue for a change either way. Third, whether Queensland's large 2025 intake of first-term Labor MPs — eight of the twelve covered here — develop a distinct public position as their terms progress, or whether most simply vote with a government position they never had to individually defend.