Arabic version: تعليق عضوية نائب من حزب الوطنيين في أستراليا الغربية بعد خلاف حول عمل فني عن غزة

According to ABC News, WA Nationals MP Lachlan Hunter has been suspended from Western Australia’s parliament for four days following a dispute over an exhibition naming children killed in Gaza. The legislative assembly voted to suspend him on Thursday after he clashed with the deputy speaker during a debate about essential services for vulnerable people.

The exhibition, Wall of Tears by American artist Phil Buehler, was displayed in the parliament courtyard on Tuesday. It lists the names of more than 18,000 children killed in Gaza since October 2023. Greens MP Sophie McNeill co-hosted the event and later described the children named in the artwork as having been killed in a “genocide”, prompting objections from Mr Hunter and Jewish Liberal MP Simon Ehrenfeld.

Mr Hunter said the event had become political and antisemitic, and accused Ms McNeill of comments that vilified Western Australia’s Jewish community. Speaker Stephen Price said Mr Hunter’s response to the deputy speaker “went beyond mere noncompliance” and that he had effectively challenged her to remove him. Liberal and Nationals MPs, along with independent Jonathan Huston, voted against the suspension. A later opposition attempt to overturn it failed.

Labor backbencher Dave Kelly, a co-convener of the Parliamentary Friends group that hosted the exhibition, said it was organised to highlight the number of children killed in Gaza and that all lives lost in the conflict were mourned. Perth Doctors Medical Aid for Palestine said its focus was humanitarian rather than political and that it opposed racism and religious discrimination. Premier Roger Cook said the suspension concerned Mr Hunter’s conduct in the chamber, not the subject he raised.