Pro-Palestine protesters gatecrash Victorian Labor conference ahead of debate on Israel-Hamas war

Protesters gather during a Pro-Palestine rally outside the 2024 Victorian Labor state conference in Melbourne on Saturday. Photograph: Con Chronis/AAP

Dozens of pro-Palestinian protestors have crashed Victorian Labor’s annual state conference ahead of what is expected to be fiery debate on motions related to the Israel-Hamas war.

Ahead of speeches by the premier, Jacinta Allan, and the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, the group of protesters entered the Moonee Valley Racecourse building on Saturday morning and began chanting outside the conference room filled with MPs, unionist and Labor delegates.

The group had previously been protesting outside, with Senator Lidia Thorpe among the speakers.

Allan, surrounded by plain-clothed personal security, was in the conference room as members of the construction union, the CFEMU, and the Industrial Left faction filed out and the doors were locked behind them.

The room remain locked for about 15 minutes and the chanting continued throughout the in memoriam section of the conference, marking the deaths of former Labor minister Simon Crean, Dunkley MP Peta Murphy and Senator Linda White.

State MP Sonia Kilkenny, whose seat of Carrum partly overlapped with Murphy’s, said her neighbouring MP for Frankston, Paul Edbrooke, was meant to join her on stage but had been locked out of the conference room.

“It’s just me up here this morning, Paul Edbroke is stuck outside with protest activity and can’t get in to share his words and memories about our really good friend and colleague Peta Murphy,” she said.

After Kilkenny’s speech concluded, Labor official Alice Smith told the room that “the protesters who were outside have been moved on”.

She sought to reassure parents that the protesters “did not enter” the on-site childcare, which she said remained “secure and safe”.

During her speech, Allan made reference to the protest, stating: “As we’ve seen today, there are those who want to distract us, to silence us, to scare us, but our movement and our party is one of the oldest in the world. We are descendants of that proud legacy.”

A group called Trade Unionists for Palestine said it had called the rally along with other community groups to protest state and federal Labor “aiding and abetting the genocide of Palestinian people”.

“Trade Unionists for Palestine stand with dissenters in the ALP such as Senator Fatima Payman who recently broke ranks with party line and called Israel’s attack on Gaza what it is, a genocide,” the group said in a statement.

The Israeli government has refuted allegations of genocide, which the United Nations defines as certain acts “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.

The Albanese government has strengthened its language on the Gaza war in recent months. After calling for a humanitarian ceasefire in December, Albanese joined with his Canadian and New Zealand counterparts to urge Israel not to commit what would be a “devastating” and “catastrophic” ground offensive on Rafah in southern Gaza.

Six urgency motions related to the Israel-Hamas war are due to be debated by the Labor rank and file on party policy on Saturday afternoon, most of which are being moved by members of the socialist left, the faction Allan belongs to.

One motion urges the state Labor government to scrap a memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed with the Israel Ministry of Defence in 2022 and “end co-operation and investments with Israeli weapons companies”, including Elbit Systems.

Earlier this year, ministers defended the MOU as having been signed prior to the recent conflict and said it had not resulted in any new contracts.

Another motion set to be debated will ask the government to guarantee no public land will be sold off to private developers when it knocks down the state’s 44 public housing towers.

While the motions are non-binding on either state or federal Labor MPs, they provide an opportunity for rank-and-file members to shape policy.

• This article was amended on 18 May 2024. A previous version incorrectly attributed a quote by Alice Smith to Labor party member Pamela Anderson.