TWO of Labor’s ideological obsessions were laid bare this week — Israel and penalty rates.

When it comes to the first issue, there’s no point pretending otherwise: Labor is no friend of Israel.

When Labor next holds its ­national conference, the party will overturn its longstanding bipartisan position and recognise a Palestinian State.

Initially it was only a fringe group of pro-Palestinian MPs, led by pompous Bob Carr, driving this push.

Now, it has the overwhelming support of Labor caucus and most frontbenchers.

Alternative leader Anthony Albanese supports it.

It is the Victorian Right alone that still strongly backs Israel.

Bill Shorten has close ties with the Jewish community and got along famously with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a visit to Israel with his wife Chloe late last year.

Their 30-minute meeting extended to 75 minutes.

If he had the authority, Shorten might be empowered to bring his party into line on this issue and not allow it to dominate critical policy-forming events like the national conference.

But he will have no choice but to accept the change in national Labor policy.

He won’t stake his leadership on it, knowing all too well that Julia Gillard was almost rolled as prime minister when she wanted to side with Israel and vote against Palestine having non-­observer status at the United ­Nations.

Labor’s obsession with the only democracy in the Middle East will alienate Australian voters and ignores their real concerns: terror, cost of living, housing affordability, education and immigration. This will only harm it ahead of the federal ­election.

Another ideological obsession that risks overlooking the needs of hardworking Australians is Labor’s position on weekend and Sunday penalty rates. Despite the desperate position of small business — given relief by cuts to penalty rates announced by Fair Work yesterday — Labor opposes the measures, seeking to turn it into WorkChoices Mark II. This stance — and Labor’s opposition to company tax cuts — betrays hundreds of small businesses across the country.

Labor’s response to the Fair Work decision was a direct sop to the unions, who insist one million Australians will be hurt by up to $6000 a year and that there is no evidence that cutting penalty rates will lead to more jobs.

Yesterday Bill Shorten prosecuted this view with all the ferocity of a union leader. Within an hour of the decision he sought to pursue political mileage out of it. He’s a good politician.

But the response disregarded the efforts of the independent tribunal after a two-year deep-dive examination of the evidence.

Shorten held a press conference side-by-side with a worker who claimed she would lose $80 of her $600 weekly salary. He laid responsibility at Turnbull’s feet, tweeting “Turnbull and his MPs have been pushing to cut penalty rates for years — and now it’s happened”.

But here’s a reality check: the “big end of town”, as the unions are fond of saying, aren’t even covered by this — supermarkets and chains traded away penalty rates eons ago with the SDA’s consent.

Rather than working constructively to better the economy for all Australians, the two sides have again become entrenched by ideology. They should be working to take the pressure off small business and lay ancient battles to rest.

UPHOLD LAW, PREMIER, OR SCRAP RULES
IF the government is not going to follow the law banning property developer donations, it should scrap it. When Sydneysiders break a law, we get punished immediately. There’s no mercy — even for something frustratingly small like parking 10 minutes too long in a one-hour zone.

But there’s another rule for politicians.

There’s always an excuse. They spin and slither their way out of accepting responsibility. It’s someone else’s fault. They didn’t know.

The cheques and credit card payments were directly made out to his own electorate conference.

But NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian wants to wait to see whether self-described property developers fit into a technical definition of the occupation.

In numerous battles with the Electoral Commission, the NSW Liberal Party has tried to weasel out of admitting they have accepted donations from developers.

The electoral authority withheld $4.4 million from the party while they squabbled over the definition of “developers”.

Ms Berejiklian is going against the spirit and nature of the law by her decision not to stand Williams aside this week.

The laws were introduced to stop donations from property developers. Simple. Jack Iori, Joe Saliba, Bruce Lyon, Peter McNamee are all property developers. All have donated directly to Williams’ Hawkesbury electorate conference.

The Premier says the moment there is a “whiff” of a breach, she will act. Yet, this has happened. The Daily Telegraph revealed this week the Electoral Commission uncovered evidence of a donation to Williams from a property developer.

If the Premier doesn’t want to abide by the law, she should scrap it.

Otherwise, the electorate will be frustrated that there’s one rule for them and another for the lofty MPs at Macquarie St.

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