‘It’s worrying…’ is how Prime Minister Anthony Albanese expressed his concern at terrorist sympathisers marching in Melbourne and Sydney streets, their flags flying and hateful slogans screeching. You know, worrying like steam coming out of a radiator. Labor’s unforgivably weak response is based on an assumption.

Team Albanese assumes that many voters in Sydney electorates with significant Muslim populations support Hezbollah or Hamas, extremist groups classified as terror organisations that are currently active in the Middle East. How welcome/offensive is that assumption to every Muslim; how off-putting is that to the general population of Australia – including the non-Muslim voters in those electorates?

‘Never assume anything about anyone’ is my mantra on which I base my argument that Labor’s pandering to those electorates is likely to backfire. Are the Muslims in the comfort of Sydney suburbs majority supporters of Hamas and Hazbollah – with whom they have been aligned by Labor’s self-serving assumption? Surveys in Gaza show support for Hamas to be around 70 per cent. Is it safe to assume that Muslims in Sydney are also supportive of those organisations to that extent? (If so, what are they doing living in Sydney?)

Labor’s cynical miscalculation has already misfired, with critics condemning it over its pandering to pro-Palestinian sympathisers marching in the street, while one of the campaigners of Muslim Vote was reported by the ABC in July saying that ‘Muslim communities were outraged the Labor government has not been tougher on Israel during the war in Gaza’. That sentiment reveals the Muslim Vote movement’s position. The Muslim Vote movement is outraged. So too is the anti-extremist general population. Lose-lose for Labor.