She certainly made Labor reap her whirlwind. Not only has she made its legislative agenda more difficult to navigate in the Senate,but her plight raised doubts about whether antiquated Labor rules governing MPs’ loyalty to caucus decisions are still fit for purpose in modern-day Australian politics when there is greater tolerance of dissent. But her stand changed nothing about Australia’s position on the Gaza war.
Senator Fatima Payman during a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra on Thursday.Alex Ellinghausen
Payman,whose family fled Taliban-ruled Afghanistan shortly after her birth,is entitled to vote according to her conscience and beliefs,but she also seems to have been a plaything of the Greens hoping to attract voters riven by the war.
On June 25,she crossed the floor to support a Greens motion on recognising a Palestinian state. In fact,Labor had proposed an amendment to assuage the concerns of people such as Payman that provided for recognition of Palestine after a ceasefire agreement and as part of a two-state solution.
Labor rules bind caucus members to the party’s collective decisions. MPs who vote against them risk being thrown out. Debate swirled after she crossed the floor. Payman did little to calm the waters,going on the ABC’sInsiders program to declare she would do it all again. She was summoned to the Lodge to meet with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and was subsequently indefinitely suspended from the Labor caucus. She later released a statement claiming to have been “exiled” and intimidated by colleagues.
Then theHerald broke the story she had been consulting Glenn Druery,the so-called “preference whisperer”,who runs a small business setting up preference flows mainly for independent and small party candidates.
Druery has been working with an alliance of Muslim groups that have supported the senator following her decision to cross the floor.
The Muslim alliance plans to run candidates against half a dozen Labor MPs in the lower house. Payman’s treatment,coupled with anger over the government’s support for Israel after the Hamas attacks on October 7,sparked condemnation by national and state-based Muslim organisations,including the Australian National Imams Council,while two separate Muslim groups fielding candidates,The Muslim Vote and Muslim Votes Matter,pledged solidarity with Payman.
Political parties in Australia based on ethnicity or religion have a history of being one-issue wonders that quite often require newcomers to side with political parties that share few common interests.
The Greens and Muslim organisations may wish to use the Gaza war to obtain footholds in Labor’s heartland,but theHerald believes that the time for such tribalised politics and imported old-world quarrels has long passed.
Payman’s orchestrated rebellion exposes Labor’s difficulties in embracing both traditional collectivist rules and modern identity politics and diversity. She will now sit on the crossbench and be another independent who will not face voters until 2028. Her rebellion was both short-lived and ineffective.
Get a weekly wrap of views that will challenge,champion and inform your own..