Karen Middleton Political editor
Australian senator has given voice to many who condemn the Israel-Gaza war while earning the scorn of her caucus colleaguesSun 30 Jun 2024 12.47 BSTShare
Fatima Payman’s career as a Labor politician is over.
The indefinite suspension from the Labor parliamentary caucus that Anthony Albanese imposed on her during a short conversation at the Lodge in Canberra on Sunday afternoon has the same effect as expulsion. She will not return to the fold.
Choosing this course, rather than formally expelling her, serves two purposes for the prime minister and the Labor party. It avoids the risk of a messy court challenge of the kind that ensued when Albanese actioned the expulsion of the controversial CFMEU leader John Setka. And it forces Payman to be the one who chooses permanent separation.
Her interview with ABC TV’s Insiders program on Sunday morning was the last straw for the Labor leadership group and, indeed, pretty much the whole Labor caucus. Albanese and his senior colleagues viewed her vow to cross the floor again as supreme self-indulgence and utter disrespect for the party that had given her a political career, after she received a relatively light reprimand for actions that can attract expulsion.
Following the interview, Albanese discussed Payman’s declarations with his deputy, Richard Marles – who had issued her a none-too-veiled warning on the same program just minutes earlier – the Senate leader and foreign minister, Penny Wong, and the trade minister, Don Farrell.
All were furious that, having first raised her voice against Labor’s position in budget week in May and distracted from the government’s message about cost-of-living relief, the young West Australian first-termer chose the day before all the measures took effect on 1 July to fire another salvo.
They agreed that the question of her future had to be resolved before Monday, when they wanted to be talking about tax cuts and energy rebates and higher wages and not much else. They also agreed that permanent suspension – limbo – was the least worst option.
For this final week of parliament before the five-week winter recess – and, in fact, forever more – Payman will therefore be excluded from the weekly Tuesday caucus meeting and any other party forums. She will only be allowed back if she chooses to “respect the caucus and her Labor colleagues” – in other words, toe the line. Few expect her to do that.
In the Senate chamber, officially, she stays in her usual seat and does not physically move to the crossbenches. But regardless of the visuals, in reality that’s where she now is. She will be cut off from the government’s internal communications and will have to determine herself how she votes on each piece of legislation.
Until she chooses to quit the party formally, she will not be able to seek approval to employ the two personal staff that are not granted to Labor, Coalition and Greens backbench senators but that is a special allowance for the Senate’s independents.
Even then, the extra allocation is in the gift of the prime minister. And he does not seem minded to be especially generous to the rebellious first-term senator from Western Australia. That’s because having received an initial one-week caucus suspension slap-on-the-wrist penalty for what is generally accepted as a major sin – departing from the caucus position and crossing the floor – Payman went out and rubbed their noses in it.
“It depends on what is brought forward in the Senate,” Payman said in the interview with the ABC’s David Speers. “Obviously you and I both don’t have a crystal ball so it’s really difficult to say. But if the same motion on recognising the state of Palestine was to be brought forward tomorrow, I would cross the floor.”
Many suspect she actually does have a crystal ball of sorts – or rather, that the Greens and others have been talking to her, if not necessarily the other way around.
The Greens leader, Adam Bandt, was asked on Sunday whether he or any member of his party had spoken to Payman about joining them. “Look, I’m not going to talk about any confidential conversations,” Bandt said, in a pointed non-denial, as he demanded the government do more to pressure Israel to stop the war in Gaza.
There has also been speculation that Payman could quit Labor to sit on the crossbench as an independent.
Compounding the anger of Albanese and his colleagues last week, she led the government to believe, via the whip Anne Urquhart, that she was not going to cross the floor to support the Greens’ motion on Wednesday. Even her own staff allegedly were not aware that was her plan. She has said she made her decision at the last minute.
But the Labor leadership noted that in the Senate on Wednesday, as the government tried to amend the wording of the Greens motion into a form all Labor senators could support – from recognising a Palestinian state alone to endorsing a two-state solution – Payman sat not in her own seat nor with the opposition or crossbench but in the advisers’ box with a member of the independent senator David Pocock’s staff.
Beyond speaking up for the Palestinian people, some within the parliamentary Labor party are wondering what Payman is trying to achieve. They are asking how her stance advances the plight of Palestinians. Her argument, as articulated publicly, is that advocacy is important in itself. Implied is that some issues justify departing from party obligations. Payman has suggested her allegiance is to the wider Labor party, not the subset that sits in the parliament.
In refusing to do what her party requires, she has stood up for her personal values and given voice to many who condemn the Israel-Gaza war. But she has earned the scorn of her caucus colleagues and nixed any future within Labor.
How much support she receives further afield will determine if she can withstand that and exactly what she does next.
Categories: Australia
I hope one day soon some good journalist will assemble a list of all names of persons who lost their job, position, chance (etc) due to the fact that they stood with justice and truth. (May be a future job for Mr. Assange?)