Thu Jul 4

Fatima Payman quits Labor with ‘heavy heart but a clear conscience’

Written by Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

Senator Fatima Payman has quit the Labor party to sit on the crossbench, declaring she was acting with “a heavy heart but a clear conscience”.

Payman, whom Anthony Albanese suspended from caucus on Sunday over her refusal to accept party solidarity, told a Thursday news conference she had been “deeply torn”.

She said on the one hand she had immense support from Labor rank-and-file members, unionists and lifelong party volunteers who were “calling on me to hang in there and to make change happen internally”.

“On the other hand I am pressured to conform to caucus solidarity, and toe the party line. I see no middle ground, and my conscience leaves me no choice.”

Payman said the ongoing genocide in Gaza is a “tragedy of unimaginable proportions”. It was “a crisis that pierces the heart and soul, calling us to action with a sense of urgency and moral clarity”.

“Unlike my colleagues, I know how it feels to be on the receiving end of injustice,” Payman said, whose family fled the Taliban in Afghanistan.

“My family did not flee from a war-torn country to come here as refugees for me to remain silent when I see atrocities inflicted on innocent people,” she said.

“Witnessing our government’s indifference to the greatest injustice of our times makes me question the direction the party is taking.”

Payman said she had informed Anthony Albanese of her decision.

She rejected Albanese’s comments this week suggesting her actions had been in the pipeline for some time.

She said she did not expect Albanese in Wednesday’s question time to “make an assumption – or I wouldn’t want to say accusation, but it felt like an accusation – that I have been planning this for a month. Because it is not true. I have not.”

She said that when she crossed the floor to vote on a Greens pro-Palestinian motion last week, her action was purely based on her conscience and her decision had been made on the Senate floor while the divisions were taking place.

Payman said an ultimatum had come out of her Sunday meeting with Albanese at The Lodge, after she had appeared on the ABC’s Insiders program.

That ultimatum was that she either “toe the party line and come back inside the tent or I give the [Senate] position back to the Labor party”.

Asked about the intimidation she has alleged, she said it had been on many fronts, including “being escorted to the prime minister’s office almost on show for everyone to see what was happening”.

She also pointed to “senators making it very clear they did not want to sit next to me in the chamber”, as well being constantly pushed “for an answer when I had not made a decision on whether I would cross the floor”.

Asked to respond to suggestions she was being guided by God and her Islamic religion in her actions, Payman said, “I don’t know how to respond to that question without feeling offended or insulted – that just because I am a visibly Muslim woman I only care about Muslim issues”.

She said the topic of Palestinian recognition and liberation, “is a matter that has impacted everyone with a conscience. It is not just a Jewish versus Muslim issue. This is a matter about humanity, freedom, equality.”

She confirmed she had had a conversation with Muslim community members from Sydney and she knew they were willing to put up independent candidates. “But that is the extent of my conversation with them,” she said, stressing she had many other conversations with community groups, not just Muslims, across the country.

“At this stage, I do not plan to form a party,” she said but added, “stay tuned.”

Shortly after her announcement, Payman briefly took her seat on the crossbench.

Earlier in the day during a rowdy demonstration, four pro-Palestinian protesters scaled the 2.5 metre fence near Parliament House’s public entrance to get onto the roof. Three men and a woman were later arrested as well as being banned for two years from entering Parliament House.