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Labor’s Fatima Payman is expected to confirm this afternoon that she is leaving the party, but will remain in Parliament as a senator.
The first-term senator from WA has been the centre of an internal Labor Party dilemma after she defied the party and voted with the Greens to call for the recognition of Palestinian statehood — and then vowed to do so again if necessary.
This decision saw Payman “indefinitely suspended” from the Labor caucus, where MPs discuss the government’s agenda and tactics, and eventually frozen out of the high-ranking Labor Party group chats and email threads.
Payman was the first Federal Labor parliamentarian to cross the floor since 2005, and the first in government since the 1980s – as she defied party the party’s rules that champion collectivity and solidarity amongst their MPs and Senators.
She will now sit on the crossbench, which isn’t really going to affect Labor’s ability to pass laws, given the fact that Payman agreed enough with the Labor Party values to dedicate her life to the party in the first place. However, it does mean that she will now be deprived of all of the resources and love that comes with being a
Payman has clarified she will not be joining any Muslim community-linked party, but will instead look to align herself with a party that is actually committed to representing the broad-ranging views, concerns and aspirations of a multicultural Australia.
Unlike Labor, who has shown themselves incapable of accomodating the expectations of a new multicultural generation of MPs and Senators that have been recruited in their surface-level efforts to appeal to a wider pool of voters, Senator Paymon is looking for a party that understands the immigrant experience.
But where can a faith-based 2nd generation immigrant, who isn’t from Sydney or Melbourne, with rusted on Labor Values, call home?
“I’ve looked around” she says.
“There’s only really one option for me”
“It’s gonna have to be the KAP”
With a voter base made up of North Queensland’s Sikh fruit farmers, Southern European cane cutters, and indeed a vast number of different First Nations communities, the Katter Australian Party understands and represents multicultural voters better than the major parties.
Payman now joins a far more multicultural cast of Australians that make up the Katter Australia Party. Including, former North Queensland Cowboys player and Torres Strait Islander candidate Rod Jensen, Italian-Australian jet ski salesman turned QLD MP Nick Dametto, the entire Katter family – whose last name may or may have not once been spelt Khattar, and of course Shane Knuth MP – who’s gotta be some sort of ethnic with a name like that.
