Fatima Payman’s husband has quit his job as a senior member of the Labor Party after his wife left the party that helped her get elected to the Senate to sit as an independent.
Jacob Stokes resigned as senior policy adviser to WA Labor Emergency Services Minister Stephen Dawson on Monday following Senator Payman’s dramatic clash with his party over the situation in Palestine.
Mr Stokes said it had not been an easy decision to leave the job he had been doing for the past year, but “it was the right decision”.
According to Senator Payman, Mr. Stokes received a hug from Mr. Dawson on his last day and thanked him for his service.
Mr Stokes told the West Australian that the decision to resign was made “after deep personal reflection and discussions with my wife.”
“These past few weeks have been incredibly challenging and as a husband, my priority is and always will be my wife,” he said.
‘Fatima is going through a time of uncertainty and isolation, and I want to be able to give her my unwavering support, something I was not able to give her while working for the State Government.’
Jacob Stokes, the husband of Senator Fatima Payman, has resigned from his position in the Labour Party after she left the parliamentary party.
After crossing the floor to support a Greens motion to recognise a Palestinian state, Senator Payman was banned from sitting in the parliamentary caucus of all Labour MPs just over two weeks ago.
Senator Payman subsequently accused some of her Labour colleagues of giving her the cold shoulder and decided to leave the party.
During this period, Mr Stokes took a week’s annual leave to fly to Canberra and be with his wife.
Senator Payman said on Saturday that her husband remained a member of the ALP and it was “his prerogative if he stayed in the party” even if she moved to the independent Senate seat.
She has now said she is “very proud” of her husband, who has given up his dream job that he had fought for so long to achieve.
Senator Payman (pictured left) said Stokes had shown the loyalty and courage a wife “could only dream of”.
After voting against the Albanese government, Senator Payman left the Labor Party and will now sit as an independent.
“Jacob was very respected in his ranks. Everyone loved him for the work he did,” he said.
She said the courage and loyalty shown by Mr Stokes is something “every wife can only dream of”.
Senator Payman insisted her husband had made the decision to resign “of his own volition” and that no one in the WA Labor Party had pressured him to leave the job.
However, she said it was untenable for him to keep the job and stand by her without potentially embarrassing the minister or others in the WA government.
Senator Payman said she had no regrets about leaving the ALP, although the past month had been a “rollercoaster” and she knew “difficult” times lay ahead.
The dramatic departure of Senator Fatima Payman from the Labour Party has raised questions about whether Labour can continue to rely on votes from Muslim communities.
The first-term West Australian senator resigned from the party over its stance on Palestine and also met with representatives of The Muslim Vote, a grassroots organisation that will field candidates in some Labor strongholds in western Sydney.
But Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says the country’s political parties must maintain social unity.
Anthony Albanese previously said Senator Payman had “put herself outside the Labor Party” after voting with the Greens.
“I don’t believe or want Australia to go down the path of faith-based political parties because what that would do is undermine social cohesion,” he told reporters on Friday.
“My party has… people who are Catholic, people who are Uniting Church, people who are Muslim, people who are Jewish – that’s the way we’ve done politics in Australia, that’s the way we build cohesion.”
Senator Payman’s departure also signalled that Albanese’s next term could be a minority government, which Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said would be a “disaster” as it would include “the Greens, the Green-teals… and Muslim candidates from western Sydney”.
Cricket legend Usman Khawaja called Dutton’s comments “an absolute disgrace” and that he was “fuelling Islamophobia”.