The only thing West Australian Labor Senator Fatima Payman has done wrong under Labor Party rules is walk across the floor and vote in favour of a motion that her conscience demanded.
You may or may not agree with Senator Payman on whether Palestine should be recognised as a state or not, but for her to do so is to be true to a fundamental belief, even if it means aligning herself with the Greens rather than Labour.
Instead, the Prime Minister responded to what happened with pure pragmatism. Pure political pragmatism… which is not to say that his judgment on that front has worked out as he would have wished.
Anthony Albanese initially brushed off Senator Payman’s breach of Labor Party rules. He did not want to expel her from the party or even suspend her from party meetings.
The prime minister was concerned that doing so could escalate the situation, anger supporters of Palestine, cause tensions within the left faction of his party, expose how outdated Labour’s rigid rules on the use of force are and ultimately leave it with one fewer vote in the Senate.
Add to the mix the image of acting against a 29-year-old senator of diverse background as another reason why Albo did not want to be too harsh.
Behind the scenes, the Prime Minister’s office was even quick to highlight past examples where Labour MPs had walked across the floor without sanction, to justify why nothing was being done on this occasion.
To justify his weak response. To justify not following the rules of the party.
No love lost here: Photos like this are a distant memory for rebel Labour Prime Minister and senator Fatima Payman
Finally, the Prime Minister hit Senator Payman on the head with a piece of wet lettuce, which briefly suspended her from attending Labour party meetings. Which seems more like a reward than a punishment, as I’m sure most Labour MPs who have to attend such meetings would agree.
Case closed, right? No. This is where it all fell apart.
Senator Payman appeared on ABC Insiders on Sunday – the day before Labor’s cost-of-living package was due to kick in – and boldly declared she would still stand in the seat if a similar vote were to take place, confirming that for her this is a matter of principle.
It was then that the Prime Minister realised that he needed to act so as not to disadvantage the powerful in the party.
Labour MPs and faction leaders who are forced to fall in line whenever the party collective is challenged wanted to know why it was OK for this senator to do so, but not them.
The Prime Minister brought his new junior senator to his official residence in Canberra for a meeting after her national television interview and told her she will be suspended indefinitely from the Labor Party room.
He told her that if she could not put aside principles for the party, she should leave the Senate so that Labour could replace her with someone who would. He said it out loud.
The issue also threatened to become a distraction from Labour’s mission this week: selling income tax cuts and energy bill relief.
The prime minister even said that was the problem when asked about the issue on ABC Radio. “It’s not because of her support for a policy position that she advocates,” he said, “it’s because of the (tax) issue that you just asked me about. Today is July 1. It’s a day when we want to talk about tax cuts.”
He repeated the part that had not been so clearly stated. He was concerned that Senator Payman was undermining the Labour Party’s communications strategy.
Tense: Senator Fatima Payman is seen during the Senate Question Time on Monday
Everyone knows that Labor and Coalition senators are only elected because they sit on the main party lists.
Albo also used her media interview to declare that the only reason Senator Payman was elected was because of the Labor brand, and claimed that a quarter of a million Western Australians did not vote specifically for her, but for the party. Once again, she said out loud what was not being said.
Senator Payman now says she feels intimidated and harassed: “I have been exiled,” she said, pointing to how she was banned from the parliamentary group’s WhatsApp groups.
“These actions lead me to believe that some members are attempting to intimidate me into resigning from the Senate.”
Albanian cabinet minister and rival Tanya Plibersek put her arm around Senator Payman to check on his well-being during the swearing-in of the new governor-general on Monday.
It should not be easy to forget that all this is happening in the context of parliamentary reforms following all kinds of accusations about what happens in the country’s capital during the weeks of parliamentary sessions.
Former Liberal MP Julia Banks made several allegations of harassment within her party in a book she published shortly after her time in parliament during the Coalition’s time in power. The current prime minister openly supported her and others for acting in this way.
Now a new concern arises for the Prime Minister and his Labour team.
Senator Payman receives a hug from Tanya Plibersek
He did not want to break its collective rules that prevent MPs and senators from crossing the floor against party directives, but now that he has done so and on the issue of Palestine there are concerns within Labour that traditionally strong support within the Muslim community could wane.
This is particularly worrying in western Sydney, where Muslim populations can have a strong influence on the vote. The powerful right in New South Wales is raising these concerns, believing that Albo’s change of stance has made a difficult situation harder to manage.
The Labour Party always takes the opportunity to foment divisions within the Liberal Party when its MPs cross sides, but it is its right to do so and the Liberal Party likes to claim that it is proud of this tradition of MPs and Senators voting their conscience.
In reality, such actions are punished in other, informal ways: promotions are halted, preselections become more difficult and so is fundraising. But the Liberals do not run any risk of being expelled from the party for crossing the line.
The Prime Minister cannot escape the bad image that Senator Payman’s actions have caused. He cannot escape the unedifying comparison between her, as a woman of convictions, and him, as a Prime Minister of basic pragmatism.
But he also can’t escape the reality that his initial weak reaction worsened the circumstances under which Senator Payman crossed the floor. And saying the quiet parts out loud afterward only increased tensions.
