Labor senator Fatima Payman has become the party’s first member to cross the floor in decades after she voted with the Greens to recognise Palestinian statehood in a vote on Tuesday.
The federal government moved quickly to quell expectations the WA senator would be expelled from Labor, despite the fact MPs have previously been thrown out for not toeing the party line. Payman, a first-term senator, said she was proud she had upheld her convictions, although she was bitterly disappointed her Labor colleagues had not joined her.
While not ruling out expulsion, a spokesperson for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s office said: “There is no mandated sanction in these circumstances, and previous caucus members have crossed the floor without facing expulsion.“The senator says she maintains strong Labor values and intends to continue representing the Western Australians who elected her as a Labor senator.
Payman said she had only made up her mind over the vote while on the Senate floor and had not spoken to Albanese about her plans. “The Australian Labor Party’s policy platform recognises both Israel and Palestine,” she said. “We cannot believe in two state solutions and only recognise one. “Everyone who would ask me until today what I was going to do with this motion, I said, ‘I will follow my conscience and I will, you know, I’m in the hands of God and I will do what’s best for the people that I represent, and that I pledged to represent when I got elected two years ago.’”
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