Is Fatima Payman the Pauline Hanson of the left? It depends on her

It is not uncommon for Australian MPs and senators to leave their political parties, but it is less common for them to do so in the Labor Party. The last “Labor traitor”, in Labor Party parlance, was Mark Latham, who lost his mind after leaving Parliament.

The last senator to leave the party while serving in Parliament was Mal Colston, who did so in 1996 in pursuit of the noble cause of a pay rise.

While every defector has a fascinating story, the case of Senator Fatima Payman, the first person in modern history to defect from her party over identity politics, stood out this week.

“This seems to be the first time there’s been a discussion around this type of national and religious identity,” said Frank Bongiorno, a history professor at the Australian National University.

“Unlike my colleagues, I know what it feels like to be treated unfairly,” said Payman, who announced her resignation from the Labor Party on Thursday but will remain in the Senate. “My family fled war-torn countries to come here as refugees, not to silence me when I see atrocities committed against innocent people.”

She was speaking about Palestinians. Peyman’s family is from Afghanistan, and her father was a politician before the Taliban took over Afghanistan. She came to Australia when she was eight.

She spoke of a clear identification with the Palestinian people and a unique personal identification with shared injustice. “The ongoing genocide in Gaza is an unimaginable tragedy. It is a heart-wrenching crisis that calls us to act with urgency and moral discernment.”

Her pain was shared by many in the Labour Party. One Labour minister said after her resignation: “The sad thing is that there is not much disagreement – everyone in the Labour Party wants the war to stop, everyone wants Palestine to be recognised.”

So what exactly is the difference between Payman’s position and that of the Labor Party? A career-defining difference: Payman switched his support to a Green Party motion that called on the Senate to “recognise the state of Palestine”. The Labor motion added “support for a two-state solution and a just and lasting peace as part of the peace process”.

When asked at her resignation press conference why the Labour motion was so inflammatory that she would quit the party, she responded: “I do not agree with the conditionality of recognition.” In other words, recognition must be unconditional; it cannot wait for a peace process.

In her speech, Payman also said that she was not a single-issue politician, but she left the Labour Party because of this single issue. This decision largely shows that she is a single-issue politician, whether she likes it or not.

She said she did it to defend humanity, but in an earlier statement she called for Palestinian freedom “from the river to the sea.” The slogan was synonymous with calling for Israel’s destruction, although Peyman denied that intent. But it wasn’t enough. She was young, but not naive.

The message was received by the insurgent activist protesters who climbed to the roof of the Capitol on Thursday. They hung a huge banner over the main entrance – “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”. They had met her a week ago. They said they wanted to “support Fatima as much as possible”. How much humanity is there in calling for the destruction of Israel?

Payman has previously criticised leaders for “showmanship”. But what is she doing now? Of course, the Australian government’s position has nothing to do with the Gaza war. Not to mention the position of independents on the Senate backbenches. None of this will shorten the war by an hour. Who is doing the showmanship now? It’s full-blown identity politics.

In modern times, another politician from a major party was eliminated as an independent in Australia, again because of identity politics. In fact, her seat in the Senate would have been close to that of Payman. Pauline Hanson was preselected as a Liberal at the 1996 election, but the party withdrew its support for her after comments she made about Aboriginal welfare that were condemned as racist. However, it was too late to reprint the ballot papers. Hanson won the Queensland seat of Oxley as a Liberal, but ran as an independent.

In her first speech to the House of Representatives, Hanson gloated over her accusations of being a racist and infamously said Australia was in danger of being “swamped by Asians”, further fuelling her bigotry. Hanson’s entire political career has been built on this combative racism.

Neither woman likes to be compared, but Fatima Payman is similar to Pauline Hanson on the left: entering parliament on the ticket of one of the major parties, striking out as an independent, and creating a profile based on identity.

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For her part, Peyman is an active advocate for the Palestinians and claims a special personal affinity for their ethno-religious identity, while opposing Israel.

In Hanson’s writing, she claims to be an advocate of the Anglo-Celtic cultural tradition, while opposing other cultural traditions – black, yellow or Muslim – according to the needs of the time.

According to right-wing political views, the left is the culprit for playing identity politics, inciting and exploiting the discontent of minority groups. In fact, the right is just as good at playing identity politics. The difference is that the right tries to incite and exploit the discontent of the majority group.

As long as identity is used in the pursuit of equality, it is a force for good. In the words of Canadian political theorist Charles Taylor, identity is “a powerful moral concept that we have inherited.” But once identity is asserted as the basis for the rights of one group over another, it becomes a force for division and hatred.

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Identity politics is sweeping the United States and Europe. When the left practices identity politics, the right scoffs at it as “woke.” When the right adopts identity politics, it’s attacked as racist. We know its face. The main proponents in the United States are Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the left and Donald Trump on the right.

So far, Australia has been lucky. Pauline Hanson has long engaged in right-wing identity politics, which is riddled with bigotry and division, but has failed to inspire a major national movement. Some figures in the Coalition party have occasionally moved closer to the right-wing political movement, but it remains fringe.

The Greens are vigorously pursuing left-wing identity politics, justifying anti-Semitic vandalism and fomenting hate speech. The war in Gaza has fueled this behavior, and the Greens are gleefully fanning the flames. The Greens are not just fringe, they are not mainstream either.

How far will Fatima Peyman take her identity politics? This is a delicate moment. “Stay tuned,” she says In response to questions about her future, she told us she had met with a group called Muslim Votes and others who wanted to field her as a candidate for parliament. This sparked much speculation.

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Australia has a history of sectarian politics, with Catholics and Protestants competing fiercely for dominance. For example, the 1955 Labor Party split had a strong sectarian tone. The breakaway Democratic Labor Party was openly anti-communist, but its binding identity was Catholicism.

But Australia has never had a formal religious party at the national level. There have been many religious, racial and gender movements, but no real political party at the national level.

Bongiorno said several distinctly religious parties had emerged in NSW, including the Protestant Labor Party in the 1920s, which never won a seat, and the Christian Democratic Party led by the Rev. Fred Neil, which disbanded after Neil retired, but had not made any moves at the national level.

If Muslim Vote or something like it succeeds in getting Peyman to join an explicitly Muslim party, it would be new territory for Australia. It would introduce a new kind of sectarianism to the Australian parliament. It would not only give Peyman a new party, it would give Hanson a new career.

In 2022, in his first speech to the Senate, Payman quoted Penny Wong as his ideal: “I seek a truly united country, a country that can be shared by all Australians, regardless of race, gender or other attributes, no matter where they live, and where differences are not a basis for exclusion.”

If Huang chose to play identity politics, she would have triple identity – female, lesbian, Asian. But she never does. “Acknowledging someone’s experience as an indigenous person or a disabled person is to make the country stronger,” Huang said. In other words, identity should not be used to divide, but to unite.

What would you choose, Fatima?

Peter Hartcher is the politics editor