Issue pits identity politics against Labor discipline

The Albanese government is being hoisted on its own diversity-identity politics petard.

What is diversity in representation without diversity in practice is the awkward proposition put by rebel Western Australian Labor senator Fatima Payman. It is a challenge that encapsulates the hypocrisy of progressive politics. The answer is that without order and discipline there is chaos.

And that is where the Prime Minister finds himself, adrift in a sea of conflicted emotions. His weakness in not enforcing Labor’s traditional caucus solidarity was quickly repaid with a threat of more disobedience.

A junior politician, who with union backing found her way to parliament on only a handful of votes, has derailed Labor’s planned big sell of its cost-of-living tax cuts.

Media questions the government wanted to be directed towards electricity bill relief were instead focused on what the Prime Minister was going to do about Senator Payman, a photogenic and articulate young woman passionate about Palestine. Mr Albanese insists she has been barred from future caucus meetings not because of her views on what is happening in the Middle East, but because of the inconvenience she has caused to the Labor spin machine.

Mr Albanese is suffering because he has been unable to bring a clear focus to how to deal with the Israel-Palestine issue more broadly. But, divided by constituent realities in western Sydney electorates, the pro- Palestinian demands of powerful unions and the intricacies of WA, Mr Albanese is now embarrassed by an inability to deal with diversity. Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles had a better sense of the politics when he said party solidarity was at the heart of obligations shared by Labor politicians. The proper response to Senator Payman’s disobedience was always to stand on Labor tradition and clamp down hard, backed by precedent. By making an exception in this case, Mr Albanese made what should have been a straightforward issue much more difficult. Along the way, he has missed an opportunity to put to rest the offensive arguments of moral equivalence.

He failed to admonish Senator Payman’s comparison of the hostages seized by Hamas in the October 7 terror raids with Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. Appearing on the ABC, Senator Payman said “if we want the hostages to be released by Hamas in Gaza we also have to expect the Israeli government to release the 8800 hostages in the West Bank”. Senator Payman clearly does not respect the authority of her colleagues, defining the party as “rank-andfile members, unionists, phone bankers, door knockers, lifetime members who put together the platform”. It is the caucus she does not respect. This puts into sharp relief the weight she will feel from Mr Albanese’s ban on her future attendance at caucus.

The Prime Minister wasted much of the first week of the winter parliamentary sitting distracted by his support for Julian Assange, a divisive figure who has pleaded guilty to treachery. Rather than Labor’s cost-of-living response, Mr Albanese has started week two, before a five-week recess, tangled up with a junior senator who does not respect tradition. Senator Payman has said you can’t have diversity in personality and representation among Labor MPs without diversity of views and opinions. “It is important to consider that modern Australia looks very different to what it did 20-30 years ago and will continue to change,” she said. “For me it means freedom from violence, freedom from oppression and freedom of equality.” Mr Albanese must quickly impart the more enduring lesson; disunity is death in politics.