What we learned, Thursday 4 July, 2024
Thanks for tuning into the blog today. With that, we’ll wrap up our live coverage of the day’s news.
Here’s a summary of the main news developments:
The outspoken Western Australian senator Fatima Payman has quit the Labor party but will stay in the upper house as an independent, in a major rupture with the Albanese government over Palestine.
Four people – three men and one woman – were arrested and some areas of Australia’s federal parliament were locked down after the protestors scaled the roof of Parliament House to unfurl banners criticising the government’s response to the Gaza war.
Former Liberal party staffer Bruce Lehrmann has been committed to stand trial on rape charges in Queensland.
The parents of a two-year-old girl who died of septic shock after she was misdiagnosed by doctors in regional New South Wales believe her death was “totally avoidable”, an inquest has heard.
A synthetic opioid has been found in the bodies of four people found dead in a Melbourne home last week, police say.
Polls have just opened across the United Kingdom as millions of Britons head out to vote in the country’s election. You can follow our live coverage of election day here.
Have a pleasant evening.
Updated
Fatima Payman says PM’s office 'planted seed' about crossing floor on Palestine motion
Senator Fatima Payman, who announced she would quit the Labor party earlier today to be an independent on the crossbench due to her disagreement with the party’s position on Palestine, has spoken more about her decision to initially cross the floor and disobey Labor’s line.
The tension between Payman’s personal views and her party’s position were thrust into the spotlight when she crossed the floor to vote in favour of a Greens motion on Palestinian statehood, which led to repercussions within the party that ultimately ended in Payman deciding to leave Labor.
In an interview with the ABC’s David Speers, Payman said it was the prime minister’s office that had planted the seed in her head about crossing the floor.
Payman said:
I had done my research about crossing the floor, because that was during estimates a week prior, the prime minister’s office had reached out to my office asking if I was going to cross the floor and I didn’t think that that was an option, because I had abstained previously.
It wasn’t until that plant, that seed was planted, that I started thinking about what it meant to cross the floor and so when I made the decision to cross the floor on the day, Tuesday of last week, I knew that this could lead to my expulsion.”
Asked by Speers if she had actually been aware that crossing the floor could lead to her expulsion before the prime minister’s office contacted her, because she had met with so-called preference whisperer Glenn Druery, Payman said:
I had done my research. I mean, you don’t make career changing decisions and such huge decisions without doing your research.”
She added:
Meeting with Glen Druery and the Muslim Vote group was just one of many other meetings that I’ve had with various other political strategists, politically minded, driven people and communities.”
Speers then interjected to ask: “Without considering leaving Labor?”
Payman responded: “I was not thinking about leaving Labor … like every other group that I’ve met with, [I] wanted to hear what they’ve got to say.”
Updated
