Anthony Albanese has said senator Fatima Payman has “made a decision to place herself outside the Labor party”, and suggested he expects that Payman may resign from the party “in the coming days”.
The prime minister made the comment about Payman’s future on Wednesday after the Western Australian senator was suspended indefinitely after crossing the floor on recognition of Palestine, which she has vowed to repeat.
Payman has claimed she has been “exiled” by the party and colleagues since voting with the Greens on recognition of Palestine. But talks between Payman, minor party political strategist Glenn Druery and Muslim groups planning to run against Labor MPs have left her colleagues convinced she plans to quit the party.
In question time the deputy Liberal leader, Sussan Ley, asked whether Labor has referred Payman’s complaint to the parliamentary workplace support service.
“Senator Payman, of course, has made a decision to place herself outside the Labor party, that is a decision that she made,” Albanese replied.
“I expect further announcements in the coming days which will explain exactly what the strategy has been over now more than a month.”
Albanese also noted that the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, had criticised Labor for taking “a great deal of care to give consideration to Senator Payman” for only temporarily suspending her from the caucus, at first.
On Tuesday Albanese told ABC’s 7.30 it was “not acceptable” for Payman to be talking to groups working against Labor and appeared to claim the Western Australian senator had been in touch with those campaigners before she was indefinitely suspended.
“I don’t take these issues personally,” he said. “I’ve been around a while … and I’ve seen people at various times make decisions to change the direction upon which they were elected.”
Asked if it was acceptable for somebody to be talking to his opponents, Albanese responded: “clearly, it’s not acceptable, which is why Senator Payman has been suspended from participation in the caucus.”
“The idea that this happened just in the last 24 hours is I think not what has occurred,” he added.
“Someone doesn’t just pop up on Insiders because they were walking past the studio on Sunday. Now, I asked for an explanation of why, what the motivation of that was. I haven’t received one.”
Payman used her first speech to the Senate in 2022 to describe how her family fled Taliban-ruled Afghanistan shortly after her birth: “I stand before you tonight as a young woman, as a Western Australian, as a Muslim devout to her faith, proud of her heritage and grateful to this beautiful country.”
In recent months, Payman has been increasingly outspoken in condemning Israel’s military operations in Gaza. She said in May: “My conscience has been uneasy for far too long and I must call this out for what it is. This is a genocide and we need to stop pretending otherwise.”
In the same statement in May, Payman used the politically charged phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, which she said asserted “a desire for Palestinians to live in their homeland as free and equal citizens, neither dominating others nor being dominated over”.
Since then, Payman has found herself increasingly at odds with her caucus colleagues. Writing for Al Jazeera on 17 June, Payman called on her own government to recognise Palestine as a state in “a symbolic and bold rejection of Israel’s current bid to erase the Palestinian people”.
She urged Albanese and the Labor party to live up to their past cries for justice, and said recognition of Palestine “would not frustrate a peace process; rather, it would rescue that very peace process and keep it alive”.
That advocacy culminated in the Senate vote on 25 June when Payman crossed the floor to side with the Greens on a motion declaring an urgent need “for the Senate to recognise the state of Palestine”.
The foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, had unsuccessfully sought to amend the motion’s wording to specify that recognition of Palestine could occur “as part of a peace process in support of a two-state solution and a just and enduring peace”.
If Wong’s amendment to the wording had succeeded, all Labor senators would have been allowed to vote for the motion.
