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.
Payman, who had already been indefinitely suspended from Labor’s federal parliamentary caucus after warning that she was prepared to cross the floor again, announced on Thursday she had resigned from the party.
In a press conference at Parliament House, Payman said she was “deeply torn” between the grassroots party members who were calling on her to “hang in there” and the caucus pressure to toe the party line.
Payman described “the ongoing genocide in Gaza” as a tragedy of “unimaginable proportions” that compelled everyone to act with “a sense of urgency and moral clarity”.
“We have all seen the bloodied images of young children losing limbs, being amputated without anaesthetic, and starving as Israel continues its onslaught, livestreamed across the world,” Payman said.
“With a heavy heart but a clear conscience, I announce my resignation from the Australian Labor party. I have informed the prime minister that, effective immediately, I will sit on the crossbench to represent Western Australia.”
Payman said it was “the most difficult decision” of her life and she felt she had been put “in a very tough position”.
She added that she had told the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, and other colleagues multiple times that “this is a matter I cannot compromise on”.
Payman said she had attempted to raise concerns through internal party processes and in conversations with Albanese and senior ministers, but felt that decisions were “already made” by the time they came to caucus meetings for formal approval.
The 29-year-old was elected to the Senate in 2022 for a six-year term representing Western Australia.
There is no rule preventing an elected senator from quitting their party and staying on in the Senate, but Labor has insisted Payman is in the upper house only because she was an ALP candidate.
When asked whether she was going against the wishes of voters, Payman said the people of WA had “entrusted” her to represent their voice and she would continue serving them.
Payman signalled that her policy priorities included addressing housing, the cost of living and the climate crisis, the high incarceration rates of Indigenous peoples, and ending the imprisonment of children as young as 10.
The announcement followed confirmation on Tuesday that the Australian political strategist and so-called preference whisperer Glenn Druery was conducting “informal conversations” with Payman and Muslim community groups. Druery said, however, that there was no contract.
Payman said on Thursday she was “not affiliated” with the Muslim Vote group and had only met once with it.
“I don’t have any intentions of collaborating with them per se and I haven’t thought about it at this point,” she said.
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.”
Payman told reporters on Thursday: “My family did not flee from a war-torn country to come here as refugees for me to remain silent when I see atrocities inflicted on innocent people.”
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”.
The Executive Council of Australian Jewry condemned Payman’s use of the phrase, saying it was “an old Arab supremacist slogan calling for the destruction of Israel and the ethnic cleansing of its Jewish population”.
Payman denied the claim of antisemitism and noted that the founding charter of Israel’s ruling Likud party stated “between the sea and the Jordan river, there will only be Israeli sovereignty”.
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”.
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”.
Payman insisted on Thursday she had decided to cross the floor only at the time of that vote. She said she was reflecting the call in the Labor party platform for recognition of Palestine as an important priority of a Labor government.
She said recent weeks had been “very difficult” on a personal level, including “receiving death threats and emails that were quite confronting, especially when it involves my family and saying all sorts of awful things”.
