Until the weekend, the story of West Australian Labor Senator Fatima Payman’s problems with the federal government’s position on Gaza had unfolded with a certain predictability. The Greens put forward a Senate motion on Palestine. Payman took the bait. The Labor leadership responded with kid glove treatment (despite factional hacks backgrounding the media to vilify Payman as a multicultural blow-in — any Labor factional chief complaining that an MP or senator is in Parliament because of special deals is textbook hypocrisy). Richard Marles, in a carefully rehearsed talking point, repeatedly stressed that the demands of social cohesion meant Labor wasn’t interested in harsher punishment of Payman.
Then Payman derailed things on the weekend by going on television to say she’d be crossing the floor again if further motions came up. That left Labor with no choice but to suspend her — which remains, by Labor’s hardline rules against defying caucus, a sin-binning rather than a send-off.
Payman could have dealt with the issue of further motions by saying she’d indicated where she stood on recognition of Palestine and, given the Greens could move a hundred more similar motions and they wouldn’t have any impact, nor save a single life in Gaza, there was no benefit in crossing the floor again on the same issue. Her focus could have been on pushing within Labor — which is in government and thus in a position to change Australian policy — to recognise Palestine now, not, as the government currently seems to want, in some nebulous future. She can’t do that while she’s suspended from Labor, or if she’s booted out.
But while Labor might have tried the soft approach in response to her initial crossing of the floor, it has offered precious little else to MPs and senators who have watched tens of thousands of Palestinians massacred in Gaza with no more than expressions of concern and calls for a ceasefire.
In particular, the government is still lying about its defence links with companies deeply involved in the atrocities committed by the IDF in Gaza — with Israeli firm Elbit Systems and Australian firm NIOA in particular. The Greens have been absolutely right to go after Labor over its steadfast refusal to admit it is handing taxpayer money — more than $900 million of it — to a firm that makes weapons used to slaughter Palestinians. It’s pretty rich of the government to complain about Fatima Payman crossing the floor in Parliament when it’s lying to Parliament about Defence’s links with Elbit.
Moreover, the government has been utterly silent since April about the murder by the Israel Defence Forces of Australian Zomi Frankcom, along with six of her World Central Kitchen colleagues. The “investigation” by former air chief marshal Mark Binskin has never been mentioned since it commenced months ago. The government has taken no action against Israel for murdering an Australian — it hasn’t even cut off the flow of money to Elbit, which made the drone that was used to murder Frankcom.
When a government won’t even punish the company that helped murder an Australian citizen, and declines to take any meaningful action in response to ongoing mass killings, it can’t reasonably expect its members simply to sit silent. Labor’s leadership could have given Payman and many other MPs and senators outraged by Israel’s actions something to point to — further steps on recognition of Palestine; the termination of contracts involving Elbit; a prohibition on funding for companies providing weapons to the IDF or with links to Hamas; regular updates on Binksin’s investigation and whether he is receiving cooperation from the IDF.
These would have given Labor something that all the Greens motions in the world would never deliver, reflecting the benefits of being a major party in power. Instead it prefers lies and silence. No wonder Payman decided she’d had enough.
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