Senator Fatima Payman’s best hope for helping Palestinians lies in the defeat of Hamas and other Islamist extremists that blight the Middle East’s politics and hold back the chances of moderation and prosperity there. By contrast, Australia has given the Kabul-born daughter of a family who fled the barbarous Taliban a unique chance to promote her adopted country’s peaceful multiculturalism, political cohesion, stability and opportunity and to be elected just over two years ago as a 27-year-old Labor senator for Western Australia. As she said in her maiden speech, she is a woman “proud of her heritage and grateful to this beautiful country”.

Instead, Senator Payman unfortunately risks creating a new sectarian divide after she broke Labor caucus rules to cross the floor of the Senate to support a Greens motion calling for recognition of a Palestinian state, before quitting the party her late father had urged her to support.