Bolt: Anthony Albanese gets a taste of karma after Fatima Payman quits
The Prime Minister is only now realising the danger of the kind of identity politics he last year tried to ram down our throats because it is threatening his Labor Party.
Andrew Bolt
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It’s karma. Anthony Albanese is just realising – too late! – the danger of the kind of identity politics he last year tried to ram down our throats, now that it’s threatening his Labor Party.
The Prime Minister last week warned deserting Labor Senator Fatima Payman, now Parliament’s unofficial Member for Gaza, not to form a new Muslim political party.
“I don’t want Australia to go down the road of faith-based political parties because what that will do is undermine social cohesion,” he said.
“It is not in the interest of smaller minority groups to isolate themselves.”
What? Who’s this hypocrite?
I agree: our political parties should be for people of whatever faith, colour or origin, so they’re fighting only for what’s good for us all, as Australians.
We’ll be torn apart if we instead get political parties based on race and religion, promoting communal resentments to demand their own politicians and special handouts for “their community”.
No to this ghettoising. This tribalising.
But that’s exactly what Albanese demanded last year, an Aboriginal-only Voice, a kind of advisory parliament, followed by a treaty over sovereignty. That was his own plan for a “smaller minority group” to “isolate themselves” that would undermine “social cohesion” by demanding not just their own politicians but own parliament.
I can see why the scales have now fallen from Albanese’s eyes, because Britain’s election has just shown us the danger Payman and her Muslim supporters are to Labor, and Australia.
Four Muslim independents got elected to Britain’s parliament on Thursday on a pro-Palestine and anti-Israel platform, with one, Shockat Adam, beating a Labour frontbencher in an electorate with 30 per cent Muslim voters.
“This is for Gaza,” Adam crowed.
Another winner, Adnan Hussain, shouted at cheering Muslims: “We will raise our voice for Gaza! We will continue to fight, until death. Inshallah!”
A fifth independent, former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, expelled from Labour after an anti-semitism scandal, also won with the backing of many Muslim voters in his electorate after campaigning hard on Gaza and against Israel.
Meanwhile, two female Labour candidates, who’d just beaten off pro-Gaza Muslim independents in Birmingham, 30 per cent Muslim, said hardliners had threatened, attacked and intimidated their campaigners, even though one of the MPs is Muslim herself.
Backing the winners was a shadowy group called The Muslim Vote – like the Australian group that’s backed Payman. It’s ecstatic.
“Folks, only through the grace of The Almighty, without whom nothing is possible, you did it,” it said, and warned the main political parties: “Muslims are united, in Muslim-heavy areas your majorities will be under threat.”
Formed just six months, it predicted more success when more of Britain’s 4 million Muslims unite behind it.
Something similar could now come here, and Labor is freaking because it holds 27 of the 29 federal seats with solid Muslim minorities. And here they come: Payman and Australia’s version of The Muslim Vote.
Payman claims she suddenly decided just last week, after praying to Allah, to break with Labor over Gaza and demand the immediate recognition of a Palestinian state that’s today led in one half by the Hamas terrorists who started this war with Israel by slaughtering 1200 Israelis, and led in the other half by terrorist sponsors who’ve banned elections for 18 years.
Yes, that’s how extreme – or dangerously naive – Payman is. And that’s how ethnic politics imports foreign conflicts into our peaceful land.
I doubt I exaggerate by calling Payman the Member for Gaza. She says she’ll fight for Palestinians by now sitting in parliament not as a Labor member but as a …. well, she’s not saying, but join the dots.
Before consulting Allah and quitting Labor, Payman actually talked to Australia’s The Muslim Vote, run by a Sydney Iman. She also met Glenn Druery, whose job is helping small political parties get elected. He’s also met The Muslim Vote.
Payman wouldn’t give a straight answer when asked if she’ll now form a Muslim party, an easier job for a sitting senator: “At this stage, I do not plan to form a party … but stay tuned.”
True, a Muslim party would struggle to defeat a Labor MP, even in the seat of Blaxland, held by Education Minister Jason Clare, where 32 per cent of voters are Muslim. Not all Muslims would back a Muslim party, although with Greens and Teal preferences, who knows? Certainly a Senate seat is possible.
So, yes, worry. And hope that Labor stops promoting identity politics, now that it’s paying the price.
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