Fatima Payman slams PM’s ‘standover tactics’, announces new party

Fatima Payman has accused the prime minister of intimidation after he told the former Labor senator turned-independent to cut short her term at the next election, and is instead set to unveil a new political party that will run candidates against the government nationwide.

A defiant Payman declared on Monday that her party was ready for “full-body contact” competition with Anthony Albanese, backed by disaffected former Labor candidates who could stand in electorates including the prime minister’s own inner west Sydney seat of Grayndler.

Independent senator Fatima Payman said she would not back down from intimidation and standover tactics.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Earlier in the day, Albanese launched a pre-emptive strike against Payman’s as-yet-unnamed party, arguing she should interrupt her term in office to run again. “Senator Payman should test democratic support for her actions by contesting the next election herself under the banner of her new political party,” he told the Australian Financial Review.

Payman, who resigned from the Labor Party in July after crossing the floor to support a Greens motion to recognise a Palestinian state and now serves as an independent, ruled out running for re-election until 2028. She was elected in 2022 and is in the middle of her six-year term.

However, she said her reputation would be on the line via her new party. “Damn straight I’ll be testing support for my actions,” Payman said in response to Albanese’s challenge. “If [the prime minister] really wants an electoral arm wrestle, we might even run candidates in Grayndler.”

Payman, who confirmed her party would be running in all states, and several marginal seats, said she had started talking to people, many of whom have been involved with the Labor Party, about running with her.

“So many former Labor candidates have reached out expressing their disappointment in the current Labor Party, and how they’re interested in getting involved with whatever I’ve got planned,” she said. “This is before I’ve even launched, so I think once we’ve launched, many more disenfranchised Labor supporters and voters are going to join in.”

Payman said Albanese, whose comments were published on October 7, should have bigger priorities than worrying about someone setting up a new political party.

“I thought he would have bigger fish to fry,” she said. “There’s a lot going on with rising cost-of-living pressures, energy prices off the roof, supermarkets price-gouging customers ... and he’s more worried about me setting up a new political party. It’s part of our democracy, but I must occupy a great deal of time and space in his brain.”

The first-term senator said the prime minister’s “standover tactics” and “intimidation” were not new, but said Albanese should reflect on his actions.

“Just because I’m a woman of colour, a woman of faith, from Western Australia, he might expect me to just take it as he dishes it out, or feel intimidated by the comments,” she said. “I think the Prime Minister needs to look at himself in the mirror, and the Labor Party, and do better.”

Payman’s new party, which will have a broad base of policies covering cost of living, aged care, housing and environment, has not sought funding from the teal funding organisation Climate 200 and will not have a religious basis, the senator said.

But Payman’s party could be endorsed by Muslim political groups that have risen to prominence since conflict burst out in the Middle East. Other Australian minor parties have proved fractious or short-lived, including Centre Alliance, the Democrats, Jacqui Lambie Network and Conservative Australia Party.

Payman confirmed she had lodged paperwork for her new party, but declined to give its name until a formal announcement later this week. “This new party won’t just be tested in WA,” she said. “It will be in every other state across the nation. This will be a full-body contact competition so bring it on.”

The prime minister’s office declined to comment.

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