Don’t underestimate the damage Fatima Payman’s resignation has done to Labor

Senator Fatima Payman after announcing her exit from the ALP. Picture: NewsWire/ Martin Ollman

Anthony Albanese heads into the parliamentary winter break with the government’s cost of living narrative completely evaporated by Fatima Payman’s dramatic resignation and an image of party in disarray.

The damage from this indulgent outbreak of identity politics can’t be underestimated.

Nothing has gone to script for Albanese this week. Nor last week, nor the previous parliamentary sitting period. And once again, it has been a failure of political management that has overshadowed its policy agenda.

Labor has fallen into the trap of publicly dissecting itself, at a time when the only thing it should be talking about is how hard everybody else has it.

This has been sparked by the singular action of dissident senator Fatima Payman, her resignation from the Labor Party over recogntion of Palestine and ending on the last day of parliament with pro-Palestinian protesters breaching Parliament House security.

This is not a winning formula for Labor if indeed Albanese is contemplating an earlier than expected election.

The only thing the government has going for it is that it is doing marginally better than the Coalition.

And perhaps that is enough.

But if Labor wants to avoid being tipped into minority government, Albanese needs more than just a cabinet reshuffle over the break to reset its priorities.

It will need to re-establish a purpose for being in government.

Labor will have learned nothing if it thinks that falling over the line in 2022 against a deeply unpopular prime minister in Scott Morrison marked the beginning of a revival for the social democratic mission.

The 2019 election post mortem conducted by the party shows little has changed in terms of Labor’s primary challenge.

While it might be able to rely on the fracturing of the conservative vote to keep the Coalition out of office, this is not enough to re-establish Labor as a party of long-term government.

The 2019 analysis demonstrated clearly that Labor lost support among its traditional base. Its primary vote fell to 33.3 per cent.

Albanese won the 2022 election with Labor on a primary vote of 32.6 per cent.

If anything, the base receded during those three years in opposition.

The latest Newspoll shows it has gone back further, sitting now at 32 per cent.

The 2019 report had this to say: “Economically vulnerable workers living in outer-metropolitan, regional and rural Australia have lost trust in politicians and political institutions.

“Not only are they alienated from the political process, they are too busy working and caring for their families to be concerned with issues they consider irrelevant to their lives.

“Indeed, they are often resentful of the attention progressive political parties give at their expense to minority groups and to what is nowadays called identity politics.”

The cost-of-living crisis of today can only lead to an assumption that this problem is now more acute.

Yet for the past two weeks, Labor has indulged in precisely the typified behaviour that previous post-election analysis warned was at the heart of its fundamental problem.

Chalmers’ shaping of the budget was clearly designed to appeal to the “economically vulnerable”. Its economic message is consistent with what Labor strategists believe is the pathway back to rebuilding the Labor base.

Yet the message is clearly not getting through.

The problems that beset Labor in opposition prior to the 2019 election still linger.

While the teals have interceded to complicate issues for the Coalition since then, Labor now risks a similar phenomenon occurring on the left.

The threat of Muslim independent candidates in western Sydney and suburban Melbourne seats unseating Labor MPs is now real.

This is a new and emerging problem that only compounds the structural issue that the 2019 report warned of: the conflict between economic dislocation and Labor’s predilection for grievance politics.

“Working people will lose faith in Labor if they do not believe the party is responding to their needs, instead being preoccupied with issues not concerning them or that are actively against their interests,” it said.

Interestingly, and even more relevant today, was a warning about faith-based voters, predominantly Christian voters and Labor’s loss of first-generation migrant Christians.

It warned back then that Labor’s policy formulation needed to be guided by the national interest rather than being captured by special interest groups.

The Palestinian issue, and Labor’s fear of it permeating through western Sydney seats, has exposed yet another failure by Labor to heed the lessons of the past.

Payman’s defection has exposed the internal decay at the heart of the party and its industrial wing.

Instead of moving more toward the centre, it has allowed and even encouraged a preselection process that promotes identity politics and embraces a woke-based lens through which to view the remodelling of the representative wing.

What did Albanese, who has witnessed and even presided over this shift, expect was going to happen?