Time for Quiet Australians to start making some noise

Senator Fatima Payman with pro-Palestine protesters at the University of Melbourne. Picture: Rebeca Borg

As some of you know, my first ­career was in TV news. Nearly 21 years ago I moved into corporate life and 15 or so years after that, I started writing. When I did, people always said, “Gemma! Never, NEVER, read the comments”, but I’ve found that advice to be shy of the mark. Most weekends I’ll scan to see what the response has been and occasionally engage (to the person who said I was a wonderful young writer, thank you for calling me young). I see it as an important part of building a relationship with you.

I like to understand what, if anything, I may have missed in the conversation, and what different perspectives may have been prompted. To me, it’s an important and meaningful part of the role.

One thing I see expressed often is the desire to speak up, the sense that many believe they should be more vocal but are unsure how. Are afraid of the blowback.

I concurrently understand that and find it a curious position to hold. Perhaps because most of my professional life has been outward-facing, and expressing a view is part of the gig. For me, it’s simple. We either stand up and speak up or settle for the values and communities other people are prepared to fight for.

Let me unpack that a little bit in the context of Australian politics in the past couple of weeks. I don’t care about the political future of Fatima Payman. She’s a nobody junior senator from Western Australia, was third on the Labor ticket for that state, whom most of us had never heard of before she quit in a storm of teary petulance over the issue of Palestinian statehood.

Now? She’s launched an almighty rocket into the ALP and its parliamentary agenda, returning the gift of preselection with both the destabilisation of the government’s agenda and the spectacular ­undermining of an already weak Prime Minister. Add to that, her name is stuck in my head like the theme song from The Love Boat. Honestly? I could do without that.

While others are dissecting the politics of what’s happened and what her stunt means for the government and for the Labor Party, I want us to consider what this little episode in self-indulgent petulance means for the rest of us.

Payman was elected to represent the people of Western Australia and advance their cause in our federal parliament. She is an elected and paid public servant (like the rest of them) of the people of Australia. Would that they all remember this.

She tearfully told the media that she is “the true voice of West Australians”. That she is speaking for them. The chutzpah of such a statement? Senator Payman, where were you during the vote on the live export industry this week, the results of which will spell disaster for much of rural WA? That’s right, you were missing in action. You didn’t vote. You abstained. So the people of Western Australia were without your apparently indispensable voice this week.

Senator Payman’s behaviour is a great example of what happens when you don’t discipline kids. It’s also an example of what happens when you preselect kids. She spoke of not having a “support person” when going to see the Prime Minister. The embarrassing immaturity of such a statement.

Payman chooses to come in on a wrecking ball over an issue about foreign statehood for a people that has no bearing or relevance to the day-to-day lives of the people she is paid to serve.

I will labour that point, because it’s the substantive one.

Her role is not to enjoy flights of fancy on single issues on foreign soil. He role isn’t to attempt to make a name for herself politically, consulting as it’s been reported that she has with so-called preference whisperer Glenn Druery in order to seek more influence than she deserves or should carry.

Again, this is all about an attempt to engineer a policy outcome that has zero impact or benefit for the people of Western Australia, or the rest of us.

Whether or not you like the government’s agenda (and spoiler alert, I’m not a huge fan), they were voted in to do a job. And now, that job is parked out the back while a baby senator has her moment in the sun.

As an aside, Labor’s response was entirely expected if not so late as to be damaging. You join a party that has bonded voting? Then you know the rules of the game. Payman has cried victim. They’re freezing me out, it’s because I’m a woman of colour.

Her posture and her comments are an insult to every one of us whose families have fled other countries to start a new life in Australia, who came here with nothing. Spare us, senator. You are no victim. If you can’t take the hits, get out of the game.

For the rest of us, frustrated, maligned voters, increasingly weighed down with the cost of living and by the apparent indifference to all of this carry-on, high levels of political disengagement make sense.

But that doesn’t mean it makes good sense for us. There is a price for everything. There is just as much a cost for inaction as there is for the decisions we make. Possibly more. Evil flourishes when good people do nothing.

People are talking a lot about the Quiet Australians; maybe you consider yourself one of them. But is being quiet the answer this hour requires?

I don’t think it is.

I think now is the time to be heard. I have stirring inside me the belief that now, more than ever, those of us who might have previously tuned in, turned on and dropped out need to do the ­opposite.

When you take a step back and consider some of the absolute nonsense that gets tolerated ­simply because most of us just want to go about our days and our lives, it’s almost a collective dereliction of duty.

I’m old enough to remember when ex-West Coast Eagle Craig Turley popped himself up a tree in WA’s Giblett Karri Forest during the ’90s to protest against old-growth logging. Bravo to a footy player for doing something other than getting arrested. And at least that was a local issue.

So, what is your tipping point? What will cause you to get off the couch of disengagement and start being counted before polling day.

It might surprise you to know that I’m not a member of any political party. I’d never been to a rally of any kind until October 7. That was my tipping point. The burning Israeli flag and chants of what many still believe was “gas the Jews” on the steps of the Opera House. It was the full revelation of the depth of anti-Semitism in academia and sections of politics and media. The hate-filled terror apologists who crawled out like cockroaches from under rocks. That was my tipping point. That was what prompted me to step up and speak out. What’s yours? Find it before it’s too late.