Election 2025: Teenage Fatima Payman volunteer targeted with Islamophobic abuse, slurs
Senator Fatima Payman has alleged a competitor’s volunteer racially abused one of her Australia’s Voice supporters with derogatory comments about the prophet Muhammad.
West Australian senator Fatima Payman has alleged a One Nation and Family First pre-poll volunteer racially abused one of her Australia’s Voice supporters, with derogatory comments about the prophet Muhammad and accusations of backing terrorism, as tempers flared just days before Saturday’s election.
The ex-Labor senator made the allegations in a letter to the Australian Electoral Commission after the incident on Thursday at an early voting centre in Mulgrave, in Melbourne’s southeast.
The Australian, which has chosen not to identify the minor, understands that the 16-year-old and his family are considering making a police complaint.
In an incident report to the AEC, Senator Payman – who founded Australia’s Voice after her high-profile exit from the ALP in mid-2024 – detailed the alleged “repeated Islamophobic and racially charged verbal abuse, bullying and harassment”.
The Australian understands that the party volunteer in question often dons the orange of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation before changing for the afternoon session into Family First attire.
“Our volunteer endured several Islamophobic slurs and degrading comments about his faith, including a particularly abhorrent remark: ‘How many people did your prophet Muhammad behead?’,” the senator wrote to the AEC.
“The individual also maliciously accused the 16-year-old of supporting terrorism. This verbal abuse was not just an act of racism but a clear case of intimidation and standover tactics, designed to humiliate and control.”
Senator Payman urged the AEC to take “appropriate action” against the volunteer and said that it was “especially disturbing” that a minor had been allegedly targeted while participating in Australia’s democratic process.
“It is concerning that such racism is being perpetuated during an election campaign,” the senator wrote. “These actions have no place in our political landscape, where every individual deserves to be treated with dignity and respect, free from intimidation and racial discrimination.”
While the teenager was left “visibly shaken”, the ability to make a police complaint rests with him and not the senator or her party.
Family First national director Lyle Shelton, the party’s lead senate candidate in NSW, said it had not received any communication from the AEC about the alleged incident, and accused Sydney-based Australia’s Voice volunteers of “accusing and harassing” his party’s booth workers last week.
One Nation was contacted for comment.
It comes as Victoria Police were called to a Wills pre-poll centre on Saturday after an altercation between Labor and Muslim Votes Matter volunteers surrounding a sign that depicted ALP incumbent Peter Wills in an Israeli flag with a red cross on his face, which accused him of going on a “Zionist lobby trip”.
Police were called after an altercation broke out over the sign.
An email sent by the AEC to relevant parties urged pre-poll volunteers to treat each other with respect. It said the sign in question was outside the booth’s area and thus outside the body’s legally controlled zone.
Separately, in Sydney on Monday, Australia’s Voice senate candidate Emanie Darwich heckled Anthony Albanese while the Prime Minister was campaigning in the seat of Banks, accusing the Labor leader of being “complicit in genocide” and blaming him for the cost of living crisis.
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