Fatima Payman defection set to stir WA Labor factional rivalries

Labor is bracing for another bout of factional tensions in the key battleground state of WA following Fatima Payman’s decision to ditch the party that delivered her a Senate seat.

WA senator Fatima Payman. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Labor is bracing for another bout of factional tensions in the key battleground state of Western Australia following Fatima Payman’s decision to ditch the party that delivered her a Senate seat.

Senator Payman, a former Young Labor president, was elected to the Senate in 2022 after she was handed third position on the ticket with the backing of the United Workers Union – colloquially known as the Missos – and the party’s left faction.

Her protracted falling-out with the party over its position on Palestinian statehood has overshadowed the Albanese government’s delivery of its latest budget and rollout of its tax cuts, and has provided further ammunition to rival party factions in WA long frustrated by the perceived party influence of the Missos.

Those frustrations boiled over last year after Mark McGowan’s sudden resignation as premier, with a coalition of unions successfully throwing support behind Roger Cook after the UWU anointed Amber-Jade Sanderson as Mr McGowan’s replacement.

While factional opponents of the Missos have been emboldened by the Fatima Payman saga, few are expecting any major changes to the party’s preselection processes as a result of Senator Payman’s decision to quit Labor and remain in the Senate as an independent.

One Labor insider told The Australian they expected party factions to use Senator Payman’s defection to attack the Missos, while another said they expect her to find strong support from lay party members from the hard left who will use her departure to continue to agitate for Labor to change its position on Palestine.

“She’s a martyr now, and there will be people in the party who treat her that way and who will want … recriminations,” said one source close to the Labor Right.

Many inside WA Labor are furious at the senator’s conduct, given the damage it has done to the government and the discipline being shown on the Israel-Palestine conflict by other, more senior MPs.

“She knew what she was doing and she thought she could get away with it,” one source said.

“She just thought she was untouchable because she was naive.”

Another Labor source said there was unlikely to be any major change to the party’s preselection processes as a result of the saga. One consequence could be that greater attention is paid to ensuring all preselected candidates – even those nominated for traditionally unwinnable positions – fully understand the significance of maintaining caucus solidarity if elected.

Labor had historically only ever won two WA Senate seats, with the Left and Right factions alternating each election over who gets to nominate the third candidate on the ticket. That privilege fell to the Left at the last election, which saw Labor deliver its best-ever result in WA as it leveraged off the popularity of then-premier Mark McGowan and the diminished standing in the state of Scott Morrison and the Liberal Party, and Labor secured three Senate seats in the state.

One source defended the preselection process that put Senator Payman in parliament, noting the senator, while young, had a solid record of service within the party and the union movement before she was put on the ballot.

The source said the party would not change its commitment to putting forward a diverse range of candidates from across the community.

A photograph featuring Senator Payman and other WA Labor MPs alongside Anthony Albanese still features on the cover of WA Labor’s Facebook page at the time of writing.

WA took on added significance at the last federal election, with the four seats gained by Labor and the six lost by the Liberals proving central in allowing Labor to govern in its own right.

Labor officially launched its 2022 election campaign in Perth and developed a WA-specific advertising strategy as it attempted to capitalise on the McGowan factor.

Although the Liberals believe they are well placed to claw back some of the ground lost in the west, the latest Newspoll showed Labor remained ahead 52-48 in the state on a two-party preferred basis. While that poll relied on a relatively small sample size in WA, it is understood the figures are broadly in line with Labor’s own internal polling.

Labor insiders in WA are not overly concerned about any Muslim voter backlash, with the per capita Muslim population in the west around half of that in the likes of NSW and Victoria.

On Sunday, Premier Roger Cook – whose government employs Senator Payman’s husband, Jacob Stokes, as a policy adviser – said “everyone in the Labor Party feels for her at the moment”.

“But she needs to obviously now understand the decision she’s made. And those decisions are for her alone,” he said.