Labor is usually tough in dealing with rats in the rank, but don’t expect that for Fatima Payman
There is a century-old Labor tradition of dealing with rats in the ranks, those Labor MPs who have taken the party’s support, promotion and parliamentary payment, and then disloyally turned against the ALP.
That traditional payment is expulsion, ostracisation, the public pillory and condemnation through the ages.
Fatima Payman, a 29-year-old Muslim, female senator from Western Australia, now stands in the ranks of the rats and awaits her sentence.
Payman crossed the floor of the Senate and voted against her Labor colleagues and with the Greens that Anthony Albanese has excoriated in recent weeks as he condemned the Greens’ sympathy for pro-Palestinian violent demonstrations.
Payman has fuelled tribal anger within the ALP, made the Prime Minister look weak on his emotional parliamentary attacks over pro-Palestinian, again divided the ALP’s message on the Middle East and distracted from the government’s priorities.
But don’t hold your breath for the “loosing” of the Labor dogs of war against the two-year senator, there will be excuses made and exceptions given.
When Queensland Labor senator Mal Colston turned rat against the ALP in 1996 – in return for the cheesy job of vice-president of the Senate – and later carried the sale of Telstra for the Howard government, the vitriol was unrelenting.
Colston was termed the “king rat”, ostracised and pursued at every turn. He was an easy target for Labor wrath: he was old, male, fat, greedy and without friends.
Now, consider Payman: young, female, Muslim, with friends and supporting Palestine, not seeking payment or promotion.
It’s the same crime but don’t expect the same punishment.
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