Senator Fatima Payman broke ranks with Labor over Israel this week. Here’s what we know about her
She broke ranks with the ALP to sensationally accuse Israel of ‘genocide’, but Senator Fatima Payman has been speaking out about the conflict for months.
One of the youngest women to enter federal parliament, Fatima Payman, was a leader in Western Australia’s Muslim and multicultural community before winning her senate seat at the 2022 election.
Born in Kabul in Afghanistan, the 28-year-old was a member of the WA Police Muslim community advisory group, secretary of the multicultural Labor branch and named the Muslim role model of the year in 2022.
But Senator Payman – who worked as a union organiser ahead of entering politics – has this week drawn national attention for her decision to break ranks with the Labor Party and label Israel’s actions in Gaza as “genocide”.
In explosive comments on Wednesday, Senator Payman said her conscience had “been uneasy for far too long” and declared she felt compelled to call out the behaviour of both Israel and her own party.
“I ask our Prime Minister and our fellow parliamentarians: how many international rights laws must Israel break for us to say enough? How many lives does it take to call this a genocide?” she said, in comments to SBS.
“I see our leaders performatively gesture defending the oppressors’ right to oppress while gaslighting the global community about (Israel’s) rights of self-defence.”
Her actions drew criticism from Anthony Albanese and other frontbenchers, but Senator Payman said on Wednesday night in a social media post that she promised to keep raising her voice on the matter.
The daughter of refugees
Senator Payman was born in 1995 as the first child of Abdul and Shogufa Waki amid the collapse of Afghanistan at the hands of the Taliban.
Her parents fled to Pakistan before Senator Payman’s father travelled by boat for 11 days to Australia in 1999.
Four years later, Senator Payman, her mother and her siblings joined him in the northern suburbs of Perth.
Losing her father
The loss of her father at just 47 years-old was the “most difficult reality of life” Senator Payman said she ever had to face.
Mr Waki was diagnosed in 2017 with acute myeloid leukaemia and went through 11 months of intense chemotherapy and bone marrow transplants before losing his battle to the disease.
Senator Payman paid tribute to her father in her first speech to parliament in 2022, recounting to the upper house the pieces of wisdom he had passed on that she still held to, including “little drops make a tiny ocean” or “seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave”.
“I have realised that in order to live a productive and impactful life and contribute towards my father’s legacy I must seize every opportunity that comes my way,” she said.
Ridiculed for her religion
Despite her efforts at studying medicine proving unsuccessful, Senator Payman went on to study pharmacy with the perception that the medical field was the best way to serve humanity.
But she faced something in her university years that she had not experienced until entering the University of Western Australia: discrimination and harassment because of her background.
Senator Payman said she was for the first time “made to feel like the ‘other’” by her peers, who ridiculed her for her hijab and told her to “go back to where you came from”.
The experience prompted her to join the WA Police Muslim community advisory group and UWA’s Muslim students association, before meeting WA MP Pierra Yang and becoming involved in the Labor Party. She served as Equity and Diversity Officer for WA Young Labor in 2020 and later President of Young Labor (WA) in 2021.
Voted in on WA’s ‘red wave’
Senator Payman was asked to run for the senate in 2021 and decided to see how far she could go to win the third Labor senate spot in WA, something which had not happened for the party since 1984.
But, as a sea of red took hold of WA, Senator Payman became one of a sizeable rump of first term Labor members from the West.
In entering parliament, Senator Payman said her priorities included ensuring young people were heard, eradicating stigmas around mental health, ending homelessness and stamping out bigotry.
“Let us not settle on multiculturalism being just a brand we associate with or take pride in as a nation but rather fully embrace it by caring for one another, by accepting each other for who we are and what we can become, and by ensuring all voices are heard at the table,” she said in her first speech.
Since then, she’s remained an active in multicultural events and affairs, campaigned strongly for an Indigenous voice to parliament and urged for better pay for workers.
Israel-Palestine
Before declaring Israel was committing genocide this week, Senator Payman has been vocal about the conflict.
In October last year she made an impassioned speech to parliament about how the world had proudly condemned Russia’s occupation of Ukraine and how the Israel-Gaza conflict demanded the same.
“The state of Israel deprives an entire population … of the basic necessities of life,” she said.
Senator Payman proudly backed the government’s decision to support a resolution to expand Palestine’s rights at the UN general assembly, declaring “this is an important step towards securing peace and recognition of Palestinians”.
But her comments on Wednesday went further than any she had made before, with a veiled swipe at the Prime Minister for not doing enough to call out Israel.
