Joe Hildebrand: No virtue in Labor MPs’ virtue singalling

In an important week for Anthony Albanese’s Labor team, his work was made even harder by two of his own party members with their ill-timed virtue signalling antics.

Imagine having a publicly funded six-figure job, complete with a couple of offices and staff to attend your every need. All you need to do in return is basically what people tell you – just represent the views of that public and vote on laws for their betterment.

Now imagine choosing instead to blow up that entire purpose – as well as all your colleagues, whose jobs are on the line – just so you can self-satisfy on an issue happening literally on the other side of the world.

Sadly, we do not have to imagine it. Because that is exactly what a couple of Labor MPs have done this week.

Not only have they set themselves to politically self-destruct but they have also pointed their explosive-laden kamikaze clunker to the ALP leadership and then slumped dead on the throttle.

The late great Labor statesman Simon Crean was dubbed “the suicide bomber” after he tried to prompt leadership change in the dying days of the Gillard government. One can only imagine the moniker given to the two MPs who have self-immolated amid the first terms of Anthony Albanese and Chris Minns.

It should not be as kind.

Senator Fatima Payman has caused more headaches fo the Albanese government. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

The first is Fatima Payman, a first-term senator from WA who has caused untold damage in what was supposed to be the most important week for the Albanese government this calendar year.

The very next day after the handing down of the final budget before the next election – upon which the government’s survival depends –it was the wellbeing of her conscience that Senator Payman was most worried about, and she needed to express as much to a group of journalists at Parliament House.

“My conscience has been uneasy for far too long and I must call this out for what it is. This is a genocide and we need to stop pretending otherwise,” she said.

No, she wasn’t quoting an advance copy of Peter Dutton’s budget reply. She was talking about an ongoing millennia-old conflict on the opposite side of the planet.

Speaking of genocide, Payman also ended her speech with the infamous catchcry “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, which the Prime Minister has rightly condemned as a call for the elimination of the state of Israel.

Anthony D’Adam has been sacked from his parliamentary secretary role. Picture: Alexi Demetriadi

Thus, less than 24 hours after a budget delivering tax cuts and power bill relief for every Australian – a message Labor is desperate to promote – the Albanese government has been instantly derailed by one of its own for the sake of self-indulgent virtue-signalling about a war on the other side of the globe. Maybe Payman is on Dutton’s payroll. Or maybe just doing his work for free.

Either way, it’s an appalling act from a first-term Labor senator. Ironically, she won’t have to worry about re-election next year but she has shafted her leader’s chances.

And so Anthony Albanese, who already has to deal with pro-Palestinian Trots on campus and outside his office, now has to deal with them in his caucus.

To the PM’s credit he quickly and firmly condemned Payman’s comments as “inappropriate”, and Labor senators then voted with the Coalition to condemn the “river to the sea” slogan. But the damage was done.

It begs the question: Why are Labor MPs, whose electorates are (checks notes) some 12,000km from Israel, so desperate to blow up their party on this issue?

Payman is not even from the Holy Land – she was born in Afghanistan. Perhaps she is just determined to speak out against wars in general – although I am unfamiliar with any of her outrage against the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

But soft! What light from yonder window breaks?

Enter NSW Labor MP – and possible part-time French rapper – Anthony D’Adam. Not to be outdone, D’Adam (on the same day no less) managed to disgrace himself in the state’s upper house by likening NSW Police to “an occupying army using force to control a civilian population” and accusing the Police Commissioner of being a liar.

“The approach of the Public Order and Riot Squad at many Palestine protests makes a liar of the Commissioner,” he said.

Premier Chris Minns, the patron saint of Sensible Labor, wasted little time in sacking the MP from his parliamentary secretary roles. D’Adam is now on D’backbench.

Yet it was in a statement following his sacking that D’Adam truly revealed the insufferably smug self-indulgence that drives these narcissistic crusaders.

“I understand the position that the Premier has taken and hold no malice towards him,” he said.

Sorry? Come again? You’ve undermined the Premier and Police Minister, shat on a government already under siege for its handling of endless Palestine protests and once again blown up the Labor Party on this tinderbox issue but it’s all OK because you forgive them?

It is difficult to accurately chart how far one would have to be inside one’s lower intestine to even think such a thing, let alone put it in a statement, but there you go.

It’s like an arsonist saying he holds no malice towards the fire brigade.

Sorry buddy, I’m not quite sure the feeling’s mutual.

Originally published as Joe Hildebrand: No virtue in Labor MPs’ virtue singalling