Peta Credlin: Fatima Payman saga only going to get worse for Albanese government

The start of power bill relief and tax cuts should have marked a rare good news week for the Albanese government. Instead it was hijacked by a turncoat senator who should have been disciplined by the PM weeks ago, writes Peta Credlin.

The final parliamentary sitting week before the long winter recess was supposed to be the week of Labor’s reset.

The start of power bill relief and tax cuts was meant to be the retail politics good news that the PM needed to banish the humiliation of losing his signature Voice referendum last year, and months of being dogged by ministerial failures over foreign criminals.

Instead, it was completely hijacked by the Fatima Payman saga and put the spotlight on Labor’s anxieties about the Muslim vote.

What kind of a government would let its foreign policy be shaped by firebrand Islamist preachers; and what kind of a government would pull its punches on fighting anti-Semitism because of the anti-Semitism of some of its own voters?

Only one that’s weak and morally compromised and, at least on the evidence so far, that precisely describes the Albanese government.

Senator Fatima Payman cut a lonely figure walking to her press conference announcing she was quitting the Labor Party. Picture: Martin Ollman

Senator Payman’s defection over the government’s failure to unilaterally recognise Palestine weakens the government in the senate, threatens Labor’s hold on seats with a large Muslim population, and — worst of all — raises the spectre of sectarian politics and even religious political parties in a country that’s been mercifully free of dogma-driven absolutism.

Like the energy policy trainwreck, this catastrophe-in-the-making has been a long time coming.

For decades, especially under Labor governments, official multiculturalism has celebrated all cultures but our own, even though some immigrant cultures haven’t exactly valued equality of the sexes and religious freedom.

Likewise, a non-discriminatory immigration policy has been thought to preclude any strong preference, via English language fluency, for those migrants most likely to assimilate into the broader Australian community.

The result of this deliberate social engineering from the left and complacency from the right has been a proliferation of Islamist hate-preachers, an eruption of post-October 7 anti-Semitism, and — now — the real prospect of a domestic Islamist political movement exploiting the concentration of Muslim voters in Labor seats to create an anti-Western foreign policy.

In her resignation statement, Senator Payman admitted that she’d been in contact with the notorious preference whisperer Glenn Druery, whose speciality is creating new political parties, and, when asked whether she would start a new Muslim movement, told the media to “stay tuned”.

Refusing to sack Fatima Payman says a lot about Anthony Albanese’s lack of ticker for tough decisions, writes Peta Credlin. Picture: Martin Ollman

Last week, an entity called The Muslim Vote advertised for candidates to run against Jason Clare in Blaxland (32 per cent Muslim voters) and against Tony Burke in Watson (25 per cent Muslim voters).

This group is a virtual replica of a UK body that helped to elect about 40 “Gaza” candidates in the recent British local government elections and is pushing sectarian concerns such as specific legislation to criminalise any criticism of Islam.

If about half of these local Muslim voters were to preference against Labor, those Western Sydney seats would be in peril.

By refusing to take a moral stand against Hamas, while prevaricating over disciplining Payman for backing the Islamist position, Anthony Albanese could end up in a world of political pain.

In the end, he couldn’t bring himself to expel Payman for disloyalty, even though that is the 130-year-old precedent used by other Labor leaders; instead Payman quit.

That in itself says everything about Albanese’s lack of ticker for tough decisions.

As Payman made clear in her resignation statement, there’s a lot of support for her position inside Labor and the unions. This isn’t going to be eroded by Albanese waving a small stick at the Gaza sympathisers. It requires a clear acknowledgment that the war could end tomorrow but only if Hamas surrenders its hostages, renounces terrorism and accepts Israel’s right to exist behind secure borders.

But does anyone really expect, from this PM, the kind of leadership that Bob Hawke exercised when he said that “if the bell tolls for Israel, it tolls for all mankind”?

It should be axiomatic that the last thing Australia needs right now is a sectarian political party inviting people to vote on the basis of religious solidarity rather than a consideration of what’s in the best interests of this country.

People whose vote is determined by events on the other side of the world that Australia has zero capacity to influence need to reconsider their priorities.

By all means have a view on the Middle East, but making it the basis of your vote is hardly putting Australia first — and that should be the duty of every citizen.

Watch Peta on Credlin on Sky News, weeknights at 6pm

Originally published as Peta Credlin: Fatima Payman saga only going to get worse for Albanese government