In the wake of Labor Senator Fatima Payman’s shock decision to cross the floor and vote with the Greens against her party I was bemused, to say the least, to see social media light up with valiant attempts to press Gough Whitlam into service as the arbiter of what the ‘correct’ labor response should be. ‘Whitlam would never have suspended her’ was a popular view, and a completely incorrect one. As our most reforming Prime Minister and an avowed moderniser of the Labor party and its policies, Whitlam’s attitude to Labor’s policy platform was nonetheless an ‘uncomplicated’ one: ‘Where I disagreed with it, I sought to change it; where I agreed with it, I sought to implement it’.
Senator Payman, who had secured her position in the Senate as a Labor Senator for six years at the last election, was suspended indefinitely from Labor caucus. As Prime Minister Anthony Albanese put it, ‘No individual is bigger than the team. And Fatima Payman is welcome to return to participating in the team if she accepts (that) she’s a member of it’.
Gough Whitlam understood better than most the travails of changing Labor policy in a party in which caucus solidarity, with decisions of the Labor caucus binding on all parliamentary members, is paramount. There was no shortage of times in which he chafed against the strictures of party discipline, famously coming close to expulsion himself for perceived ‘disloyalty’ to the ’12 witless men’ as he termed the party Executive, yet he never crossed the floor to vote against his own party and nor did any member of his government.
Caucus solidarity is primarily a protection for the party and its platform, minimising the prospect we are now seeing of individual members voting against party policy in government and, potentially, turning against the party and even splitting from it. On which, more later. There are particular historical reasons for this strict adherence to caucus solidarity, born of Labor’s origins in the organised Labor movement and reinforced by decades of bitter splits. The other side of which is that caucus solidarity is also a protector for the electorate, enabling us to know just what policies we are voting for, which the Labor caucus is pledged to uphold, and to expect them to be implemented.
Social media is a lightning rod for missteps, half-truths, and falsehoods, rapidly circulated and repeated with alarming regularity, so the repetition of error and misrepresentation in that imperfect forum should hardly be surprising. More perplexing, and concerning, is just how confusing and incomplete much of the commentary on Senator Payman’s decision and the government’s response to it has been. Given the significance and rarity of a Labor government member crossing the floor, something which had not happened since the 1980s, this called for clarity and completeness where too often there was imprecision and uncertainty. The absence in several reports of a key element in this story – Senator Payman’s abstention from voting on a Labor amendment to the Greens’ motion – was a misrepresentation from the outset.
The Green’s motion called on the Senate to debate, as a matter of urgency, ‘the need for the Senate to recognise the state of Palestine’. Labor’s amendment to that motion called for the Senate to debate, as a matter of urgency the need for the Senate to recognise the state of Palestine ‘as part of a peace process in support of a two-state solution and a just and enduring peace’. Senator David Pocock voted for Labor’s amendment, the coalition and the Greens against, while Senator Payman abstained.
The wording of Labor’s amendment is important as it replicated the party platform and therefore the caucus position, yet Senator Payman did not support it. The careful wording of her public statements, that she had abided by the principles and the values of the Labor party is a pointed indication that her actions supported what she sees as Labor principles, not Labor policy. Nevertheless, several media reports echoed the Greens party leader Adam Bandt’s claim that in voting for the Greens’ motion Senator Payman, unlike other Labor Senators, had been true to Labor policy, as though Labor’s amendment reflecting that policy had never been put. She clearly had not. By abstaining from Labor’s amendment, Senator Payman had defied Labor policy. As the former Victorian Labor member Phil Dalidakis said, ‘it calls into question her commitment to a two-state solution which has been Labor policy for decades’. Despite that obvious conclusion, Senator Payman appeared on Insiders and reiterated that she supported the two-state solution.
Further confusion abounded regarding the motion itself, with several reports stating that Senator Payman had voted for a Greens motion calling for the recognition of Palestine – or, as one report described it, ‘a motion calling on Australia to formally recognise Palestinian statehood’. There was no such motion. This was compounded by the inflammatory and offensive hyperbole from Adam Bandt who accused Labor members of ‘supporting genocide’, which did nothing to assist a reasoned discussion of what had actually happened nor, more importantly, of what it now appears had been happening for some time.
With the revelation that Senator Payman has been meeting with the election strategist and ‘preference whisperer’ Glenn Druery, as well as leaders of the ‘Muslim Votes’ group which is planning to run candidates against Labor, it’s clear that there’s more to this episode to come. It suggests some planning regarding both the Greens motion and the outcome, which is yet to be fully understood. A religious based political party is a novel, and for some a worrying, new dimension in Australia’s secular political landscape, the largely Catholic yet ostensibly non-religious DLP notwithstanding. Nor can it be assumed that such a narrowly defined party is something that many Muslim Australians would necessarily be keen to support.
Nevertheless, as Kos Samaras has noted, a Muslim Votes teal-style campaign targeting Labor seats with a high proportion of Muslim voters, could cause problems for Labor by splitting its primary vote, particularly in seats in which the Greens vote has also been increasing. Coincidentally or otherwise, this scenario mirrors the Greens own political calculus on increasing its parliamentary representation. For some of those seats at play – Wills, Cooper, Macnamara, Perth for example – are also seats that the Greens figure in the next tranche of possible gains from Labor. A break-away Muslim Votes splinter group would gift the Greens a DLP-style spoiler operation, splitting Labor’s vote in a three-way contest in which the Greens would be the major beneficiary. Patrick Gorman, Labor member for Perth, described using ‘an international war as a domestic political opportunity’ as ‘a new low’. Just what role the Greens have played in the intrigue of recent weeks may become clearer once Senator Payman, as expected, resigns from the Labor party.
On Wednesday, the Greens joined the Liberal-National party coalition in voting against a Labor motion, ‘that the House of Representatives endorse the Government’s position to support the recognition of the State of Palestine, as part of a peace process, in support of a two-state solution and a just and enduring peace’. While tens of thousands of Gazans have been and are continuing to be slaughtered, this baleful war of words continues.
Jenny Hocking is emeritus professor at Monash University, Distinguished Whitlam Fellow at the Whitlam Institute at Western Sydney University and award-winning biographer of Gough Whitlam. Her latest book is The Palace Letters: The Queen, the governor-general, and the plot to dismiss Gough Whitlam. You can follow Jenny on Twitter @palaceletters.
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