An Australian senator has accused her colleagues of intimidation after she was suspended from the ruling Labor party’s parliamentary caucus following her vote for a motion to recognise a Palestinian state.
Afghanistan-born Fatima Payman, an outspoken opponent of the war in Gaza and defender of the Palestinian cause, last week ignored her party’s decision to oppose a Greens party motion. She was suspended on Sunday and, on Tuesday, the Labor caucus voted unanimously to endorse the decision.
“I have been exiled,” Payman said in a written statement, after the penalty was issued. “These actions lead me to believe that some members are attempting to intimidate me into resigning from the Senate.”
Payman, who is the first hijab-wearing woman to serve in Australia’s parliament and its youngest senator at 29, has said she is considering her position, amid speculation she may quit the Labor party and spend the final four years of her six-year term as an independent.
The indefinite suspension leaves the senator in political limbo, still officially a member of the government but ostracised from its forums and internal communications.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, initially issued Payman a one-week suspension for breaching a 130-year-old party rule that all members must uphold caucus decisions – a defiance that historically has attracted expulsion.
But Albanese and his leadership team upped it to indefinite suspension on Sunday after Payman gave a television interview vowing she would do the same thing again.
“By her own actions, Senator Payman has placed herself outside the privilege that comes with participating in the federal parliamentary Labor party caucus,” Albanese told parliament on Monday.
Stopping short of expelling the Western Australian senator forces her to either except her isolation or resign from Labor of her own volition. She is not required to quit parliament.
Payman’s initial penalty was relatively light because of domestic political sensitivities around the Gaza war and concerns the issue was straining social cohesion.
But some within the party were furious because other Labor parliamentarians had historically toed the line on policy positions with which they also strongly disagreed.
Across the wider party, Payman has attracted support among progressives angry that their leftwing prime minister has not taken a tougher stance against Israel on the Gaza conflict. The Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi told the Senate on Monday that Labor had “shamefully sanctioned” Payman, and should instead focus its efforts on the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October, and Israel’s war in Gaza, have prompted regular protests in Australia, including graffiti attacks at the electorate offices of government MPs, some involving broken windows and other damage.
Albanese, opposition leader Peter Dutton and others have strongly condemned a sharp rise in antisemitism linked to the Gaza war. Albanese has also acknowledged and criticised a rise in Islamophobia.
Payman has been told she is welcome back in the party if she agrees to “respect the caucus and her Labor colleagues” – requiring an undertaking not to vote against her party’s wishes again. But she has given no sign she is willing to comply.
“I know that Australians are fair people, and knowing about the Labor party, we are a party with a conscience and champions of human rights, whether that be justice, fighting for freedom or equality,” she told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on Sunday. “So I believe that I’ve been abiding by those principles of the party.”
The prime minister has not commented on Payman’s claims of intimidation from colleagues, however the government minister Bill Shorten said on Tuesday he did not think she had been “been intimidated or exiled”.
Payman has publicly used the phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” – seen by some as opposing the existence of the state of Israel. She said she uses it only to describe liberation and believes Israel has a right to exist.
The Labor party supports the recognition of a Palestinian state but as part of a two-state solution in the Middle East and unsuccessfully tried to amend the wording of last week’s Greens motion by adding the words “as part of a peace process in support of a two-state solution and a just and enduring peace”. The original Greens motion was defeated 52 to 13, with Labor and the conservative opposition voting against it.
Some prominent Australian Muslim leaders have backed Payman’s defiant stance, vowing to mobilise communities to campaign against the government at the next election, due before May.