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Meanwhile in Australia: Islam, Gaza, and Party Loyalty
Let's take a break from our regularly scheduled Trump-related programming to consider some drama in another country...
This is Fatima Payman. She's a Labor senator for Western Australia who's recently found herself in a spot of bother, which I found interesting enough to be worth comment. Let me set the stage with a bit of background first.
Australia has a Westminster system of government with a bicameral legislature. The lower house of parliament has MPs who are elected representing particular districts, but the upper house, or senate, has a different and convoluted method of electing its members. Each Australian state (there are six) gets twelve senators and each territory (there are two) gets two, for a total of seventy-six. Most of the time the way senators are elected is by political party. A senate ballot paper looks like this, and rather than number specific individual preferences, most voters merely vote for a single party, and then their votes are allocated according to that party's pre-selected preferences.
This is relevant because Fatima Payman, who's only 28, was third on the Labor list of preferences for the senate in Western Australia. She was not particularly expected to win - only six seats were up and Labor didn't expect to win three. So it's worth noting that neither the party nor Payman herself thought she'd get into the senate in 2022, and perhaps more importantly, almost nobody at the ballot box even knew who she was, much less expected her to win. How this affects her democracy legitimacy is for you to determine.
Labor, or in full the Australian Labor Party (ALP; note that the party is Labor even though the word 'labour' has a U in it in Australian English, it's because there was significant American influence on its foundation in the 19th century), is the centre-left party in Australia and is currently in government. Its traditional rival is the centre-right Liberal Party (in coalition with the National Party, hence Liberal/National Coalition, LNP, or just 'the Coalition'). Labor is traditionally a working-class, blue-collar party with a heavy base in the Australian union movement. In the 90s, like many labour parties in the West, it rebranded a bit to try to appeal more to the middle class and progressives, but the union heritage is still very much present.
Meanwhile, coming up on Labor's left flank is the Australian Greens. Australia has preferential, ranked-choice voting, so there's no spoiler effect, and this has allowed the Greens to rise without ruining the left's chances overall. The Greens were originally a one-issue environmentalist party in the 80s, but have since become a general progressive or far-left party. The Greens tend to take more idealistic, some might say extreme positions than Labor, and have been nibbling away at Labor's left flank for decades. The Greens tend to do best with middle-class or wealthy progressives and especially the young and students - stereotypically, they're the hipster, yuppie party.
One last thing is worth noting. Internally, Labor have traditionally had a strong emphasis on party discipline and solidarity. The norm for Labor has generally been that MPs and senators may voice disagreements in private, but once the party has come to a collective decision, everybody is expected to maintain discipline and stand by that decision, even if they disagree. Despite a few exceptions, Labor have generally stood by this in the past - one famous example was when the Labor party room agreed to oppose gay marriage, Penny Wong, a Labor MP and lesbian in a committed relationship (and obvious private supporter of same-sex marriage) voted against it and even argued against it in public, not changing her public view until the party as a whole came around.
So, time for the drama.
The Greens recently put forth a bill to recognise Palestinian statehood. This is a long-standing part of the Green platform. (The Labor platform includes something waffley about supporting a two-state solution in principle, but without committing to anything. They have been fending off criticism for this over the last few months.) Naturally it failed, with both Labor and the Coalition voting against. At the time, in May, Fatima Payman made some defiant pro-Palestinian speeches and was quietly censured.
Then last week, in the end of June, a motion in the senate to recognise Palestinian statehood came along. Again, Labor and the Coalition voted against it, but Payman crossed the floor to support the Greens.
Crossing the floor - voting against your own party - is a big deal in Australian politics.
Since then, Payman has been temporarily suspended from the Labor caucus, but not removed from the party; she may yet return to the caucus in good standing if she promises to follow the Labor party's rules. She has been criticised by some of her fellows, but supported by some authors, and the Labor prime minister, Anthony Albanese, seems to be struggling to find a middle path. The Greens are naturally praising Payman for her display of conscience, while the Coalition are mostly just pointing and laughing.
What's even more interesting is that local Islamic groups in Australia, which in the past have mostly been Labor voters (they don't like the Coalition for usual right-wing-party-related reasons, and they're not nearly socially progressive enough for the Greens) are strongly siding with Payman, and are flagging the possibility of an electoral revolt against Labor.
(The teals were a group of traditionally Coalition seats who cared a lot about environmental issues and climate change and revolted, electing independent MPs - so blue (the Coalition colour, conservatism) plus green (environment) equals teal. The possibility of a similar revolt against Labor would be terrifying for them.)
This rebellion may not come to anything and may not be very influential in the long run - there just aren't enough Australian Muslims, and most of them are in heavy Labor seats anyway - but with the next election rapidly approaching, Labor would really want to avoid any appearance of strife or disunity, especially with inflation, rising cost-of-living, energy policy, and the failed Voice referendum all making this government look a bit more ramshackle than they'd like - the Coalition are rapidly closing in on them in the polls.
As for Payman herself, it's not clear what she will do. She claims to have been bullied or intimidated, but at least from what's been seen in public so far, she appears to have been treated relatively gently. She could commit to abide by the Labor party's rules again and return to the caucus, or she could quit Labor entirely and become an independent senator, though this would make it extremely unlikely that she would ever get re-elected. Still, she's not up for re-election until 2028 anyway, so that might be worth it.
I don't have a conclusion to draw from this mess yet - but I think it's an interesting example of how Palestine and the Muslim vote are influencing centre-left politics in Western countries. Muslims aren't even a particularly large proportion of Australians (per the last census, 3.2% of Australians; compare 2.7% Hindus and 2.4% Buddhists), and yet they've got some influence here.
Of course, it's also possible that this is just a one-off - Labor screwed up the ticket in 2022 and by bad luck, a millennial who never should have been a senator in the first place got in there, and now she's grandstanding in a way that hurts her own party. Perhaps the only moral to draw from this is just "don't be stupid when selecting senate candidates". (A lesson the Greens might need to learn as well; this invites comparison to the saga of ex-Green independent senator Lidia Thorpe. But more on that some other time.)
Anyway, I offer the situation up for your reactions.
As I understand it, voting against your party basically never happens in British politics, because the party leaders can just replace you instantly with someone who toes the line. Is that also the case in Australia? or how hard is it to replace a "faithless parliamentarian?"
It's actually significantly more common in British politics (though still much less common than in America). For example, in the UK 56 Labour MPs broke ranks with the party over the Gaza issue, as opposed to just one here.
In neither system can the party instantly replace you. They can kick you out of the party or deny you pre-selection though, and that functionally means you will not be re-elected in most cases.
Australian Labor Party discipline is very, very tight. Payman is only the 20th Labor MP to ever cross the floor. I think the last time it happened was back in the 90s.
The Conservative side of politics is less extreme. You won't be kicked out of the party and you probably won't be denied preselection. But you have to give up any ministry positions and generally it hurts your political career. So a few opinionated people decide it's worth it, for example Bridget Archer has crossed the floor dozens of times. But overall it's still pretty rare, and the vast majority of Liberal MPs have never crossed the floor.
The British parties actually have a system for telling MPs (and Lords) just how unacceptable a rebellion would be. The party whips produce a roughly weekly newsletter for their MPs (also called "The Whip") giving warning of forthcoming votes and telling them which way to vote. The preferred vote is underlined once for an important vote where MPs are expected to show up, twice for a vote where MPs are required to show up (unless "paired" with an absent opposition MP) but only habitual offenders will actually be punished for not showing, and three times for a vote where MPs are required to show up and unauthorised absence will be punished by default. Rebelling against a three-line whip will, in theory, get you kicked out of the party caucus (in British terminology, "having the Whip withdrawn" because caucus membership is de facto defined by the circulation of the newsletter) but in practice only happens where there is safety in numbers such that the Party leadership can't afford to kick all the rebels out.
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