Until the weekend, the story of West Australian Labor Senator Fatima Payman’s problems with the federal government’s position on Gaza had unfolded with a certain predictability. The Greens put forward a Senate motion on Palestine. Payman took the bait. The Labor leadership responded with kid glove treatment (despite factional hacks backgrounding the media to vilify Payman as a multicultural blow-in — any Labor factional chief complaining that an MP or senator is in Parliament because of special deals is textbook hypocrisy). Richard Marles, in a carefully rehearsed talking point, repeatedly stressed that the demands of social cohesion meant Labor wasn’t interested in harsher punishment of Payman.
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