It Was Foreign Policy, Not a Matter of Conscience, Fatima

When rogue Labor Senator Fatima Payman crossed the floor on a motion about Palestine — she was not opposing the government on a matter of conscience but a matter of foreign policy.

That is an indisputable fact because whichever way you cut it — the actions of any MP or individual here in Australia will not in and of itself end the suffering of millions of innocent Gazans in the Middle East.

As one senior Labor source I spoke with this week put it: “When the Israelis pull the tanks out of Gaza or the hostages are released, Fatima Payman wouldn’t have anything to do with it one way or another.”

I have no doubt that Ms Payman, a young Muslim-Australian who fled war-torn Afghanistan as a child, feels strongly about the horrific human suffering in Gaza.

Watching images of tiny dead bodies pulled from homes turned to rubble are brutal and rightly inspire a sense of horror.

And that horror is shared by many of her colleagues and many in my own home of Western Sydney.

But what she and those putting foreign affairs above domestic social cohesion are forgetting is that we all came to Australia to escape the social and political instability many of our former homes offered.

Sure, political movements underpinned by religion have existed for decades but until now they have almost always focused on changing domestic politics.

Christian-focused political parties have sought to push against same-sex marriage, euthanasia and abortion rights. Just two years ago, as a member of the NSW state press gallery I saw first-hand the staunch religious opposition to the state’s voluntary assisted dying bill. But there is an undeniable difference between a religious movement driven by changes in Australian healthcare and social policy and one that is driven by a war fought oceans away.

Australians should care about what happens in the Middle East, they should have compassion for the loss of life in Gaza and put pressure on the Albanese government to ensure both sides of this war are following International Law.

They should care when Australian aid workers are killed by Israeli forces. And they should care about what aid the government is sending to the devastated region.

But voting in single-issue independents, like what has unfolded in the UK election, is a dangerous precedent to set.

The Australian arm of The Muslim Vote is yet to announce its candidates and is far less organised than its UK’s counterparts so far.

But if their success in the UK election is anything to go by — they will focus on putting “Palestine on the ballot” and there is no way any candidate whose sole priority is a matter of foreign policy can act in the best interests of Australians.

Advocacy on wars fought overseas must never come at the cost of fighting for Australians who are struggling to put food on the table right here at home.

Every other day, people awake to news that an Indigenous group has been granted native title over another slice of the country, increasingly over prime real estate, such as on the Sunshine Coast, Redland and Moreton Bay areas and on Fraser and Moreton islands

The narrative is always the same – nothing to see here, no need for non-Indigenous Australians to worry about access and usage.

If this is so, why bother to spend vast amounts of taxpayer dollars ­paying lawyers to argue these cases if it’s all going to be hunky dory and business as usual?

People are told not to worry, but if Premier Steven Miles was to park himself beside any suburban backyard barbecue, he would quickly discover people are very worried about what this will mean for the nature of the society in which their children and their children’s children will live.

I’m old enough to remember the days when even though people held opinions that differed from yours, it was understood we were all in this ­together and agreed to disagree in the interests of the common good.

Those days are fast disappearing.

I wonder if we will ever see their like again.