I quite like Carrick Ryan’s take on this (apologies for FB link): https://www.facebook.com/realcarrickryan/posts/pfbid02yEcgzfHPmMDv52kLe897qfcG55cpt9YY6phdntvZGEd4Jx1do645JfXPK2hge85vl
A few days back I wrote about my discomfort at the inability of Labor MP’s and Senators to vote with their conscience. As I stated at the time, in theory every vote should be a conscience vote.
In fairness to Labor, I think it is worthwhile explaining how Labor operate under this strict discipline model, and why it isn’t necessarily as draconian as it might first sound.
In both houses of Parliament, an average of about 139 pieces of legislation are passed every year. This is spread across an average of about 70 sitting days.
In addition to legislation, there are countless “motions” that can be submitted by any member of the house which is really not much more than a statement of intent, or declaration of belief.
So how do MP’s know how to vote on each and every bill or motion that comes before them? Each party has a “Whip”, a senior member whose job it is to essentially tell everyone how the Party intends to vote on each matter. (Or if you’re an Independent, you do a LOT of reading).
How does the Whip know? Well in Labor’s case, the Party decides what its policy or stance will be through a Caucus Vote. This is a meeting of all elected MP’s and Senators from the Party in which the stance of the Party on individual issues are decided.
While the influence of senior members and factions obviously play a huge role in determining the outcome of these votes, they are held in secret and the vote of Prime Minister Albanese is worth no more than that of a back bencher.
Once the Caucus vote on a particular policy agenda, it is agreed that the whole Party will unify behind that agenda regardless on how they voted in Caucus. This is referred to as the pledge of Caucus Solidarity.
So why does Labor do this and why not let individual members vote as they please in Parliament?
The argument is that a consistent Party voting bloc means voters have a clear understanding of exactly what they are voting for when they elect a Labor candidate.
It means voters don’t have to interrogate the values of each local MP, they know what they are getting because they know what the Party stands for.
Fatima Payman had an opportunity in Caucus to convince her Party colleagues to vote in support of the Green’s motion, she evidently failed.
The moment she knew what the Labor stance towards it was, she knew she would be breaching Party rules by crossing the floor.
She breached the rule of Party solidarity, and whether or not you agreed with her stance, Albanese now has little option but to enforce the rules of the Party… otherwise the rules will be ignored.
It should be remembered that in the 2022 election, only 1,681 people voted for Payman directly. She has her seat in the Senate because she was the third placed Labor candidate for the Senate (and Labor won three Senate seats).
So while Payman should be applauded for following her convictions, it could also be reasonably argued that she has no mandate to pursue her own policy agenda in the Senate. She is in Parliament because West Australians voted for Labor, not her.
An obvious exception to this rule is when Party Leaders allow for a “conscience vote”. This is when an issue is acknowledged as deeply routed in personal ethics or societal morality, and each member is encouraged to then listen to their individual electorates and vote as they please (e.g. abortion or marriage equality).
Could Payman gave been given a conscience vote? Possibly, but allowing a conscience vote on what is essentially our national foreign policy is problematic. Having significant foreign policy being dictated by conscience votes would make us a very unpredictable ally and make it difficult to pursue long term agendas.
As is so often the case, it’s possible to believe two things.
It’s possible to believe Payman is a principled Woman who risked her political future to take a moral stand.
And, at the same time…
It’s possible to believe that Labor’s policy of Caucus solidarity has existed for almost 150 years, and she knew the rules when she joined the Party.
Whether she could have affected greater change within the Party Caucus than from her now exiled status is a debate worth having… I’m interested to hear your thoughts.
It reads to me like lazy apologia for Labor’s weak stance here. It has been Labor’s official policy for decades, and even was at one time an issue Albo himself was outspoken on, to support Palestinian statehood. Now they get into Government and refuse to do so because it wouldn’t play well to America. It’s weak and gutless.
The fact that Labor is punishing their member in the light of all that just highlights the problem with their strict policy of solidarity. They should take a more nuanced approach like parties often do overseas. Defection on critical issues like supply and confidence motions is obviously unacceptable, but for other issues, the whip should be removed only if they are regularly voting against the party line. Put different votes into different tiers and weigh up how often an MP or Senator is voting against the party line in different tiers.
I also find it very ironic that he signs off with “I’m interested to hear your thoughts.” But hasn’t engaged with any of the reasonable criticism of his article in the comments. Only with a couple of crazies.
This whole debacle is, to me, more proof that you can’t change a system from the inside, all you can do is support and legitamize it.
Good on Payman for taking a stand, hopefully this leads to either actual change in the party or to people realising that Labor really isn’t any less corrupt than the LNP.
I pretty much shared my thoughts on this a couple of days ago. I think this take on the matter is glossing over something really significant:
It’s possible to believe that Labor’s policy of Caucus solidarity has existed for almost 150 years, and she knew the rules when she joined the Party.
What was Labor’s stated position on the matter of Palestinian statehood when Senator Payman joined the party?
(That’s rhetorical, we all know the answer)
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A Labor branch in Anthony Albanese’s own electorate has passed a motion expressing support for the dissident senator Fatima Payman, even as expectations grow she is poised to quit the party.
At least six Labor branches have now passed motions backing Payman in the past 48 hours, in a sign that some of the party’s rank-and-file members may be more forgiving of her breach of caucus solidarity rules than her fellow MPs and senators.
Federal Labor parliamentarians on Tuesday endorsed Albanese’s move to indefinitely suspend Payman from the caucus after the Western Australian senator, 29, warned she was prepared to cross the floor again on Palestinian statehood.
When the unamended motion was put to a vote, Payman crossed the floor to support it - a form of dissent that has historically been treated harshly by Labor, which has longstanding rules to uphold collective decisions.
Anthony D’Adam, a NSW upper house MP and spokesperson for the Labor Friends of Palestine group, said the federal party “needs to listen to Fatima Payman, not punish her”.
He argued Payman had “taken a brave and principled stand for Labor policy that was agreed collectively and democratically at the party’s highest level of decision making: the 2023 national conference”.
The original article contains 845 words, the summary contains 204 words. Saved 76%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Not just Leichhardt, but “at least six Labor branches have now passed motions backing Payman in the past 48 hours”. This whole thing is just proving how corrupted the Labor Party has become. They won’t stand up for their own members’ beliefs.
They never have. It’s always been the case that you have never been allowed to cross the floor with Labour. If you go into that party, then you know that you cannot truly speak your own mind as we see here.
Is this a reply in the wrong thread? There are a lot of threads about Labor and Payman around the last couple of days, but this one specifically is about how Labor is not even standing up for their own pre-stated beliefs and how the party caucus is going against the wishes of the party’s rank-and-file members. It’s not so much about the extremist approach to caucus solidarity that caused this mess in the first place.
My reply was simply to state that Labour has always had this stance. You can never go against the party on anything, and you have to vote what the party says. It has always been this way.
idk much about politics or how the ALP works, and didn’t even read the article, but unless there’s something specific about Labor branches that have voted to support Albanese’s position, it’s one sided reporting by definition …
Edit: I scanned the article and there appears to only be reporting on those 6 branches that were against the PM. For all we know, every other branch (hundreds?, thousands?) supports the PM. One sided.
