Australian Story on ABC and ABC iview profiles Fatima Payman – Former Labor senator Fatima Payman reveals why she voted against her party and the fallout that followed, both at home and in the capital.
A week after she returned to Canberra as an independent, Australian Story presents the dramatic inside story of Senator Fatima Payman’s decision to break ranks with the ALP and cross the floor.
Senator Payman gives a rare insight into the conflict that arises when private views clash with party policy and the personal toll of her actions on her and new husband Jacob Stokes.
“It’s not often that your wife is in a public fistfight with the prime minister,”
– says Stokes, who was then a Labor staffer in WA.
“We got into arguments about it.”
After speaking out against the party’s position on the Gaza war, the first-term senator became the centre of a media and political storm, which culminated when she quit Labor to sit on the crossbench seven weeks ago.
Labor Minister Anne Aly speaks candidly about her former colleague’s actions.
Australian Story documents the WA senator’s return to federal parliament as an independent, speaking to her controversial new chief of staff, former “preference whisperer” Glenn Druery.
“I don’t know what to expect in terms of how my former colleagues are going to treat me,”
– she says.
Fatima Payman was the first-born of four siblings whose family were forced to flee when the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan. In 2022, at the age of 27, she unexpectedly won a seat in the Senate for Western Australia and became the parliament’s first politician to wear a hijab.
She’s the first Labor member to cross the floor in 40 years.
Producers: Olivia Rousset, Robyn Powell and Kirstin Murray.
Australian Story on ABC and ABC iview – Monday 19 August, 2024 at 8:00pm
Media Release – ABC
TV Central ABC content HERE
Australian Story on ABC and ABC iview profiles Fatima Payman
