The Chaser Report - Why Fatima Payman Left Labor | Amanda Tattersall

Episode Date: September 11, 2025

Charles and Dom are joined by Amanda Tattersall, host of the ChangeMakers Podcast, who just interviewed Senator Fatima Payman on what went down behind closed doors before she left the Labor Party. Hear Dom and Charles debrief with Amanda about the interview in this episode, and the full episode with Payman on changemakerspodcast.org.ChangeMakers Fatima Payman episode: https://shows.acast.com/change-makers/episodes/fatima-payman-gaza-and-the-labor-party---Buy the Wankernomics book: https://wankernomics.com/bookListen AD FREE: https://thechaserreport.supercast.com/ Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us: [e-mail] CEO’s Super-yacht upgrade Fund: https://chaser.com.au/support/ Send complaints to: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gadigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Jayser Report with Dom and Charles. And a very special guest here, Charles. Who have we got joining us around the podcast table? Just checking my notes. It is Dr. Amanda Tattersall. It's an associate professor, Amanda Tattesall.

You got the title wrong? Oh, sorry. Who is, now, yeah, sorry, I'm a little bit done. Who am I? You're confusing the person who, what is it? Runs the Change Makers podcast, is the phrase you're after. This is such a sleek introduction, I think. It's always good to get your guest's academic title wrong in the first moments of an interview.

It always sets a really good way into this thing. I've heard that there's been a fairly bombshell-filled episode of The Change Makers podcast. It's been recorded, potentially not yet dropped, or will it have dropped? by the time we hear this. It will have just dropped. It will have just dropped. Okay, some pretty high-level revelations. Charles, what can you tell us about?

What are we going to hear? What's the juice? Well, I think what we're getting is we're getting internal gossip on how Fatima Payman got chucked out of the ALP from Fatima Payment herself. From Fatima Payment, exactly. It's all coming up after this. Okay, so let's backtrack, Amanda. because you have considerably more familiarity with what the story is about

than Charles does for all kinds of reasons. Yep. How do you know Fatima Payment? Well, I know Fatima Payment because I asked her to be on my podcast, but I know of Fatima Payment because a good mentor of hers, Maha Abdo, has been an almost lifelong mentor of mine. And Maher was with Fatima when many of the issues were happening in Canberra in, when was it, May, 2024.

And Fatima is the West Australian Centre. West Australian Senator, who was elected by the Labor Party. In 2022, the massive landslide. She was the third person on the ticket. And she was the first Muslim ever, wasn't she? Well, there were other Muslim, first female Muslim. Right, in the Senate. Yeah.

So a groundbreaking victory. Yeah, so the youngest women. It's one of the headlines of election night because, you know, ALP being ALP, they don't normally assume that the third person on their ticket will get elected unless they have a landslide, which they did. Yeah, and she knew that, right? So the last time that someone in her position had been elected was 1984. She ran to support the party and all of a sudden ended up in Parliament. Right.

And she's quite young, isn't she? She's like mid-20s. Yeah, she's young. Young and quite brilliant, let me just say, quite brilliant. Okay, so W-A-A-L-P senator. But when you're in the ALP, there are certain ways of conducting politics, aren't there? There are certain rules you have to follow. There are.

You check various personal opinions you may have at the door, I'm told. Or you're expected to. And they call it Corka Solidarity, right? So the caucus has a democratic debate of robust exchange of ideas, makes a decision and then you're meant to be true to that decision, right? It's called Corka Solidarity. And there's quite a few examples of that in real life. Like Penny Wong famously voted repeatedly against gay marriage because even though she's

completely lesbian, she believes in. She believed in Corker's a member of the Labor Party. Yeah, she believed in Corker Solidarity. And what else? Occasionally people can get a conscience vote And occasionally people have been able to cross But that's been more of a Liberal Party thing Than a Labour Party thing

Yeah and it's in the Liberal Party of the backbenchers Generally have a conscience vote and everything If you're a minister, you've got to follow in the cabinet's solidarity being there Yeah, yeah So no, so everyone will remember the days of Penny Wong Repeatedly going on Q&A and being asked every single time about that issue And having a genuinely awkward moment

In which she, you know, said what she was supposed to say while also making her unhappiness very visible on TV. She was also in Cabinet, right? It's different to being on the back bench. Totally. Okay, so out of her payment, upon becoming a Senator unexpectedly, did she know the extent of the deal she was getting into? Do you think?

I don't think anyone can understand what the Labour Party is like until you live it. I mean, you know, I have never experienced the heights that she has got to, but I've been involved in the Labour Party for 15 years, or a member of the Labour Party been active in it, And the high you climb and the way in which power has exchanged, the more disappointing and frightening the space can become. So talk us through when things get wrong.

I mean, of course, let's be really clear. The best way to hear this story is on change makers, right? Yeah, it's true. It's true. There's more details from her. And she speaks for herself rather than having us. But it's going to be fascinating for us to sort of analyse the whole thing. So things went south following the Israel-Garza conflict, right?

Yeah, that's right. So there was the terrorist attack on Tobit 7, quite soon after that an opportunistic decimation of Palestine and as the war increases the violence increases she starts lobbying internally right and initially

which is the whole theory behind the Labour Party is what you do is you do it behind closed doors and then you get the numbers and then it changes the LP which makes us imagine all of the awful conversations Penny Wong had inside the park not on Q&A for many years There's a story for her biography someday.

It's also true that in this instance, and maybe it's got even worse in the Labour Party, I don't know, but there was a real fear, and she goes into some of the details and names and names on the podcast. So if people want to know more details, they should tune into that. But she talks about how she was told to not bring the issue up in caucus, but only to bring it up one to one with people like, Oney Wong.

Couldn't bring it up in caucus. Not to bring it up in caucus. Why not? Because it would leak, and they didn't want it to leak. But what's the point of caucus if you can't have a full and frank discussion behind closed doors, which is the whole theory behind that COVID Solidarity? Are you suggesting, Charles, that the Cabinet Solidarity thing is a little bit of a smokescreen for just not having a democracy?

Arrageous. What are you saying? I mean, I was brought up believing in democratic centralism. It's the foundation stone of caucus. Well, this is true to the Lennon, this model. Yeah, well, Lennon didn't have to deal with people leaking things to the Australian. No, he did run that. too. I mean, it made it easier. It's true.

Yeah, the sort of internal purges they had back in that society. I mean, that might have stamped a little bit of... It's interesting. You talk about purges. Yeah, we'll get on to that. But so, okay, so that's really interesting. So the whole idea that, you know, there's a full

debate and frank, and you can give your, you can give your opinion in private, but goodness me, in public we're all the team. That's a nice idea. It was a very constrained space for democratic discussion. So who was she supposed to talk to? Who was, like, who was, like, just one-on-one.

One-on-one with Penny Wong and Anthony Albanesey. Right. So just the most senior and intimidating members of the party. Yeah, it wasn't fair enough for a young woman, isn't it? So these mid-20-something had to go on... On her own. On her own. Go and have one-on-ones.

Yep. With the most powerful person in Australia. And guess what? She did. Oh, that's pretty cool. The thing that is the most extraordinary, and extraordinary, not-extor-ordinary thing about this story is how much they underestimated the fight within this woman.

Yeah. Like, she is a... dynamo built for steel, right? Like her family had to escape the war in Afghanistan. They then had to survive here. The story she tells about growing up and kind of how she was sort of formed by being her father's voice, but also having to sort of stand for her faith in Western Australia, which wasn't necessarily fully in love with her hitchab wearing body and her family, right?

But she did. She did all of that. And then she goes into the party and they think that she's just going to roll over. Yeah. So you're suggesting that people who've literally escaped from hell on earth might be equal to giving Albaugh a little bit. Yeah, I think they just underestimated what was walking into the party. I'm slightly confused by this, Amanda,

because I distinctly recall, and correct me if I'm wrong, I'm no expert on Labor, that Anthony Almanesey was once one of the conveners of parliamentary friends of Palestine, along with, interestingly, Susan Lee. Oh, look. Renovation business. That's right. What do you want to do?

It's Anthony Almanezy at the front door. Hello, Prime Minister. Oh, look, Anthony Albanese has worn many hats in his life, including being a super-duper-progressive guy when he was young. But, you know, he's wore a different hat now, which is wanting to stay in power for a really long time no matter what. Was that the time when he was the co-convener? Was that the hot elbow era?

Because we've talked on the podcast. For many years. I'm curiously whether that moment exists. That was a... One photo? That was a nanosecond. That was one micro-second. We've talked for many years.

You might remember Nina Arama bought this up back in the day. Yes. The Merrickville Metro toilets. Yeah, the women's toilets. They have the enormous picture of hot elbow on the wall, apparently. I think he benefited a lot from the idea that power is attractive because he had this has often had power. The Chaser Report, now with extra whispers. So what do we know about what happened inside the room in those meetings?

Well, Fatima was very clear that things needed to move quickly. And she was repeatedly told things like, we're a small fish in a big pond. there's very little we can do. If we acted on this, it wouldn't make a difference, so we're not going to act. So what does she want them to do? To speak out against the genocide and to call for recognition of a Palestinian state. A concept that you might think of is, oh, everyone's talking about that now. I feel like I've heard that on the agenda at some point during the course this year.

But that is now Labor Party policy. It was Labor Party policy, actually. It was actually. It actually was Labor Party policy. That's part of her. But isn't it also Australian policy now? Like a Australian federal government. Yes.

Anyone going to have anything else here on the record in saying. Agreeing with badamer. Right. So can I just understand that Albo's got into power and he just wants to sort of not do anything with that power. It can be really unpopular if you do stuff. It's so grindingly. And so did Albo politely explain this to Fed of a payment?

Is that how? I can't possibly do anything. I don't have enough power. Although I do have power, but I don't have power. Yeah. Like, is that what he did? Or like, what was his demeanor like in those meetings? Look, Albo has a public, it's interesting how the caucuses sort of privatised debate, you know,

like because Albo, I would say, has both a public and private demeanour too, right? So in public, he comes across, he's like consensus builder, you know, sort of trying to be like Bob Hawke, less of an agenda, but trying to be reasonable. The ministers and the team, and, yeah, he's always talking about that. It's kind of not that guy. What does he call it? Like a cabinet government or whatever. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Which is like a, yeah. A team. I'm not just the boss. I'm not Kevin Rudd. He wants to do it like Hawk did, which is every minister gets their own. And look, to be honest, there's a lot of talent there.

It's just not a lot of an agenda. But look, he's a bit of a yellow in private. Oh. Is Anthony Albanese. And Bathema experienced some of that increasingly. So what you're saying is a 50-year-old man yelled in a one-on-one meeting at somebody half his age who's a woman. Yep, in a hijab.

There you go. Yeah. Classy. Right. They're for diversity. Having stopped her from taking it to a sort of wider forum where she could potentially have had other people, other even witnesses, moderate that conversation. Yeah.

And look, one of the things that I think is really interesting about what Fatima says is that you can't just get people who look different and expect them to just sail the same things as everyone else. If someone comes to a space looking a little bit different, they probably have had a whole bunch of different experiences, which probably at least should be allowed to be aired, right? She wasn't even allowed to air why she was worried about genocide and Gaza or what was going on in the war. She wasn't even allowed to speak it. She was asked to shut it down.

She was only given private conversations. I mean, this is the Labor Party. Like, this is not, we're not even talking about Trump's America here. We're talking about a party that, you know, says it's about democracy and debate and difference. But it's not about, it's difference in service of sameness. It's, you can say whatever you want as long as you agree with us. And by the way, we won't even have the debate in caucus because it's too controversial these days. Well, I guess now that it's several years on and that the lab parties come round formally to Fatima Payman's position,

she'd be back in the caucus now, right? She'd be welcome back, yeah, if she had been expelled. Because when did she resign? about a year ago. Yeah, June last year. We were a bunches of flowers and come back, Fatima, and maybe we'll listen to you this time. Was that what happened?

Yeah, no, that didn't happen. No, she's gone and she's got three more years left in the Senate, right? She has a Senate role. She was definitely bullied. Some pretty spectacular, if you listen to the podcast, some people in the process of her being exited from the party tried to encourage her to not, to stop talking and stop being angsty about it. You know, what do you go off and have?

family, you're a young woman, just go and have a family. Stop worrying about this Gaza stuff. Why are we listening to this podcast rather than listening to Fatima? Because isn't the problem that they didn't listen to Fatah's from Payment? So shouldn't we stop the podcast and just literally just have a clip now of Fatima Payman talking for Fatima? It seems to me that the point is that we want to hear her account from her. So we can play, why don't we play a little bit. A little sneak peek.

But not enough so that you don't have to go and listen to the whole of Changemakers, where she speaks for herself. But we'll put that soon, but just before we. we do what was your impression did this shock you because I mean you must you have you've spent a lot of years in Labor you've fair to say you've seen some of the dark side of the place yeah no it didn't shock me at all

so in 2001 I helped co-convene and set up Labor for Refugees right the Labor Party had disastrous election John Howard you know tried to send well you did send refugees to Nauru that's where it all came from right at the Tampa election right

and me with a large number of people inside the Labor Party set up a social movement there to try and get them to act with consciousness to change their mind. And we passed motions in Labor Party conferences all around the country, built quite ahead of steam. I remember there was, yeah. On that issue. And then at a series of crunch times, first at a rules conference in October of 2022.

It sounds like a rule conference, a rule is very Labor Party. It's very rock and roll. That's right. He's a nerd off down. in Canberra and then at the national conference when Mark Latham was the leader. This was obviously a time of great decision making inside of the Labor Party. It was a conference. It wasn't

a conference that ruled. It was a conference about the internal rules. That was with Simon Crean and then later on went Simon Crean. Simon Crean to hear the rules conference. But I remember just for instance, for instance right, there was, we moved this motion that about changing the Labour Party's policy. We were completely

outmaneuvered by this time. Mark Latham was the leader. There were a bunch of rank and fileers. who spoke in support of this motion, including actually, I mean, Selling McManus was there. They ended up being, some of them ended up being quite high profile.

So are you saying Mark Latham was not on the team of Labor of Refugees? I know, I know. Goodness me. The fact that he was team Labour Party should have us more worried, I think. And then against us, though, but against us, though, but against us was Julia Gillard, Bob Carr,

and a team of premiers. It was like the idea that old, powerful men, I was 25, bully young women. I mean, it just had form to me. Fat of a payment. Yeah, I mean, it wasn't as dramatic as well, and not as stressful as what family experienced,

but the idea that the party coalesces atomic bombs on descent, yeah, I'd been there before. I'd seen that too. Which might be why you're an associate professor and not a senator. Oh, one of many reasons. All right, well, let's hear some of the fat of a pastime. I basically want to hear the episode now.

If the point of this episode was to sell that episode, which it was, and tease some of the revelations. Yeah, consider the revelations thoroughly teased. So where do you get this podcast? Before we listen to it, where do you get it? Where do you get it? Well, we're on ACAST as ChangeMakers Podcast, or you can go to our website, which is ChangeMakerspodcast.org. And it'll be on the front page. Thank you very much. So Professor Amanda Tadisle of the University of Sydney. Let's go to the heart of the matter. I'm sure our listeners are going, when are they going to talk about Gaza? And it's like, now, friends, now we're going to talk about Gaza.

So, you know, there were the terrorist attacks on the 7th of October, horrendous. Then there was an almost immediate, destructive, now clearly genocidal invasion of Gaza. A year, you know, a bit less than a year after that, you called it, you called out all those things in the Senate, you crossed the floor and eventually you left the Labour Party. In your own words, why don't you tell us a little bit about that story? And I guess thinking in particular about... change making and the politics and parliamentary politics, the Labor Party, the possibilities and limits of those spaces that you encountered in this debate. It was a decision that I definitely didn't take lightly. I seen the invasion and the disproportionate killing in Gaza, which now

two years on, has been the most horrific genocide live streamed on our phones. I was at odds with not just my values, but also the Labor Party platform, where I was being pressured by the broader community, the Australian public, but also the membership and the unionists who were like, hey, we expected better because you're not just a Labor Party member, you're also a unionist, a staunch unionist. Like, come on. Like, justice is something that we've always fought for. And I think when what I've learnt about the Labor Party, Party machinery and I can't speak for the Liberal Party, but I think as a major party with all these structures and processes, I bypassed a lot of the caucus meetings because I was told, you know,

things can be leaked from the caucus meeting. So whatever. And I was like, fine, I will go directly and talk to the ministers. So I've had all these questions and conversations with Penny to Richard Miles to the prime minister himself. And it just felt like when there's, only so many times they can say we're a small fish in a big pond our hands are tied we can't do anything when russia invaded ukraine we were able to like be very forceful in our language sanctions it was just a barrage of all these actions we were able to take but now that it's flipped the perpetrator is our ally now we our hands are tied like it felt very hypocritical it felt like the double standards was just so blatant and that's where like you know when a lot of people say oh this thing keeps me up at night this actually kept me up at night you know like I'm not even exaggerating to the point where I would contemplate on why am I here what am I doing is this me just being part of the machinery and doing as I'm told like or am I here to enact some form of a change because

change isn't going to come when you're in your comfort zone. Change doesn't come when you're cruising through life. Change requires tough conversations, heartache, you know, you've got to reach that breaking point where you're like, I can't. And that breaking point for me was when I was, you know, I was told what to say, what words to use. My speeches were monitored. My movement was monitored. I felt like my staff and my team where, you know, sort of spying on me and telling the leadership what I was doing. And it just, you feel suffocated. You feel like I can't trust anyone. You were being suffocated. Yes. It was insane. And then to have people from the same union I've fought with come to me and say, politics is a very tough game. And it's not for

everyone. You know, you've just got married a few months ago. Have you thought about settling down and studying terribly? Why did you go have a baby? Oh, fuck. Wow. Wow. Yes. Yes. You can say that out loud because, oh my goodness. I just stared at this person like, are you kidding me? The Chaser Report, news a few days after it happens.