‘Chilling’ new Sydney University protest rules
Students feel “strangled” and “chilled” by a new University of Sydney campus policy severely limiting their right to protest, AAP reports.
At least three days’ notice must be given for protests that include the use of booths or stalls, megaphones or amplifiers and affixing banners or posters to campus buildings.
Camping is banned altogether after an encampment protesting Israel’s war in Gaza stood for almost two months before campus staff ordered students to vacate in June.
Students said the changes had been made stealthily given they were not consulted or told the policy had been introduced.
They only became aware of the policy on Wednesday night when Dave Brophy from the National Tertiary Education Union called the measures an “attack” on freedom at the university in a post on social media platform X:
USyd’s new ‘Campus Access Policy’ – adopted without any notice or consultation – is an astonishing attack on political freedom at the university.
Key events
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Payman ‘obviously passed eligibility to be elected’, Malarndirri McCarthy says
Labor senator and minister for Indigenous Australians Malarndirri McCarthy has spoken with ABC News Breakfast about Fatima Payman’s decision to quit Labor.
McCarthy said Payman “brings so much to the caucus” and for “those of us who do call her a really close friend, I think that this has been a very sad time”:
But I also know that Senator Payman is very firm in the direction that she would like to go, and I sincerely wish her all the best.
McCarthy was asked about a story in the Australian newspaper that says senior Labor figures are raising Payman’s Afghan citizenship as a risk to her remaining in the Senate because of a potential breach of section 44 of the constitution.
McCarthy responded:
It’s unfortunate that that’s actually on the front page of the newspaper today.
She said it was “really unfortunate that this is a focus” and, when pressed that it had been raised by members of her party, responded:
I’m not sure if it’s just party members – it could be rumours and innuendo. What I will say is this: that the Australian Labor party has a vetting process that is very clear about our eligibility, and Senator Payman obviously passed that in order to be elected.
‘I’m looking forward to what the next few weeks hold,’ Fatima Payman says
Wrapping up the interview, Fatima Payman flagged what she was looking towards in the future:
I made the decision yesterday morning [to quit the party] so it’s a lot to take in. It’s a lot to plan what my party policy – or if I’m going to establish a party policy – what that’s gonna look like.
This is an evolving space, it’s very exciting. Definitely at 29 making such a huge decision and now really excited to go back home and reunite with my West Australians and ask them how I can best represent them …
In saying that there’s going to be a period of grief, if you’d like to say – leaving my Labor political family isn’t going to be an easy time, but I’m looking forward to what the next few weeks hold.
Payman told colleagues ‘in confidence’ she was praying for guidance on Gaza motion
Patricia Karvelas asked Fatima Payman to clarify what she meant, when she told Labor colleagues she was praying for guidance on how to vote on the Gaza motion.
At yesterday’s press conference, when asked about this, Payman said she was “offended or insulted [at the idea] that just because I am a visibly Muslim woman I only care about Muslim issues.”
Speaking this morning, Payman said:
When I told them that I would be praying and seeking guidance from God, that was in confidence and I did not expect that they would go around telling people, almost in a condescending, ridiculing why like, “Oh, look at this one. She’s praying to this almighty being.”
It was something serious that I had to spend time reflecting, and everyone has their own ways of coming to a decision. I didn’t fully have an idea of how I decided to – I was on the Senate floor, making that decision. So for my colleagues to, I don’t know, make it seem like it’s very ridiculous that this person has to depend on a high being, like that’s personal to me …
And plus we pray every single morning in the chamber, so to just single me out in a situation like this is poor form.
‘I’ve received such an overwhelming amount of support’
Host Patricia Karvelas: “If it just said on the last election Senate paper, ‘Fatima Payman: independent’, do you think you would have got elected?”
Fatima Payman: “I can’t speculate what would have happened.”
Karvelas: “It’s pretty unlikely, right?”
Payman: “Yes, but a genocide wasn’t taking place, Patricia.”
She continued:
I’ve received such an overwhelming amount of support over the last few weeks from people in Western Australia who want to see the values of fairness, justice and equality upheld. And that’s made me realise that I need to be that independent voice for Western Australians and young people without boundaries and limitations.
‘I had not made the decision to leave the party until yesterday morning’
Fatima Payman was asked why she met political strategist Glenn Druery days before officially announcing she would quit the Labor party.
Shesaid she had decided to leave the Labor party only yesterday, because on Wednesday during question time the prime minister flagged that he expected her to make an announcement.
She told ABC Radio:
I’ve met Glenn Druery through the members of the community in Sydney, among many other people that I had met over the last week and a half. When the possibility of crossing the floor was brought to me, I understood what that would mean as the consequence of potentially being expelled and when one has to make a career-changing decision … making sure that I’ve got all my Is dotted and Ts crossed is very important to get all the information to see what all the options are.
But in saying that, I had not made the decision to leave the party until yesterday morning and I hold firm to that.
Payman says Labor should embrace dissenting voices
Senator Fatima Payman said diversity “comes with unique experiences”, and that diversity of thought and views “needs to be accepted”:
Dissenting voices within the ranks need to be heard. If the Labor party wants to continue representing modern-day Australia, they really need to embrace the differences that are going to be voiced within their ranks and perhaps even allow those conscience votes from time to time. Because what Australia is looking like today is very different than what it was 20, 30 years ago.
(Katy Gallagher later responded to this, and you can read that here.)
Fatima Payman pushed on ‘tone deaf’ comment
Circling back to Fatima Payman’s interview on ABC Radio, when she said she “wholeheartedly” stood by her decision to quit the Labor party yesterday.
Payman was asked about a comment she made during yesterdays’s announcement that she was quitting the party, when she said:
Unlike my colleagues, I know how it feels to be on the receiving end of injustice.
Payman was asked: “Some Labor MPs have said they feel like that was tone deaf, do you accept that?”
She said “everyone’s got their own story, and I appreciate that”, and continued:
In my situation, being a daughter of a refugee, coming from a war-torn country, having seen devastation and experienced it – even if it was second hand through the trauma that my family has gone through, and obviously my dad’s experience, travelling the ocean, in a boat coming to Australia – these are experiences that shape an individual’s perspective growing up and experiences as a young woman trying to adjust into a new society …
Those were experiences that were unique to me and injustices … perhaps one of them being expected to just accept things as they are when I’m experiencing a difference in treatment in a workplace, for example – whereas, you know, an Anglo-Saxon colleague can just get away with something I have to prove myself, I have to work extra hard.
Asked if this happened in the Labor caucus, Payman said:
I would say that it’s happened across my many roles prior to even being in the Labor caucus.
‘We argue, we agree, and ultimately we land on a position’
Host Patricia Karvelas asks: Fatima Payman told me that if Labor wants to continue as a party to represent modern Australia, you’re going to need to allow MPs to cross the floor in the future. Is that worth considering?
Katy Gallagher:
I disagree with that, and I think the caucus disagrees with that.
I mean, we have our process. So we have caucus committees, we have caucus itself, we have factional meetings where members of the Labor party argue and contest the ideas that are before us …
People bring their diversity and their own experience into those forums. We argue, we agree, and ultimately we land on a position and that is how it works. That is how us as individuals, you know, stick together with a caucus position – it is agitated and argued over and debated in all the way that you would expect politicians to, because not everyone has the same view. But once we’ve landed on that position, that is the position that we stand for in the parliament and vote for.
‘If it was me, I would not sit in the Senate’
Katy Gallagher says if she herself couldn’t sit in parliament as anything other than a Labor senator, she would leave the parliament:
I think [Fatima Payman] was elected as a Labor senator. The matter of whether or not she sits in the Senate is a matter for her and I’m telling you, if it was me, I would not sit in the Senate.
Q: Would you urge her to quit?
No … She’s made it clear she’s going to stay as an independent. I don’t think there’s anything that comes from her former colleagues telling her to remove yourself from the parliament.
‘She’s made her decision’
Q: Is the door really still open for Fatima Payman to rejoin Labor? Is that now over?
Katy Gallagher:
Well, I think she’s made her decision, she’s made it clear. She is no longer a Labor senator. She doesn’t want to participate in the Labor party and she is going to remain in the Senate as an independent, so I think that ends the story there, really.
Government will ‘have to work a little bit harder’ to get legislation through Senate, Gallagher says
Asked if it will be harder for the government to pass legislation now that Fatima Payman is no longer a Labor senator, Katy Gallagher says:
Yes, I think it will. You know, instead of needing 13 votes to get legislation or any matter dealt within the Senate, we will now require 14. So yes, it will make that harder.
Speaking with ABC RN, Gallagher said she was “really sad” Payman had made the decision to leave the party”
I think the caucus was hoping Senator Payman would stay but that hasn’t happened. So we deal with reality in the parliament. The reality is the Senate’s always a difficult chamber. We have to work hard to get anything through and now we’ll just have to work a little bit harder.
Questions raised over Payman’s citizenship
Katy Gallagher is asked about a story in the Australian newspaper, stating senior Labor figures are raising Fatima Payman’s Afghan citizenship as a risk to her remaining in the Senate because of a potential breach of section 44 of the constitution.
Gallagher says she has “no idea about that”:
I’ve seen the headlines in [the Australian] and I have no understanding about any of those issues … You know, the ALP vetting processes are pretty tight these days, but I have no idea where that stories come from.