Senator Fatima Payman, launching her new political party Australia’s Voice, is pitching strongly at the large number of voters who are disillusioned with the big parties.
Author
Michelle Grattan
Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra
“Australians are fed up with the major parties having a duopoly, a stranglehold over our democracy. If we need to drag the two major parties kicking and screaming to do what needs to be done, we will.”
Payman, who stresses she is not forming a Muslim party, quoted both Gough Whitlam and Robert Menzies in introducing the new group.
She said the party was “for the disenfranchised, the unheard, and those yearning for real change”. But she was short on any detail, saying policies and candidates would come later.
Payman quit the Labor party to join the crossbench after disciplinary action that followed her crossing the floor over Gaza. A senator from Western Australia, she doesn’t face the voters until the election after next.
It has previously been flagged the party intends to field Senate candidates as well as run in some lower house seats. Its strategist is so-called preference whisperer Glenn Druery, who works for Payman. Druery had success in promoting micro-party candidates running for upper houses in the past, but tightened federal electoral rules mean it will be an uphill battle to get a senator elected for the new party.
Payman told a news conference on Wednesday: “This is more a movement than a party. It’s a movement for a fairer, more inclusive, Australia. Together we will hold our leaders accountable and ensure that your voice – Australia’s Voice – is never silenced.”
Payman invoked “the great Gough Whitlam” when he said, “There are some people who are so frightened to put a foot wrong that they won’t put a foot forward”.
“This comment made in 1985 applies so much to the current Labor Party who has lost its way,” Payman said.
Looking also to the other side of politics she said: “Australia’s Voice believes in a system where people come first, where your concerns are not just heard but acted upon. We reject the status quo that serves the powerful and ignores the rest, the forgotten people as Robert Menzies put it.”
She said after spending countless hours listening to Australians, the message she’d heard had been “a growing frustration”.
“A feeling of being left behind, of shouting into a void, only for their concerns to fall on deaf ears.
“So many of you have told me, with emotion in your hearts. ‘We need something different We need a voice’.
“It is this cry for change that has brought us here today. Because we can no longer sit by while our voices are drowned out by the same old politics. It’s time to stand up, to rise together, and to take control of our future.”
Underlining the party would be inclusive, Payman said, “This is a party for all Australians. We’re going to ensure that everyone is represented, whether it’s the mums and dads who are trying to make ends meet, or the young students out there, or whether it’s the grandparents who want to have dignity and respect as they age.”
