Labor’s multicultural branch in Western Australia is in upheaval, with two officeholders quitting the party in protest at the treatment of Fatima Payman.
Guardian Australia can reveal that the branch’s treasurer and vice-president have resigned, with one claiming the party had “become a spineless jellyfish” that “throws its own under the bus at the drop of a hat”.
Multicultural Labor is one of WA Labor’s direct branches, which are separate from geographic-based branches. Payman was secretary of this branch before she was elected to the Senate in 2022.
Adam Demir was the vice-president of the branch until Payman resigned from the Labor party two weeks ago.
Demir, who helped campaign for Anne Aly in the Perth seat of Cowan at the last federal election, expressed his dissatisfaction with the party’s treatment of Payman in a WhatsApp group chat with other members of the branch.
“As we all witnessed what happened to Senator Fatima Payman and ALP’s spineless stance about the Genocide in Gaza and its total disregard for the Multicultural members I’m resigning from this party,” Demir wrote in a WhatsApp message seen by Guardian Australia.
“I wish good luck to those who want to remain as useful fools waiting to be discarded like a toilet paper once they are used.”
Demir, who also serves as the treasurer of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, set out his concerns in a formal resignation email to WA Labor.
“Since October 7, I as a person of colour, have discovered that the ALP has created the illusion that it stands for freedom of speech, diversity and the recognition of the State of Palestine,” he told WA Labor.
“I was also led to believe, wrongly it would now appear, that the ALP represented the marginalised and the disenfranchised.
“It is now clear to me that the stance of the ALP and its treatment of Senator Fatima Payman has proven that all these portrayals were just a facade created to grab the multicultural vote.”
Demir sent his resignation email on 4 July and labelled the ALP as “spineless”, just hours after Payman announced she was quitting the Labor party but would sit on the cross-bench as an independent senator.
“I was signed up to ALP by Fatima,” Demir wrote. “I came with her, and now I’m leaving with her.”
Demir confirmed to Guardian Australia that he had quit the party. In an interview, he said he wanted the Australian government to label the Israeli assault on Gaza as genocide.
He urged ministers to fulfil the policy set out in the Labor party platform, which called for Palestine to be recognised as a state as “an important priority for the Australian government”.
Guardian Australia also spoke with the Multicultural Labor branch’s former treasurer. The former treasurer asked for his name not to be used in this story, but confirmed he had quit the ALP on the same day as Demir.
When asked for a response to the resignations, WA Labor said it would not comment “on interactions with current or former party members”.
The upheaval comes at a time when two new groups are seeking to mobilise Muslim voters and their allies to make their voice heard at the next federal election.
The Albanese government has called for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” in Gaza since December and has repeatedly said it mourns the loss of all innocent lives, Palestinian and Israeli.
The government has refrained from labelling the bombardment of Gaza as genocide and has affirmed Israel’s right to self-defence after the 7 October Hamas-led attacks and hostage-taking.
Australia explicitly opposed the Israeli invasion of Rafah in southern Gaza and publicly urged Israel to comply with international law and the binding rulings of the international court of justice.
The government’s position that it would recognise Palestine only as part of a peace process has caused consternation among Labor’s rank-and-file members, who say this condition was not set out in the party’s national platform and amounts to an indefinite delay.
The Labor minister Chris Bowen said on Wednesday the government would “make our foreign policy choices and decisions based on the evidence and good policy, not on electoral politics”.
Bowen, who represents the western Sydney seat of McMahon, said the party took “nothing for granted, no vote for granted, no seat for granted”.
“It sometimes annoys me to see newspaper articles saying this MP has argued for this, and here’s the percentage of Muslim voters in their electorate, like they must by definition have a view about Palestine that’s driven by electoral purposes and not for good policy reasons,” he told the National Press Club on Wednesday.
Bowen highlighted that the Labor government had voted at the UN general assembly in May to give “greater rights to Palestine”.
