The move, some would say forced, of former Labor Western Australia Senator Fatima Payman to the crossbenches for voting in favour of a Greens resolution urging the Senate ‘to recognise the State of Palestine’ – has done a number of things. It has shown an increasing tendency on the part of the Albanese government to set its own traps, into which it readily falls into.
Apart from drawing greater attention to the dire situation in Gaza even as the ALP struggles with rank-in-file voting principles dating to early last century, the Payman episode has also raised the possibility of Muslim activists taking to the political field, with the possibility of offering support for the senator, and other candidates come the next election.
The shape of that activism has come in the form of The Muslim Vote, a movement that can hardly be described either as a political party, let alone a religious movement. Its declared mission is one of ‘empowering Australian Muslims in the electoral process’ through providing ‘essential information on voting, key election dates, an analysis of party policies impacting their communities.’
This has brought with it sharp intakes of breath and concern, much of it misguided. No doubt seeing a potential threat emerging to his party’s electoral fortunes come the next election, Albanese proved distinctly ahistorical in expressing the view that Australia should not ‘go down the road of faith-based politics because what that will do is undermine social cohesion.’ He thought it unwise for ‘smaller minority groups to isolate themselves – which is what a faith-based party system would do.’
Labor MP Julian Hill, in noting his loyal support for the view, even went so far as to call the very idea of faith based political parties ‘a terrible thing’ for both Australia and minority groups. On the other side of the political aisle, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton drew a distinction between parties with religious views and those engaged in a political agenda external to Australia, in this case supporting the ‘Palestinian cause’.
The carefree deployment of the vapid term ‘social cohesion’ has served to mask the reality of religion and faith in Australian political life, both current and historical. How easily does such criticism ignore the fact that the previous Australian prime minister made no secret of his evangelical faith. Indeed, at various points, Scott Morrison revealed his own religion as a fundamental compass to his understanding of government and policy.
His maiden speech to parliament in 2008 spoke of faith being a ‘personal’ matter while acknowledging its social implications. Morrison’s memoir Plans for Your Good, authored with a US evangelical Christian audience in mind, is rather instructive in that regard.
'The recent manufactured panic about any proposed religious movement is a fair indication about yet another emerging threat to the traditional dominance of the Labor-LNP order.'
As historian Frank Bongiorno remarks, ‘Morrison’s Christianity was not understood as a threat to social cohesion – weird, certainly, but not dangerous in that way.’ Critics of it were dismissed for needless hyperbole, and, as Bongiorno goes on to remark, ‘hypocrisy – since Kevin Rudd’s Christianity did not receive the same level of scrutiny or criticism.’
Major Australian political parties were themselves mirrors of religious fault lines and faith-based impulses. The Labor Party proved heavy with Catholic representation; the forces aligned with what became the Liberal Party of Robert Menzies featured Protestants. Labor itself had to contend with tearing blows within its ranks over such matters as conscription during the First World War and the 1955 split fomented by B.A. Santamaria of Catholic Action, resulting in the creation of the stridently anti-communist Democratic Labor Party.
Such instances reveal a historical landscape speckled with religious tensions amidst political movements. In the 1920s in New South Wales, the crusading Walter Skelton made it an article of faith to battle what he called ‘Romanism as a political body’ as distinct from ‘the religion of Rome’. To spear his efforts to do so, he established the Protestant Independent Labor Party and was showered with brief fortune by election to the Legislative Assembly.
In recent years, it was hard to consult the record of New South Wales politics without coming across Fred Nile of the Christian Democratic Party, who served in that state’s parliament for over four decades. While his presence was lamented by such figures as the current Greens Senator David Shoebridge, who sat in the upper house with Nile for 12 years, as proffering ‘a very unwelcome platform for homophobia and transphobia, with real effects on vulnerable communities’ he did represent a certain view of conservative Christianity.
Much of the claims of secularism in Australian politics is artificial, given its distinct Christian suffusion. Again, to quote Bongiorno, Australia ‘calls itself secular, but retains a Christian identity in culturally ambiguous but nonetheless tangible ways.’ One of those tangible ways is Commonwealth funding for religious schools. Of the $29.2 billion allocated as part of its recurrent funding in 2024, the Department of Education documents that $9.9 billion is slated for Catholic schools. ($11.3 billion is intended for government schools, the rest for categorised independent schools.)
The recent manufactured panic about any proposed religious movement is a fair indication about yet another emerging threat to the traditional dominance of the Labor-LNP order. That the latest movement promises itself as Islamic suggests a departure from traditional views of the tolerably integrated Muslim in non-Muslim, multicultural society. In response, social cohesion is being brandished by the traditional parties as a weapon to smother what is, essentially, a trend that allegedly threatens them. Far from withering social cohesion, the existence of such groups as The Muslim Vote, and Senator Payman’s presence in Canberra, serve to confirm it.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University.