Australian Prime Minister Antony Albanese has said that Senator Fatima Payman’s vote in favour of recognising a Palestinian state was “designed to undermine” the collective position of the Labor party, in an interview with ABC radio, Al Jazeera reports.

Australian news site 6 News reported yesterday that Payman had been indefinitely suspended from meetings with the rest of Labor’s parliamentary members, after she joined the Australian Greens to vote in support of Palestinian recognition last week.

However, journalist Hugh Riminton noted in a post on X, that Labor’s National Platform “calls on the Australian Government to recognise Palestine as a state”, as determined by members at the party’s National Conference in August 2023.