Fatima Payman reveals why she became Australia’s first hijab-wearing senator

Fatima Payman’s journey to becoming Australia’s first hijab-wearing MP started when a university classmate ridiculed her headscarf.

The young pharmacy student had always felt accepted since arriving in Australia after fleeing Afghanistan as a baby, until she was sitting in that tutorial.

Years later, Senator Payman defiantly wore her hijab in her emotional maiden speech to parliament on Tuesday night where she broke down thanking her late father.

Abdul Wakil Payman came to Australia by boat in 1999 after the family fled to Pakistan, and worked for four years until his family could join him.

Senator Payman, 27, said her father faced ‘discrimination and abuse to job insecurity and low wages’ but his sacrifice allowed her to live a happy childhood.

‘I stumbled upon my first experience of being made to feel like the ‘other’ at a university tutorial when a young man ridiculed my hijab,’ she said in her speech.

‘You see, I never felt different growing up. Perth felt like home from the get-go – because home is where the heart is and my heart was with my family.

‘I didn’t feel different or strange, I felt like any other Aussie kid, growing up in the northern suburbs of Perth, catching public transport to university and hoping to become a productive member of society.

‘But comments like ‘Go back to where you came from’ or inferences to extremism forced me to feel like I didn’t belong.’

Senator Payman defiantly wore her hijab in her emotional maiden speech to parliament on Tuesday night where she broke down thanking her late father.

Senator Payman said this was the catalyst for her becoming involved in politics, joining youth leadership groups, police advisory groups, and Muslim student associations.

‘I started volunteering in the hopes of being part of a change, if I was seen to be spreading goodness in society, perhaps then I would be accepted as an equal member of this nation,’ she said.

‘As the daughter of a refugee who came to this land with dreams of a safe and better future, I gave myself that audacity to challenge the system and to see… how much change I could initiate.’

However, she said Australian politics, and even the Senate chamber, was too often marred by xenophobia and racial and religious fearmongering.

She challenged her fellow MPs to stamp out bigotry, racism, and discrimination and not just pay lip service to it.

Senator Payman also shared new details of her father’s harrowing 11-day voyage on a rickety boat to Australia to give his family a new life.

‘Anxiety and waves of doubt flooded my mother’s thoughts as she waited and waited, for any news of my father arriving safely in Australia. Four months later we finally received the good news,’ she said.

Senator Payman as a teenager with her father Abdul, mother, and three younger siblings

Senator Payman as a Year 5 student at the Australian Islamic College in Perth soon after arriving in Australia aged eight

The family had fled Afghanistan to Pakistan when the Taliban took power, because Senator Payman’s grandfather was a member of parliament under the old regime.

After time in immigration detention, Mr Payman worked grueling hours as a kitchen hand, taxi driver, and security guard to save up enough money to sponsor his family.

The future senator arrived as an eight-year-old girl with her mother and three younger siblings in 2003.

She was the head girl of the Australian Islamic College in Perth and went to university to become a doctor.

Mr Payman never lived to see her become a senator, dying of leukemia in 2018 aged 47. But his death spurred his daughter on to run for higher office.

She paid tribute to him in her first address to parliament on the first day of the 47th Parliament on July 27, where she was so overcome with emotion she sobbed.

‘Whose sacrifices will never be forgotten and who I dearly wish was here to see how far his little daughter has come,’ she said of her father. 

Senator Payman on Tuesday said she joined the Labor Party after watching her parents be taken advantage of at work as they struggled to raise her in Australia.

‘I witnessed the struggles my parents went through to put food on the table, to pay for our education and to provide a roof over our heads,’ Senator Payman told the Senate.

‘From discrimination and abuse to job insecurity and low wages, my father endured those hardships without complaining or seeking compensation.

‘Like many hard working Australians this came as second nature to my parents who just wanted the best future for their four children.’

Senator Payman receives a standing ovation from the Senate chamber after her speech

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Defence Minister Richard Marles (far left) made a special visit to the Senate to watch her speech and were among the first to congratulate her afterwards

The former unionist pledged to ensure the better representation of non-Anglo communities, speaking in her native language of Dari to recite a poem about humans being one community.

‘Australians showed us their appetite for a parliament that reflects our society because you can’t be what you can’t see,’ she said.

As third on Labor’s Senate ticket she was not expected to be elected, and treated the experience as practice for a serious 2025 run.

But after an enormous landslide for Labor in WA that handed Anthony Albanese government, she scraped in. 

Senator Payman said her surprise election, along with that of numerous other minority MPs, made Parliament more representative of ‘the true Australia’.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Defence Minister Richard Marles made a special visit to the Senate to watch her speech and were among the first to congratulate her afterwards.

She shared a long hug with Early Childhood Education Minister Anne Aly, a fellow Western Australian Muslim MP who served as her mentor.

‘I’m so proud of you,’ she said as the pair embraced. 

Senator Payman with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese gear up for the federal election where she was surprisingly elected despite being third on the ticket

Senator Payman said her surprise election, along with that of numerous other minority MPs, made Parliament more representative of ‘the true Australia’

Conspicuously absent was Pauline Hanson, who stuck around for Senator Tammy Tyrrell’s speech just before her but left after it was over.

Senator Payman has something in common with the One Nation leader – she was technically the first person to wear Islamic dress on the floor of the Senate.

Senator Hanson in 2017 infamously wore a niqab into the Senate before dramatically revealing herself to call for them and burkas to be banned in Australia.

At 27, Ms Payman is also be the youngest serving senator and the third youngest in Senate history.

Mehreen Faruqi is the first Australian Muslim senator, but does not wear a hijab.