Fatima Payman reflected Labor's hopes for the future. How did it ...

"Little drops make a mighty ocean."

It was a saying Abdul Wakil would often repeat to his eldest daughter Fatima.

For Abdul, it was more than metaphor. In 1999, having fled the Taliban, he crossed the Indian Ocean in a small boat bound for Australia.

There he would work for four years before Fatima, her mother Shogufa and her siblings could join him to start a new life in suburban Perth.

Two decades later, his 27-year-old daughter was overcome with emotion as she paid tribute to her father in her first Senate speech.

She quoted from a poem he would often read her, spoken first in Dari then in English:

Human beings are members of a whole /In creation of one essence and soul / If one member is afflicted with pain / Other members uneasy will remain

In the months following the Hamas terror attack of October 7, as Israeli forces killed tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza, Senator Payman became increasingly uneasy.

On Thursday, that culminated in her decision to quit the Labor party after days of mutual animosity, accusations and backgrounding over her decision to vote against the party on a Greens Senate motion calling for Palestinian recognition.

Fatima Payman paid tribute to her late father in her first speech in 2022.(ABC News: Ian Cutmore)

Senator Payman has insisted that decision was made only seconds before she walked across the chamber to cast her vote.

But even if the vote was not premeditated, her discomfort had been building for months.

By early 2024, she was acutely aware of anger in the Muslim community over her government's response to the conflict, when she struggled to line up community members willing to attend Iftar dinners with the prime minister.

Like several Labor colleagues, she had also ventured beyond the party's position on Gaza and was given implicit licence to do so.

But Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was prompted to rebuke her when she accused Israel of genocide in a May statement that concluded with the phrase "from the river to the sea," which he considers incompatible with a two-state solution (an interpretation Senator Payman rejects).

Still, even after the vote, the PM's instinct was to forgive and forget, emphasising that Labor's longstanding norms against disunity were not ironclad laws and could be overlooked in the name of social cohesion on a divisive matter.

He asked Senator Payman not to attend party meetings for the remainder of the parliamentary sitting fortnight, but indicated she would not be punished further.

Anthony Albanese accused Senator Payman of a "strategy" in relation to her Insiders appearance.(ABC News: Luke Stephenson)

Then came the backbenchers. Reports emerged that angry colleagues wanted a stronger response. It was a reaction that speaks to the deeply-held attachment to collectivism that is in Labor's fabric.

But seeing it play out through the media, coupled with what she saw as a "cold shoulder" and "intimidation" from colleagues, angered Senator Payman.

Enlisting the help of infamous crossbench "whisperer" Glenn Druery, she planned a response, which began with a surprise appearance on the ABC's Insiders on Sunday in which she declared she would defy her party again on similar motions.

An angry prime minister, who would later accuse his senator of a "strategy" and bluntly observe her Insiders appearance didn't come about "because she happened to walk past the studio", summoned her to The Lodge for a discussion.

Her account of that discussion with the PM and his chief of staff Tim Gartrell is that she was given an ultimatum: support the party's position or leave it.

The PM has resisted that characterisation, but it is agreed the meeting ended with Senator Payman's indefinite suspension.

Senator Payman has said she only resolved to make that a permanent departure on Wednesday. But in the days prior, the momentum had pointed in that direction.

On Sunday's Insiders, she said she had no plans to quit the party. By Monday, she said she was "reflecting" on her political future. And on Thursday, she confirmed what by then had been universally expected: "with a heavy heart but a clear conscience," her time in the party was over.

The loss will be felt heavily by a Labor Party whose electoral future depends on several of the constituencies Fatima Payman represents: not just the Muslim community, which has drawn the most attention in recent days, but young Australians, women and migrant communities — all groups reflective of the modern working class.

Payman's story reads like a modern Labor story from central casting.

Her father worked several jobs, including kitchen hand, security guard and taxi driver. Her mother started a small business as a driving instructor for women. And her parents inspired her "to aspire to greatness, to study hard, get a secure job and be a respectable member of society," as she said in her first speech.

Fatima Payman joined the Labor party in 2014 and was WA Young Labor President in 2021.(Supplied: WA Young Labor)

Her father had always encouraged her to vote Labor, "not because he was very well versed in Australian politics, but he had a firm belief that Labor cared for the working-class people."

It was only once she became involved in Labor politics and as an organiser for the United Workers' Union that she realised her father's workplace experience was one of exploitation of the kind many migrant and low-income workers were still subjected to.

That burnished her interest in entering politics, cemented by her involvement in the factional politics of WA's Labor youth wing, and her election as Young Labor President in 2021.

It was with that internal profile that she was selected third on the WA Senate ticket, a typically unwinnable spot but one which saw her elected on the crest of a Labor wave in the state.

In a 2022 interview, Senator Payman told the ABC the transition to politics did not always sit comfortably with her.

"It never occurred to me that it was a career that I would take upon," she said.

But a turning point came when an elderly woman singled out her presence at a community event as "the only one with a hijab on."

"I made this pact with myself that I'm going to purposefully go out of my comfort zone and put myself in situations where I am in a room full of people who look different to me and be a representative for not just people who look like me but minority groups who are always bound to feel left out."

The PM has repeatedly pointed out in recent days that Labor politicians are elected not just in their own name, but with the Labor name next to it, a point which supports the view held by some in Labor that the Senate seat should rightfully belong to the party, not to an individual.

But Senator Payman was clear from the start that she felt she was carrying far more weight on her shoulders than that of an ordinary Labor politician.

"[It's daunting] because I represent so many different demographics… women, young people, migrant communities, the Afghan community… To manage all those expectations, I do find it challenging," she told the ABC in 2022.

"Over time I'll hopefully become good at it, but having people's hopes and dreams attached to your progress and the work you do is quite a lot of pressure…

"It is going to be a massive adjustment, I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to make it seem like it's all going to be rainbows and sunshine… It's a long six years and I want to do the best job I can in these six years."

The remaining four years of her term may now feel longer after her bitter cleavage with the party she joined fresh out of high school.

But in recent days Senator Payman has again made frequent reference to her father, who died shortly after being diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia in 2017 and who she calls "the strongest man I have known."

"I have made a decision that would make him proud," she said last week.