While the Labor Party's commitment to a tradition of caucus solidarity that dates back more than 130 years is being defended as necessary and commendable it might be time for this particular leopard to change its spots.
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The ALP has, after all, had the courage to change with changing times on many previous occasions. Its current suite of policies and objectives bear little resemblance to the positions it adopted in the early years of the federation or even as recently as the Whitlam era.
It is also timely to reflect that at the same time the party's founding fathers were embracing a principle of solidarity that enforces the tyranny of the majority they were also zealous advocates of the White Australia policy.
This odiously racist and bigoted policy, made manifest in the infamous Immigration Restriction Act of 1901, was retained in one form or another until the 1970s. That was an appropriate response to a shift in attitudes.
Fifty years later the spirit of the times has changed again; a point made by Senator Fatima Payman when she reaffirmed her willingness to cross the floor in support of the recognition of a Palestinian state on Sunday.
The senator, who this time last week was hardly a household name, is now being attacked and condemned by many of her colleagues for becoming the first federal Labor parliamentarian in decades to defy the authority of the caucus and the senior leadership group.
That's as much because of her stand on a point of principle, which has become a major embarrassment for a party that was already in deep strife, as her thumbing of her nose at the ALP's time-honoured rules and regulations.
While the right-wing commentariat and the LNP are having a field day, accusing the 29-year-old senator of grandstanding and trying to advance her own interests, most people who have been paying attention would agree she is lucid, principled and sincere.
Senator Payman's defence of her actions made some telling points neither the Prime Minister, Senator Wong, Richard Marles nor other ALP heavy hitters have made a serious attempt to refute.
Noting one of the reasons she was in the Labor Party was because it was a party of human rights, Senator Payman said for her the ALP was the rank and file members, many of whom have rallied behind her, and that she believed she had "upheld the values the Labor Party should stand for".
Her most cogent point was that the Labor Party's solidarity rules raised serious doubts about its commitment to diversity.
"The 47th Parliament is the most diverse Parliament ever," she said. "You can't have that diversity of personalities and representations and not have diversity of views and opinions.
"Modern day Australia looks very different to what it did 20 to 30 years ago and it is going to keep evolving".
Only a cigarette paper separates the senator's position from official ALP orthodoxy.
She supports a two-state solution and recognises Israel's existence as a Jewish homeland.
Her reservation is that it seems counter-intuitive to call for a two-state solution if you only recognise one state. That's actually Labor policy.
The sticking point is the caucus position which makes recognition of Palestine contingent on "a peace process in support of a two-state solution and a just and enduring peace".
The quickest way to lance this boil would be to reinstate Senator Payman, pending a debate on the solidarity rule in caucus and at the next national conference.
