WHAT WAS CLAIMED
Senator Fatima Payman called Natalie Barr a racist during a TV interview.
OUR VERDICT
False. The interview did not occur and the quotes have been fabricated.
AAP FACTCHECK - Foreign-run disinformation pages are again sharing political disinformation about Western Australian senator Fatima Payman.
A network of Facebook pages run from Vietnam and the Philippines is spreading false claims that Senator Payman called breakfast TV host Natalie Barr a "racist" during an interview about the return from Syria of women commonly referred to as the ISIS brides.
But the quotes attributed to the senator are fake and the interviews in question never happened.
More than a dozen Facebook pages have shared the false claims, with some posts gaining tens of thousands of views.
A post from a page called Aussie Tales claims Senator Payman and Ms Barr were involved in a "heated on-air confrontation".
"SHUT UP! YOU RACIST!" the post quotes Senator Payman as saying to Ms Barr.
"This is not about race. This is about the safety of Australians," Ms Barr is quoted as saying in reply.
The post includes a composite graphic that includes images of Senator Payman, Ms Barr and one of the so-called "ISIS brides" who previously returned to Australia.
Meta's page transparency details show the Aussie Tales page is run by users in Vietnam.
The same claims about Senator Payman were also posted by two other pages - Aussie Vibes and The Daily Brief.
Meta's page transparency details show those pages are also run from Vietnam.
Comments on the posts encourage users to visit a website that expands on the post's false claims.
However, there are no credible reports that the exchange between Senator Payman and Ms Barr actually happened, nor that the Western Australian senator said the words attributed to her.
Senator Payman, who was elected as a Labor senator in 2022 and now sits as the sole representative of her own political party, Australia's Voice, is a popular target of foreign-run disinformation operators on Facebook.
In April 2026, AAP FactCheck debunked false claims about Senator Payman shared by Facebook pages run from Sierra Leone and Vietnam.
Another page, called Rylan's Realm, has posted similar claims about Senator Payman, though instead of Ms Barr, it references British television personality Rylan Clark.
The post claims Senator Payman sat down for a studio interview with Mr Clark.
"Someone turn his microphone off immediately!" the post quotes Senator Payman as saying.
According to the false post, Mr Clark then responded to Senator Payman by saying: "Listen carefully Fatima, you cannot sit in a position of power, call yourself 'the voice of the public', and then immediately dismiss anyone who doesn't conform to your idea of how they should speak."
The post includes a composite graphic that features an image of Senator Payman and Mr Clark, including one where both are sitting in front of a sign that reads "ABC".
There is also no credible record of Mr Clark ever interviewing Fatima Payman and the quotes attributed to her appear to be entirely fabricated.
Gemini, Google's AI assistant, confirms the image of Mr Clark and Senator Payman contains an invisible digital watermark, known as SynthID, indicating it was made using Google AI tools.
Meta's page transparency details show the Rylan's Realm page is operated by users in Vietnam and the Philippines.
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