Why are Asian Australians underrepresented in federal politics?
By Clinton Chan
10 minute read
Note: This blog is a heavy topic, so strap yourselves in
Why are Asian Australians underrepresented in federal politics?
“The Australia that I live in and the one that I work in, Parliament, are two completely different worlds”.
Those are the words of Mehreen Faruqi, a Greens senator and the first female member of Parliament. What Mahreen was eluding to was the sheer lack of ethnic diversity in Parliament when compared to the diversity seen in the towns and cities of Australia.
With the federal election coming up I’d like to dive into a topic that has weighed on my mind for decades: the lack of Asian-Australian diversity in federal government.
Since the Whitlam government’s full dismantling of the White Australia Policy in the early 1970s and embracing of multiculturalism, Australia has grown increasingly diverse, especially when it comes to welcoming migrants and refugees from Asia. As of the last Census in 2016 Asian-Australians (including South, Southeast, and East Asians) makeup approximately 16% of the Australian population.
Over the years Asian-Australians have grown as a proportion of the population.
But guess how many candidates of Asian heritage were elected in the last federal election in 2019? Just 5. A cursory look at the candidates from that election will also note a severe lack of Asian-Australians even picked to run in the race. The 5 that were elected make up about 2% of the 227 seats available - that’s a gap of 14%. Though it’s no doubt hard to get perfect proportional representation, we should expect to be edging closer to 36 Asian elected officials.
What’s more, this is a uniquely Australian problem. Countries like Canada, New Zealand, the US, and the UK are far ahead in terms of their parliamentary diversity, especially when it comes to the proportion of elected officials and candidates of Asian heritage relative to the population.
So what the frack is going on? Why is the representation SO bad, and why aren’t Asian-Australians given a chance to even make it to the starting line, let alone run the race?
In this blog I dive into some of the reasons for poor representation…
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It’s racism, racism is the reason!!!
My blood is boiling as I did the research for this blog, and it is very easy to point the finger at racism or some level of discrimination. But at the same time, it’s REALLY hard to shore up the evidence to show that racism is the problem here.
I do believe though that some level of discrimination is systematic and that part of the problem is how multiculturalism is practised in Australia. Dr Devaki Monani, a researcher in multiculturalism puts it aptly when she says that many Australians from non-White backgrounds are “recognised first by their ethnicity” as opposed to their identities as Australians. As a result they are not considered truly representative candidates because for the major political parties, their voting base is still largely white (which is so wrong). On the other hand, those with European or Anglo-Celtic heritage, Dr Monani argues, are much more quickly absorbed into the political landscape and the Anglocentric idea of Australian identity.
Whilst Night Noodle Markets in major cities are fun, they are a surface-level way to engage with the lives and identities of Asian-Australians.
The former Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane has also mentioned that multiculturalism in Australia is basically performative and “celebratory” - our approach to multiculturalism lacks “real engagement” and is largely based on funky foods and cultural festivals. This potentially leads to the perception that ethnic minorities are an oddity as opposed to Australian sub-communities with real voices and aspirations.
I couldn’t agree more with both - the fractious and sometimes disingenuous approach we take to multiculturalism and framing migrants (not just Asian migrants) as “ethnic” and not “true blue” is finally rearing its ugly head in federal politics.
At the same time, however, I recognise that there are other factors at play, some of which are outside of anybody’s control. Read on…
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Party politics
For any member of a major political party, the path to candidacy can be fraught. There’s the jockeying, the competition to outdo other candidates, and the need to both learn and master the unspoken rules and party procedures to gain support for candidacy. All of this is naturally not easy for a new migrant in an alien culture and society.
What’s more, the seat you are running for and how “safe” it is at the next election has a massive impact. Even if you had the social capital from being a prominent member of your particular community or electorate, the party machine may still select somebody else because of the political clout and pedigree they bring.
Party politics is part of the reason why we aren’t seeing enough Asian candidates
This was clear to see when Labor veteran and former NSW Premier Kristina Kennealy was recently parachuted into the electorate of Fowler (the seat for Cabramatta, a suburb with a strong Vietnamese presence) for its pre-selection for the federal election, pushing aside local lawyer Tu Le who is of Vietnamese descent. The public outcry has been huge, and whilst Ms Kenneally has significantly greater political credentials than Ms Le, it’s obvious that difficult races are given to the most experienced runners, whilst diverse candidates stop being serious contenders. Alternatively, Asian candidates are also given “unwinnable” seats to run in, seats firmly held by the opposing party where their candidacy makes no difference to the political strategy of the party.
Not only are non-white candidates in Australian politics low on the totem pole, they are also included tokenistically. Asian candidates in particular are assumed to be the de facto representatives for their communities, and are often tasked with menial jobs like recruiting only party members and voters from the same background as opposed to working in a more advisory capacity to ministers or senior party leaders to learn the ropes. They are also often “punished” for not having wide appeal, and as a result, are just used as diversity fillers. It’s clear then that the major political parties in Australia are not taking Asian candidates seriously enough - they’re just cannon fodder.
The major parties’ unwilllingness to give political opportunities to Asian-Australians has also seen potential candidates stand for smaller political parties instead.
It’s not all grim though if the path taken by Gladys Liu, the federal member for Chisholm is anything to go by. Gladys, originally from Hong Kong, migrated to Australian in the 1980s and joined the Liberal party in 2003. She then spent 16 years competing for “unwinnable” spots and cutting her teeth in Victorian State Elections before she was given the federal candidacy in 2019. I don’t know how long it takes to get to candidacy in federal politics but at least she made it, and in a multicultural seat of Melbourne too!
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Who represents us?
There is also the more nuanced problem of selecting representative candidates for ethnically diverse seats - there often isn’t a clear ethnic majority at all, making it hard to say that one seat is predominantly “Chinese” and should therefore have a Chinese candidate.
Let’s take the federal seat of Fowler for example, which houses part of the Sydney suburb of Cabramatta and has a significant portion of Vietnamese-Australians. You’d assume picking a Vietnamese-background candidate would make sense right? Not necessarily.
If we look at 2016 census data, those with Vietnamese ancestry makeup about 16% (the largest) followed closely by Chinese, Australian, and Italian ethnic groups. With no clear ethnic or cultural majority it can be hard to choose a candidate to “represent” the community if we are largely looking to find a representative on the basis of ethnocultural heritage.
It is partially for this reason that major parties have shied away from picking “diversity” candidates. As some commentators and former MPs like Ross Cameron have noted, at times parties can find it hard to choose one candidate amongst a pool of diverse candidates, and choosing a White candidate is “safer” because it “avoids triggering prejudices among different ethnic groups”. However, this also assumes that ethnic minority candidates can only represent their own specific community as opposed to minority communities at large, which likely isn’t always the case, though ethnic tensions (if present) are definitely a barrier.
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It takes time…
It is important to note however that political engagement from ethnic minority communities often takes decades and perhaps even generations before these communities feel comfortable engaging in political life.
Researcher Grant Wyeth finds that this is particularly the case for refugees and other migrants who are economically disadvantaged and may need time to learn the language, build up their personal wealth, engage with the community, and build a career before thinking of entering politics.
As a result, it may take 1-2 generations before candidates from a particular ethnic community become politically active. We see this in the lives of politicians such as Tien Kieu and Meng Heang Tak who were born in Vietnam and Cambodia respectively, arrived in Australia in the late 1970s and 80s, and spent decades studying and working in Australia before entering state parliament in Victoria.
Tien Kieu left Vietnam at the age of 18 on a boat. 43 year later he’s a physicist who’s taught at Oxford University and MIT, and is now a Victorian state member of parliament.
Of the Asian-Australian ethnic groups that arrived in the latter half of the 20th Century, many are arguably well into their second and third generations in Australia and change is slowly creeping in. But the change is arguably too slow, particularly for Asian communities that make up such a large proportion of the voting public.
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The future is (kinda) bright
Interestingly, the representation of Asian-Australians at the state level seems to be significantly better, at least for NSW and Victoria. Victoria and NSW see 10% and 9% of their MPs emerging from non-European ancestry compared to the measly 2% we see at the federal level.
Up until recently, we also had some solid partly leadership from non-European politicians too (though not necessarily Asian) with Elizabeth Lee leading the Liberals in the ACT and NSW’s favourite “iron lady” Gladys Berejiklian at the helm.
In the 2022 election, the sensitivity to the changing demography of key federal seats is also increasing. This is especially the case for the Chinese-Australian and Indian-Australian communities. Even though these groups are both incredibly politically diverse, the sheer number of people in these groups also means that more members of these communities will take an active role in politics and it will be hard to deny these groups a candidacy in key seats in future elections. In the 2019 election, both Labour and Liberal parties decided to run Chinese-Australian candidates for the seat of Chisholm (which houses the Chinese-majority suburb of Box Hill), with Gladys Liu winning and holding the seat today.
The light at the end of the tunnel is dim but tides are changing, and with greater solidarity amongst Asian-Australians I have hope that we can play an increasingly more decisive role and a louder voice in federal politics in years to come.
Want to read more about diversity in politics? I found these articles to be super insightful:
