After the recent elections, there are now eight MPs from a South Asian background and six of Chinese background in the Australian Parliament – which now has a record number of MPs from Asia.
This is a good outcome – but they still only account for about seven per cent of the Federal Parliament compared with about 17 per cent of the population.
Good result – but we need more!
The governing Labor Party will now have six MPs with some Chinese ancestry in its federal ranks after the election, led by Foreign Minister Penny Wong who was the only Chinese background Labor MP in 2019.
They are pre-existing MPs Sally Sitou (Reid, NSW) and Sam Lim (Tangney, WA) along with the newly elected MPs Zhi Soon (Banks, NSW); Julie-Ann Campbell (Moreton, Queensland); and Gabriel Ng (Menzies, Victoria).
The Government (Labor) now also has four federal MPs of south Asian descent in incumbents Cassandra Fernando (Holt, Victoria) from Sri Lanka; Zanetta Mascarenhas (Swan, WA) from India; Varun Ghosh (WA Senator) from India; and newcomer Ash Ambihaipahar (Barton NSW) from Sri Lanka.
The conservative parties have two MPs of Indian background in NSW Senator Dave Sharma and newly elected Leon Rebello (McPherson, Qld). The Greens have a Pakistan background Senator in Mehreen Faruqi and former Labor Senator turned Independent Fatima Payman is from Afghanistan.
Incumbent Independent Vietnamese MP Dai Le (Fowler, NSW) was returned to Parliament with a small increase in support after an unusual diaspora election battle with Labor’s fellow Vietnamese candidate Tu Le.
This is now a record number of Federal MPs from an Asian background and possibly the largest number ever from a non-Anglo background.
Australia is a major MULTICULTURAL society, and this is beginning to be reflected in our Parliament.
(SOURCE – thank you to Asia Society Australia for the above data)
Into India 