(The Age 16/11/2023)
The Muslim vote. The Chinese vote. After decades of multicultural policy and with the recent historically high immigration intake, the emerging phenomenon of federal electorates that are ethnically or religiously specific is reshaping our politics.
Seats with large diasporic communities are deciding elections. Last year, voters of Chinese origin, offended by Scott Morrison’s regular verbal aggression towards China, helped hand power to the Labor Party. Three Liberal-held seats with big Chinese communities – Chisholm, Bennelong, and Reid – swung hard to Labor, which won office with just a two-seat margin.
Now, we’re seeing the potential electoral power of the Muslim vote being asserted over the Israel-Hamas conflict. This time, the diasporic vote presents some difficulties for the ALP.
It’s true that in times past, religious and cultural ties have played outsized roles in important Australian political debates. The Catholic Church and Irish Australians heavily influenced the outcomes of two highly controversial issues in the 20th century: the conscription question during World War One, and the presence of communists in the labour movement in the 1950s. Both debates caused the Labor Party to split.
But what’s happening now looks different because of the high concentrations of new and recent entrants from other countries in specific seats.
Australian society is becoming increasingly more complex and diverse. The 2021 census found that 27.6 per cent of all Australians were born overseas and 48.2 per cent of us have an overseas-born parent. More than 25 per cent of us use a language other than English at home. In the four years preceding the census, one million people had emigrated here, and the high migration trend is accelerating, with Australia on track to accept more than half a million new entrants this year alone.
This will make it ever more difficult for both major parties to manage the politics of combustible and highly contested international issues. As we’re seeing with the conflict in Israel and Gaza, the needle cannot be threaded, with Palestinian and Jewish groups respectively demanding that the government adopt their positions in toto. Anything less invites denunciation.
The week began with foreign minister Penny Wong being condemned by leading Australian Jewish groups for making the unremarkable statement, “We need steps towards a ceasefire. It cannot be one-sided.” By Wednesday, seven government MPs were targeted by pro-Palestinian supporters who dumped fake dead bodies outside their offices.
Peculiar to this current blow-up is that the political argument is largely about gestures and language rather than concrete action. The demand from Palestinian protesters that Anthony Albanese totally denounce Israel, which he’ll never do, won’t change the fighting in Gaza. But it could hurt Maria Vamvakinou in Calwell, where 13 per cent of the electorate has Middle Eastern ancestry and her margin has already been cut by 8 per cent in the past two elections.
In the other direction, Wong daring to use the word “ceasefire” is not going to make a speck of difference in Israel. But it might cause Josh Burns to lose Macnamara, which is already highly marginal, and has the highest proportion of Jewish voters in the country.
It’s close to the point where no statement, no perspective from the government can be uncontroversial.
Beyond any direct political problems this might cause for the big parties, and especially in this case the ALP, it doesn’t do much for the wider community’s ability to understand and debate the issues in a rational way. And it challenges the long-held expectation that multiculturalism would guarantee greater tolerance of differing views.
The Israel-Palestinian question has been unresolved for almost 80 years. It is unbelievably complicated, and what happened on October 7 and every day since has more than likely pushed resolution further into the distance. It appears that most Australians look at it that way – as an incredibly saddening and difficult situation a long way from here. The latest Resolve Political Monitor suggests that a majority of voters oppose public protests by those on either side of the dispute. A big majority opposes Australia contributing military equipment, which must come as a blow to Peter Dutton, who last month recommended offering Israel military assistance. Dutton’s language is verging on the hysterical and can only sow further division.
During question time on Wednesday, Dutton addressed the prime minister, saying, “Therefore, [we] call on the prime minister to one, understand that … his priority must be the protection of the Australian community at home, cancel his plans to travel to the United States … [and] urgently convene a national cabinet meeting to formulate a strong and coherent response to combat the rise of antisemitism, repair social cohesion and protect community safety.”
As the diasporic vote increases and intensifies in specific geographic locations, the politics of these issues change, and the views of the wider, less engaged majority can start to lose their electoral primacy. That’s why ministers Tony Burke, Jason Clare and Chris Bowen, and Vamvakinou, who hold the seats with the highest proportion of Middle Eastern voters in the country, will speak with more empathy about the residents of Gaza. They have to.
Will it make a difference? The easiest thing for the government to do, as a junior United States ally fully signed up to the AUKUS pact, would be to go all in with Israel, much as the US has done. But its MPs represent by far the biggest proportion of Australia’s Muslims, and the electoral power of those constituents can only grow. Just one more knotty problem for the government to add to its list.
Shaun Carney is a regular columnist.