Highlights
- The Australian Constitution can be a barrier to federal politics for dual citizens
- Current federal MPs do not adequately reflect diversity, according to political observers
- Housing, childcare, cost of living are ‘hot button’ issues in Parramatta: Abha Devasia
Ethiopian-born, Indian-Malayalee-Australian Abha Devasia said that while over 95 per cent of federal parliamentarians hailed from Anglo-Celtic backgrounds, 20 per cent of the wider population did not identify with these origins.
Ms Devasia said a major obstacle to more people from diverse backgrounds entering federal politics was Section 44 of the Australian Constitution which required that citizens could not hold or run for political office if they had the rights to or held citizenship in another country.
Section 44 was at the centre of the 2017–18 Australian parliamentary eligibility crisis, which saw a number of MPs deemed ineligible to sit by the High Court.
Thirty-nine per cent of Australians have a cultural background that is not Anglo-Celtic or Indigenous with 21 per cent having ancestry from a non-European country.
She also criticised what she said was a “transactional approach” by political parties to engaging with multicultural communities as if their concerns were not the same as those of the wider Australian society.
“There’s an incorrect assumption that certain communities will all vote the same way at every election and this is simply not the case,” she said.
Ms Devasia, who is a member of the Australian Labor Party (ALP), said she had hoped to run for preselection in the seat of Parramatta given the incumbent MP Julie Owens was retiring but that the party had instead chosen businessman Andrew Charlton as its candidate in the upcoming federal election.
Second-generation Chinese-Australian, Osmond Chiu, said he agreed with Ms Devasia that Australia’s parliament did not reflect the nation’s wider, multicultural society.
“The parliaments of the United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand are far more representative of cultural diversity,” Mr Chiu said.
Osmond Chiu says Australia lags behind the UK, Canada and New Zealand in terms of the cultural diversity of parliamentarians. Source: Osmond Chiu
Whereas in Australia, 21 per cent of Australians have overseas, non-European heritage, only four per cent of MPs do.
Mr Chiu, who went to primary school in Parramatta, said that unlike other countries, Australia had not prioritised improving culturally diverse representation.
“We don’t even collect basic diversity data in any official manner and that needs to change,” he said.
“Properly implementing the Jenkins Review’s recommendations of a 10-year strategy to increase diverse representation, including for people from culturally diverse backgrounds, and publishing data on the diversity characteristics of MPs are practical steps that should be taken.”
Mr Chiu, who is a member of the ALP, said that regardless of whether candidates were members of a political party or independent, it became much easier to run for election if they had the time, resources, and connections.
It means successful candidates tend to be people who are older, more established, work in certain professions and are affluent, not usually from culturally diverse backgrounds.
Mr Chiu, who works in a public policy role, said he saw the impact of government decisions on people’s everyday lives.
“Despite what people say, I know who is in charge matters,” he said.
Parramatta is a marginal seat
The ALP’s Julie Owens was elected member for Parramatta in Western Sydney in 2004 which ended an eight-year hold for the Liberal Party.
However, it has also been one of Labor’s most pivotal and difficult seats to hang on to with a margin of just 3.5 per cent after the 2019 election.
This Division of Parramatta, created in 1901 and approximately 24km west of the Sydney CBD, has around 104,000 voters and covers an area of 57 square kilometres consisting of 27 suburbs.
According to the 2016 Census, the most common ancestries in Parramatta were Indian (26.9 per cent), Chinese (16.3 per cent), English (7.7 per cent), and Filipino (2.4 per cent).
‘Place of eels’
Parramatta was founded as a British settlement in 1788, the same year as Sydney, and is the oldest, inland European settlement in Australia.
Since 2000, major government agencies have moved their headquarters to Parramatta from Sydney including the New South Wales Police Force and Sydney Water.
Its name derives from the Darug First Nations’ people who lived in the area from about 30,000 years ago and means “place of eels” because of the high incidence of eels and other sea creatures attracted to the nutrient-rich water at the place where the freshwater of the Parramatta River meets the saltwater of Port Jackson.
Cost of living and childcare are major concerns
Ms Devasia said the main issues for the people of Parramatta in the upcoming federal election were the cost of living, in particular the rising cost of housing and inaccessibility and affordability of childcare.
“This is directly affected by the inability to have extended family such as grandparents come to assist from overseas to mitigate against childcare costs due to border lockdowns or visa restrictions,” she said.
Ms Devasia said a lack of secure, full-time employment and stagnant wages were also worrying people.
“Access to government services, particularly with the impact of COVID on businesses in the ‘second CBD’ is a major concern for small to medium enterprises (SMEs) in the area as they are struggling to revive their businesses after the lockdowns and are suffering from staff shortages,” she said.
Politics a way of ‘giving back’ for migrants
Ms Devasia said she hoped to enter politics in the future as a way of giving back to Australia which had given her “a sense of belonging”.
She is currently working as National Legal Coordinator for the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union (AMWU) which has a membership of more than 100,000 across a wide range of sectors.
“Australia is my home, I was educated here, and it has given me every opportunity,” she said.
I see my qualifications as a gateway to service to my community and to the country.
“I wanted to run for a seat in the federal parliament because I wanted to become a beacon for others like me, so that they could see themselves as politicians and leaders in the mainstream.
“I wanted to help people in my seat by representing them and their interests and also contribute to the debate and discussion in Parliament so we could make decisions that considered the many views of our community, not just of the demography that are already well represented in positions of power.”
