The 2022 federal election was a watershed for representation in Australian politics. It delivered the most diverse federal parliament ever with the election of a record number of women, First Nations and other people of colour as members of parliament (MPs).[1] There was a significant increase in Asian Australian MPs, more than doubling in the House of Representatives from three to seven.[2] It also saw the election of Fatima Payman from Western Australia to the Senate as the youngest member in the Australian Parliament.[3] These newly elected parliamentarians have centred their cultural backgrounds and personal stories, suggesting a shift in the style of Asian Australian leadership in politics.
The result was a marked turnaround given the controversy over candidate selection or preselection for the federal seat of Fowler in south-western Sydney by the centre-left Australian Labor Party (Labor) in 2021. It suggests a growing recognition of the importance of culturally diverse representation in Australian politics.
Despite the result, the political underrepresentation of Asian Australians remains an issue. Australia continues to lag behind Canada and the United Kingdom. Potential explanations for ongoing underrepresentation have included data collection, electoral incentives, electoral systems, party preselection processes, and biases and assumptions.[4]
Underrepresentation in Australian politics
The aphorism that Australia is a multicultural nation with monocultural institutions often gets mentioned when discussing diversity in Australia.[5] Australia is a multicultural country, but is an outlier on representation. Australia is behind similar English-speaking Westminster democracies, especially New Zealand and Canada, when it comes to elected federal MPs from overseas non-European cultural backgrounds.[6] This underrepresentation extends to sub-national legislatures.[7]
Public attention on the underrepresentation of those with non-European cultural backgrounds in Australian politics emerged as a political issue prior to the 2022 federal election.[8] Those with Asian heritage constitute the largest portion of the population with non-European cultural backgrounds. The Australian Standard Classification of Cultural and Ethnic Groups (ASCCEG) has three broad groups that can be considered Asian: South-East Asian, North-East Asian, Southern and Central Asian. While Australia does not collect data on ethnicity, analysis of 2021 Census data suggests 17.4 per cent of the population has ancestry that is categorised by the Australian Bureau of Statistics as Asian. Despite that only 7.1 per cent of federal parliamentarians had Asian cultural backgrounds after the 2025 election.
Representation in comparable countries
While there are examples of Asian Australians in senior leadership roles in politics, Asian migrants and ethnic minorities have historically been underrepresented compared to the United Kingdom and other demographically, similar settler-colonial countries like Canada and New Zealand.[9] 12.8 per cent of Canadian MPs have Asian heritage compared to 19.3 per cent of the population.[10] While only just over 5 per cent of New Zealand parliamentarians have Asian heritage compared to 17.3 per cent of the population, [11] this figure has remained unchanged since 2017.[12] In contrast, until the 2022 election, less than 3.6 per cent of federal Parliaments had an Asian cultural background. In the British House of Commons, over 8 per cent of MPs have Asian heritage compared to 9.3 per cent of the population of England and Wales.[13]
Though Australia, New Zealand, and Canada share a Westminster parliamentary tradition, they have vastly different electoral and party systems. [14] Despite that, both Canada and New Zealand have led for some time on broader cultural diversity in politics. A comparative analysis of data between 2002 and 2022 found the representation of elected MPs from overseas non-European cultural backgrounds in Australia increased from 2.2 per cent to 7.1 per cent, with only 4.4 per cent prior to the 2022 federal election. Comparable data showed increases from 5.0 per cent to 16.8 per cent in New Zealand and from 5.5 per cent to 15.7 per cent in Canada over the same period. Even the United Kingdom experienced a greater increase from 1.8 per cent to 10.5 per cent.[15]
At the Executive level nationally, Australia stands in stark contrast to the United Kingdom with British Asians who have recently served in Cabinet roles such as Suella Braverman, Priti Patel, Alok Sharma and Sajid Javid in the previous Conservative Government that was led by Rishi Sunak. The level of diversity within the Cabinet of a British Conservative Government suggests underrepresentation is not due to an ideological division between left and right.
This begs the question: what causes Asian Australian underrepresentation in politics and why has it been much worse in Australia than in Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom?
Potential explanations for Asian underrepresentation
Australia has a two-party dominant system with both the centre-left Labor and centre-right Liberal Party of Australia noting the need to ensure cultural diversity amongst its candidates in their 2022 election reviews.[16] While commentary on culturally diverse underrepresentation has grown, the exact reasons for underrepresentation is less clear. Recent 2021 Census data suggests Australia is demographically similar to other comparable English-speaking Westminster democracies like New Zealand and Canada.
Explanations given for the ongoing political underrepresentation of those from overseas non-European cultural backgrounds, including Asian Australians, include poor data, electoral incentives, the electoral system, party preselection processes, and biases and assumptions.[17] Examining these explanations by comparing Australia against Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom may provide some insights into how applicable they may be.
Data collection
Poor data collection may help explain why Australia is behind other countries. Australia lags behind New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Canada on the collection of ethnic identity at a population level.[18] Australia does not yet officially collect comprehensive data on cultural diversity within organisations and institutions.[19] While there are moves with the Federal Government committing to collect ethnicity data, Australia remains far behind other countries.[20] In contrast, data on the ethnicity of New Zealand and British MPs is accessible on government websites, allowing a level of public scrutiny.[21] Analysis of the ethnic diversity of MPs is also far more common in Canada.[22]
While this issue is not limited to politics, it has a compounding effect. Poor data can create and maintain poor representation as the extent of the problem is not well understood and can result in less pressure to act. It may explain why it has not been seen as a priority by political parties until more recently.
Electoral incentives
The lack of electoral incentives for political parties to recruit migrants and ethnic minority representatives has been cited as an explanation for underrepresentation. Factors include the decline of ethnic voting, multiculturalism, and the shift in the socio-economic status of migrants due to increasing skilled migration.[23] One explanation is few federal electorates have ethnic concentrations based on single country origins and political parties are more likely to select minority candidates in seats with high geographical concentrations of ethnic minorities.[24] Major Australian parties are less likely to nominate ethnic minority candidates than their counterparts in the United States and the United Kingdom, one explanation being the ethnic minority population in the United States and United Kingdom is made up of two or three larger groups, opposed to numerous smaller ones, as is the case in Australia.[25] Compulsory voting also removes incentives to mobilise specific communities to vote in elections.
There have been a number of Australian federal seats since 2016 with a high concentration of voters with pan-Asian ancestry;[26] the extent, however, is not the same as Canada where visible minorities, primarily those of Chinese and South Asian heritage, make up a majority of residents in over one in ten ridings.[27] The 2022 election results, however, suggest a strong primary swing against the Coalition in urban booths with high Chinese ancestry proved decisive in key marginal seats.[28] It has led to a debate within the centre-right Liberal Party about how to win back voters of Chinese ancestry.[29] Candidates with Chinese cultural backgrounds were preselected by the Liberal Party in a number of battleground seats such as Bennelong, Reid and Tangney. Despite this, it has not yet translated to a wider discussion about improved political representation for Chinese Australians.[30]
Electoral systems
The effect of different electoral systems is another potential factor as advocates of proportional representation argue it enables greater diversity.[31] New Zealand’s adoption of a Mixed Member Proportional system led to the election of New Zealand’s first Asian MP and since then 93 per cent of all Asian MPs have been elected through a party list.[32] But while New Zealand uses a proportional electoral system, Canada and the United Kingdom both use the majoritarian First Past The Post electoral system for national elections. Comparing these countries suggests the electoral system may be a factor but not the most important one for Asian representation as representation in New Zealand remains much lower than in Canada and the United Kingdom.
Party preselection processes
Party preselection processes have also been cited as a cause of underrepresentation.[33] A report on Indian Australian representation found“…navigating internal political party mechanisms cumbersome, daunting and time consuming.”[34] Australia’s major political parties primarily preselect through a closed preselection model, often combining qualified membership participation with a central panel or component.[35] Successfully navigating it requires significant motivation, perseverance, resilience, wealth and social capital.[36] It has often favoured those with a long party history, strong relational networks and time to maintain them, often benefitting political professionals. In contrast, Canadian political parties have a very loose eligibility requirements that allow the recruitment of members to vote in the period leading up to a preselection vote.[37] This may help ensure candidates that better reflect the demography of an electorate.
In other Westminster countries, central intervention has been used by parties to increase cultural diversity. For example, the creation and use of an A-List or Priority List by the British Conservative Party was used to signify endorsement by the party leadership for specific candidates who were often from diverse backgrounds. British Labour’s shortlisting of candidates for preselection enables it to have the strategic selection of diverse candidates. In New Zealand, the use of party lists to address underrepresentation has been common feature. Though centralised intervention occurs in Australian political parties, it has not been officially used to improve cultural diversity.
Despite that, the existence of any barriers to involvement have been dismissed by politicians. For example, a former Liberal Senator claimed during a hearing that focused on Chinese Australian communities that “the problem here is that certain communities just don’t want to participate” as there is nothing precluding them for involvement in a political party.[38] That said, a divergence in levels of electoral participation between subgroups within a broad ‘Asian’ category, such as those of Chinese and Indian heritage, has been noted in Anglo-democracies such as the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.[39]
Biases and assumptions
Beyond demographics and party preselection processes, biases against culturally diverse candidates, both within parties and by the electorate, is another common explanation given. Australian studies are mixed, one suggesting no electoral benefit from running an ethnic minority candidate in multicultural seats and evidence of a ‘backlash’ effect for white-Anglo voters.[40] Others, however, suggest an increase in the likelihood that ethnic minority respondents will support Labor if they run an ethnic minority candidate and no discernible impact on white voters.[41] One study of experimental inter-party competitions between hypothetical Labor and Coalition candidates suggests candidates born overseas are among the least likely to be selected and having Chinese cultural background decreases the probability of selection while an Indian background has a negative, but not statistically significant effect.[42] Suspicion towards candidates of Asian heritage has been noted, particularly those with Chinese heritage in the current geopolitical climate.[43]
Other biases such as assumptions about cultural traits associated with ethnicity and perceptions about what leadership looks like may also play a role.[44] An Asian leadership style has also been cited as an explanation for underrepresentation in senior leadership more broadly, citing cultural values such as deference are not valued.[45]
While it is difficult to determine the exact impact of electoral systems and party preselection processes in Asian underrepresentation, the Labor preselection for and subsequent election result in the federal division of Fowler allows exploration of electoral incentives and assumptions regarding Asian Australian leadership as explanations. It suggests structural barriers associated with preselection exist and assumptions exist but the fears of biases against culturally diverse candidates are exaggerated.
The Fowler debacle
The division of Fowler, in the south-west of Sydney, had been held by the Australian Labor Party as a safe seat since its creation in 1984. A highly multicultural seat in Australia’s largest city, where 76.7 per cent spoke a language other than English at home,[46] Fowler has a long history of being included in complex sub-factional deals between sections of Labor’s Left and Right factions to mutually support candidates. There have long been claims of a factional agreement involving the federal seats of Throsby and Fowler since 1997.[47] In 2010, after the retirement of incumbent member Julia Irwin, the then-member of Werriwa, Chris Hayes, contested Fowler, vacating it for Reid MP Laurie Ferguson whose seat had been abolished.[48] Branch-stacking in the 1990s in south-west Sydney has meant the absence of rank-and-file preselections in the area for over twenty years. Within the NSW Labor rules, there is even a specific section about preselection ballots in Fowler.[49]
In March 2021, the incumbent Labor member for Fowler, Chris Hayes, announced his retirement and publicly expressed his support for Tu Le, a young Vietnamese Australian lawyer, to succeed him.[50] Le would have been the first Vietnamese Australian to serve in the Australian Parliament, representing an electorate where over 20 per cent of the population had Vietnamese heritage.[51] Instead, Labor’s Deputy Senate leader, former NSW Premier Kristina Keneally, who was also from Labor’s Right faction, became Labor’s candidate in Fowler.
The 2019 double dissolution resulted in three incumbent Labor Senators being up for re-election in 2022: Jenny McAllister, Kristina Keneally, Deborah O’Neill. Labor’s primary vote in NSW suggested that Labor would only win two Senators at the 2022 federal election and the factional breakdown at NSW Labor Conference meant that Jenny McAllister, from the party’s Left faction, would win the second spot on the ticket due to proportional representation.[52] Instead of a preselection battle within Labor’s Right faction that she was likely to lose, Kristina Keneally sought preselection for Fowler and was installed by the ALP National Executive, which used its power to bypass rank-and-file preselections.
In response to criticism about the lack of diversity, then Labor Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese and former Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating emphasised Keneally’s achievements as a migrant success story,[53] only adding fuel as they were perceived as tone-deaf as Keneally was a white Anglo-American migrant. There was criticism from within Labor’s own ranks with Anne Aly and Peter Khalil, federal Labor MPs from culturally diverse backgrounds flagging the need for Labor to do better.[54]
Following the outcry, Labor preselected Sally Sitou and Zhi Soon for the marginal seats of Reid and Banks in Sydney.[55] The marginal seats were highly multicultural and both candidates were Asian Australians. The NSW Labor Conference in October 2021 also recognised underrepresentation in its platform and committed to compile diversity data on key positions within the party, create a diversity fellowship and better engage with multicultural communities.[56]
Soon afterwards, former Prime Ministerial adviser Andrew Charlton, was preselected for the federal seat of Parramatta by Labor’s National Executive. Parramatta was a highly multicultural, Labor-held seat in Western Sydney. While he had no connection to the seat, he was selected over several candidates with South Asian cultural backgrounds who had signalled their intention to contest.[57]
Both the Fowler and Parramatta preselections provoked a strong reaction amongst Asian Australians, particularly amongst the second-generation who were highly educated and had professional jobs.[58] To many, it felt what they had always suspected about politics not being a space for them had been confirmed.
2022 federal election
The 2022 federal election resulted in the worst result for the Liberal Party since the Second World War until the recent 2025 election. Despite a decline in its primary vote, Labor formed a narrow majority government, picking up middle-ring multicultural seats in Sydney and Melbourne that had a high Asian Australian population.
Bucking the trend was an unexpected victory in Fowler by Dai Le, even though a seat poll suggested Keneally might lose.[59] Dai Le was the Deputy Mayor of Fairfield Council in Western Sydney and had previously run as a candidate for the state seat of Cabramatta as a Liberal and independent. She had been expelled from the Liberal Party for a decade in 2016 for joining the ticket of Frank Carbone, the incumbent Fairfield mayor who quit Labor after losing preselection.[60] Having that local profile with voters, she ran on a platform of being a true local, in contrast to Keneally who resided on an island off Sydney’s Northern Beaches, and that she would stand up for local issues.
Labor held onto Parramatta where Labor received a small swing towards it, however, its performance was poor compared to other surrounding seats. The lack of a viable independent candidate and swings against the Liberals in north-eastern suburbs with high Chinese ancestry, cancelling out swings against Labor in suburbs that had a large proportion of voters with South Asian heritage, were arguably pivotal to Labor keeping Parramatta.[61]
The 2022 election saw a massive increase in diversity with a record number of new Asian Australians elected to parliament across the country, almost all on the Labor side. New Asian Australian MPs included Sally Sitou, Sam Lim, Cassandra Fernando, Fatima Payman, Michelle Ananda-Rajah, Dai Le, and Zaneta Mascarenhas. The response to their election indicates a growing recognition of the importance of culturally diverse representation and its expectation amongst political leaders by communities.
What was different about these new MPs was the shift where their personal story about being from a culturally diverse background was central to who they were, their values and they were comfortable about talking about it openly. The first speeches of Sally Sitou, Fatima Payman and Zaneta Mascarenhas all alluded to the importance of culturally diverse representation in politics. Sally Sitou spoke about growing up with a sense of unease about her place in Australia, articulating that diverse representation makes the parliament better and our democracy stronger.[62] Zaneta Mascarenhas talked about how the public had shown its desire for a parliament that reflects the community and that “this is not the high water-mark” for a multicultural parliament.[63] Fatima Payman expressed how she wanted to work towards better representation for people of colour in parliaments.[64]
Outside parliament, they spoke about their experiences, their story and their hopes. During her campaign, Sally Sitou spoke out about racist messages she had received.[65] Fatima Payman mentioned her mission was to normalise hijab wearing.[66] Sam Lim talked about his upbringing in Malaysia and his admiration of Gough Whitlam for dismantling White Australia.[67] Dai Le spoke about how when she first decided to run for election in 2008, people of culturally diverse, particularly women of colour, did not feature in mainstream life.[68] Former Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphomassane noted this rhetoric shift, commenting that it suggested “something generational is at play.”[69]
It marked a distinct contrast to previously incumbent Liberal MPs of Asian heritage, Ian Goodenough, Gladys Liu and Dave Sharma, who did not centre their Asian cultural backgrounds in their political narratives. It had even been noted some constituents in Wentworth believed Dave Sharma, their incumbent MP, had Jewish heritage.[70]
Where to next?
Why 2022 delivered Australia’s most diverse federal parliament needs to be unpacked if further progress is to be made. While it was a dramatic improvement, Australians from overseas non-European cultural backgrounds, particularly Asian Australians, continue to be significantly underrepresented in Australian politics.
Along with the emergence of a newer generation of candidates and lucky timing, Australia’s demographic shift has undoubtedly played a role in delivering a more diverse Australian parliament. Those of Asian ancestry make up 17.4 per cent of the population.[71] This is an increase from 2000 where 5.6 per cent of the population were Asian-born or their children.[72] There is also growing concentration of voters with Asian ancestry in key marginal seats in Sydney and Melbourne as well as both safe Labor and once safe Coalition seats. The shift towards more skilled migration from the 2000s onwards has changed the class composition of migrants with higher median incomes and average tertiary education rates in multicultural suburbs.[73] The electoral incentives to appeal to urban, multicultural electorates became accepted as common sense after the 2022 election results and they will continue to be battleground seats into the near future.
Other factors that may explain underrepresentation such as electoral systems and party preselection processes are unlikely to change but a more culturally diverse parliament will have an effect. The normalisation of Asian Australians in leadership roles and their successful election in marginal seats will challenges biases and assumptions about electability, similar to what occurred in the United Kingdom.
Since 2022, even more Asian Australians have been elected to federal parliament with the 2025 election delivering the most diverse federal parliament ever. But while subsequent Senate casual vacancies have been filled by Asian Australians and additional non-incumbent Asian Australian candidates were elected in seats such as Barton, Banks, McPherson, Menzies and Moreton and to the Senate at the 2025 election, there remains a risk progress could stall as many Asian Australians were elected to marginal seats. The decline in state MPs with non-European cultural backgrounds at the last Victorian election shows that representation can also go backwards.[74] The experience of the United Kingdom was a slow progress after an initial breakthrough in Black and Minority Ethnic representation amongst MPs.[75]
The lack of cultural diversity in Australia politics has been recognised in recent reports about parliamentary workplaces.[76] An Independent Review into Commonwealth Parliamentary Workplaces made several recommendations including a 10-year plan to increase diversity in politics, with specific actions for those from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, and the publication of diversity data about MPs.[77]
Pressure will build but political change is never inevitable, and demography is not destiny. The resignation of Fatima Payman from Labor to sit as an independent in the Senate highlights improved major party representation alone is insufficient. She previously stated, ‘I was not elected as a token representative of diversity’, at a media conference after crossing the floor on a Senate motion about Palestinian statehood.[78] Focus groups have suggested Payman’s feelings of isolation resonated with those from culturally diverse backgrounds, particularly younger women.[79] Greater representation must not be seen as simply conditional acceptance.
Asian Australians will need to be vocal, organise and push political parties to take representation seriously and ensure it is not tokenistic. A more culturally diverse parliament will require more than just time but the impact of Fowler and the more confident leadership approach from new federal MPs who are comfortable with their Asian Australian identity suggests change is happening. More needs to be done to ensure genuine inclusion but it will be amplified as more Asian Australians break through.
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Endnotes
[1] Swati Pandey, “Australia’s Next Parliament Will Be Its Most Diverse Ever,” Bloomberg, May 25, 2022, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-24/australia-s-next-parliament-will-be-its-most-diverse-ever.
[2] Akash Arora, “Asian Representation in Parliament Has Now Doubled. Some Advocates Say It’s Not Enough,” SBS News, May 24, 2022, https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/asian-representation-in-parliament-has-now-doubled-but-some-advocates-say-its-not-enough/ezzub39hn.
[3] Nour Haydar and Chantelle Al-Khouri, “Labor’s Newest Senator Fatima Payman Is Blazing Trails and She Hopes Others Will Follow,” ABC News, August 7, 2022, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-07/fatima-payman-new-labor-senator-blazing-a-trail/101303298.
[4] Osmond Chiu, “At the Back of the Pack: Explaining Australia’s Comparative Underrepresentation of Cultural Diversity in Politics” (Gender & Cultural Diversity in Politics: Australia, Asia & the Pacific, Australian National University, July 15, 2022).
[5] Tim Watts, “Speech: Book Launch – The Golden Country,” https://www.timwatts.net.au/news/speeches/speech-book-launch-the-golden-country/.
[6] Frances Mao, “Australia Election: Why Is Australia’s Parliament so White? – BBC News,” BBC News, May 20, 2022, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-61432762.
[7] Naaman Zhou, “Australia’s State Parliaments Lagging on Racial and Cultural Diversity, Report Finds,” The Guardian, August 6, 2021, sec. Australia news, https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/aug/06/australias-state-parliaments-lagging-on-racial-and-cultural-diversity-report-finds.
[8] Australian Human Rights Commission, “Leading for Change: A Blueprint for Cultural Diversity and Inclusive Leadership,” 2016; Osmond Chiu, “What Should Australia Do About…its Politics Being Too White?” (China Matters, 2020), https://chinamatters.org.au/policy-brief/policy-brief-january-february-2020/; Juliet Pietsch, Race, Ethnicity, and the Participation Gap: Understanding Australia’s Political Complexion (Toronto ; Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 2018).
[9] Juliet Pietsch, “Explaining the Political Under-Representation of Asian Australians: Geographical Concentration and Voting Patterns,” Political Science 69, no. 2 (May 4, 2017): 161–74, https://doi.org/10.1080/00323187.2017.1345283.
[10] Statistics Canada Government of Canada, “Ethnic or Cultural Origin by Gender and Age: Canada, Provinces and Territories, Census Metropolitan Areas and Census Agglomerations with Parts,” October 26, 2022, https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=9810035601.
[11] Statistics NZ, “2023 Census Population Counts (by Ethnic Group, Age, and Māori Descent) and Dwelling Counts,” May 29, 2024, https://www.stats.govt.nz/information-releases/2023-census-population-counts-by-ethnic-group-age-and-maori-descent-and-dwelling-counts/.
[12] “A More Diverse Parliament,” Elections, accessed February 10, 2025, https://elections.nz/democracy-in-nz/25-years-of-mmp/a-more-diverse-parliament/.
[13] Office of National Statistics, “Ethnic Group, England and Wales: Census 2021,” November 29, 2022, https://www.ons.gov.uk/census/maps/choropleth/identity/ethnic-group/ethnic-group-tb-20b/asian-asian-british-or-asian-welsh-bangladeshi.
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