The ethnic diversity of Australia's parliament is lagging behind other countries

Australia's population is arguably more ethnically and racially diverse than the UK and the US, but when it comes to the make-up of its parliament, there is a difference.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison and some of his ministers during Question Time, 2021. Source: AAP / Mick Tsikas

There is little doubt Australia’s parliament has an issue with representing the diversity of the country.

A 2018 report from the Australian Human Rights Commission found only 4.1 per cent of all parliamentarians come from a non-European background. That's compared with an estimated 21 per cent of the general population.

The same ratio is reflected in today's cabinet; only one of the current 24 ministers comes from a non-European background - Minister for Indigenous Australians, Ken Wyatt.

Ken Wyatt was the first Indigenous Australian in the House of Representatives. Source: AAP

Acting director of the Sydney Policy Lab and Australia's former Race Discrimination Commissioner, Professor Tim Soutphommasane, says those numbers haven’t changed, and are unlikely to change again following the federal election on 21 May.

“On current form, you'd have to multiply the number of non-European background parliamentarians by at least five in order to reach something representing our modern character today.”

“If we don't have a parliament that reflects us, its legitimacy will suffer. It means that those in our community don't necessarily see themselves as part of the major institutions that make up who we are.”

Former Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane. Source: AAP / MICK TSIKAS/AAPIMAGE

Nearly half of all Australians were either born overseas or have at least one parent who was. But when it comes to parliament, it appears Australia is lagging behind other nations.

In the UK, people from ethnic minority backgrounds make up 10 per cent of its lower house, the House of Commons, compared with 14 per cent of the population. In the House of Lords, 6 per cent of members are from ethnic minority groups.

In the US, 23 per cent of politicians in its House of Representatives and Senate are from racial or ethnic minorities, compared with 36 per cent of the population.

If we don't have a parliament that reflects us, its legitimacy will suffer.

Tim Soutphommasane

Professor Soutphommasane says Australians are aware of the disparity and their frustration is building.

“Most of all, there's this risk that we will have people in our communities feeling that they're excluded from our institutions and feeling like they're second-class citizens,” he says.

“If our major political parties don't address this problem and start thinking seriously about cultural diversity and setting targets for their candidates to ensure there's greater representation of our community, then it's unlikely we'll see change any time soon.”

Has the Section 44 rule impacted the diversity of our parliament?

Five years ago, a 116-year-old section of the Australian constitution threatened to undo the government.

Section 44 bars anyone who is a subject or citizen — or entitled to the rights of a subject or citizen — of a foreign power from being elected into parliament.

In total, 15 sitting politicians stood down over their dual citizenship, briefly costing the then-Turnbull government its lower house majority.

But five years later, both major parties have been caught out again, each losing a candidate because of Section 44 recently.

In early April, Labor's candidate for the seat of Hughes in Sydney, Peter Tsambalas, withdrew from the election race because the status of his Greek-Australian dual citizenship remained unresolved.

A week later, Liberal senator Ben Small resigned after he became aware he was a dual citizen of New Zealand. He was later granted renunciation of his New Zealand citizenship by its authorities and allowed to re-join the campaign trail.

Constitutional law expert Professor Cheryl Saunders from the University of Melbourne says the section was written in a hugely different context.

Professor Cheryl Saunders says Section 44 is problematic. Credit: University of Melbourne

“The section actually used the words 'subject or citizen of a foreign power', and so the question is: who was a foreign power in 1901 when the Australian Constitution came into effect, and Australia was still a colony within the British empire?”

“Really, no countries in that very large British empire at the time were foreign powers, so the context has changed dramatically, and it's left us with a situation that we need to decide how to manage."

SBS Malayalam: How Section 44 remains a 'major obstacle' blocking migrant Australians from politics

To change any part of the Constitution, Australia needs to hold a referendum, and that would be both lengthy and costly.

But in a country often lauded as the most successful multicultural nation on earth, Professor Saunders says there's no doubt Section 44 poses a problem.

“It's a problem for a country that is very multicultural, happily multicultural, and has such a lot of dual citizens.”

“In essence, Section 44 precludes them from a key political right; from running for elected office at the national level”

Communities left feeling 'taken for granted'

Changing Section 44 alone also won’t fix representation in parliament — most of the politicians caught out by it come from a European background. But some members of culturally diverse communities say it forms part of a bigger picture of structural barriers stopping them from participating in politics.

Fowler in Sydney's southwest is a Labor stronghold, but the party stirred anger there last year when it overlooked local lawyer Tu Le, a Vietnamese Australian, to pre-select US-born career politician Kristina Keneally, who lived almost 50 kilometres away.

Tu Le intended to nominate for the lower house seat of Fowler in Sydney's southwest. Source: Supplied

“There is a sense that, as a community, we are taken for granted, especially because this has been an experience time and time again for these communities where candidates are parachuted in who aren't necessarily local and don't necessarily reflect the diversity within the community,” Ms Le says.

Ms Le says the barriers to participation for non-white Australians are many and varied, and she believes it will take a lot of will from both major political parties to remove them.

“The first thing is that you don't have the institutional knowledge and you don't have the connections and the networks, and those are some things that you have to build organically and start building.”

“There's almost this sense of we're still guests in this country, we don't have a right to things like running for parliament.”

A Liberal Party campaign spokesperson said the party has "a proud history of fielding candidates from a wide variety of backgrounds that reflect our great multicultural society".

Ahead of the federal election, they said the party is "proud of putting up candidates and MPs that come from a diverse collection of professional backgrounds ... [and] will continue to support people with differing backgrounds and life experience into leadership positions, such as Minister Wyatt."

Labor did not respond to a request for comment.

There are several parties running in the federal election, as well as independent candidates.

See SBS News's full federal election coverage here.

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