New South Wales Labor committed to increasing diversity within the party just months before bypassing a local rank-and-file vote to install a white candidate in the federal seat of Parramatta, at the expense of three people of colour.
After installing Kristina Keneally as the party’s candidate in the south-west Sydney electorate of Fowler last year, a cross-factional group pushed for greater diversity among candidates.
At the NSW state conference in October, the group put forward a motion to change the party’s platform, recognising “ongoing underrepresentation of culturally and linguistically diverse people” in senior leadership positions “across business, politics, government and higher education”.
The proposal committed Labor to “improving the representation of culturally and linguistically diverse people across all organisations”, including the party.
The motion was passed unanimously, along with a commitment to compile data on diversity in key positions in the party and to appoint organisers to better engage with non-white communities before the federal election.
But after the decision to bypass a local preselection to install former Kevin Rudd adviser and economist Andrew Charlton as the party’s candidate in the marginal seat of Parramatta, some members say they’re frustrated Labor has missed another opportunity to promote diverse candidates.
“It feels like one step forward, two steps back,” said Osmond Chiu, a research fellow at the thinktank Per Capita and a member of NSW Labor’s policy forum.
“The real frustration I have is that opportunities to increase diversity in parliament are so rare.
“My huge frustration is that even if for whatever reason the party didn’t support the candidates who were going to nominate in Parramatta, we couldn’t find a single candidate in that seat that seemed to represent the area.”
While the push for more diversity preceded Keneally’s preselection in Fowler, he said that decision had “brought it to the forefront.”
“From my conversations, after Fowler there was a recognition this was a problem,” he said.
“I think this issue about cultural and linguistic diversity in the party was seen as a lower priority and Fowler elevated it so there was a sense something had to happen, something had to be done.”
Guardian Australia previously reported that Labor intervened at the request of party leader, Anthony Albanese, to halt a local preselection in Parramatta. That was despite three candidates from diverse backgrounds having expressed interest in running.
It’s prompted an angry backlash from local party members, and led to criticism from the retiring MP Julie Owen.
Instead, Labor’s national executive confirmed Charlton will be the party’s candidate in the seat on Monday night after he was the only nominee.
Guardian Australia understands all three candidates who had flagged an intention to run in the seat decided not to nominate once the preselection was referred to national executive, because his candidacy was understood to be a fait accompli.
A Rhodes scholar and former Rudd adviser, Charlton lives in a $16m home in the well-heeled suburb of Bellevue Hill in Sydney’s east, about 30km away from Parramatta. His installation in the seat has reinvigorated debate about Labor’s commitment to increasing diversity in parliament.
The earlier decision to install Keneally as its candidate in Fowler last year came at the expense of Vietnamese Australian lawyer Tu Le, who had been backed by the outgoing Labor MP Chris Hayes.
Charishma Kaliyanda, a Labor councillor in Liverpool which is covered by the Fowler electorate, said she was disappointed the party had not learned its lesson.
“It’s disappointing that after all of the words spoken and commitments made in the wake of Fowler we’ve yet again gone back to status quo or, in inverted commas, the ‘safe decision’ in held and safe seats,” she said.
“After Fowler there was this outpouring of passion where so many people contacted me who I had no idea were interested in politics to say, you know, we actually think that it is important that we have more diversity in our political system.
“It wasn’t about Kristina Keneally, [but] more about when these people are looking at the representatives making decisions on their behalf, they see people who seem very disconnected from their own lives, dreams and aspirations.
“People were very vocal about that, but it seems like in Parramatta there’s kind of a tinge of cynicism about it. It’s like, we can speak up about it, and the party will say all the right things, but they’re just going to do the same things again.”
According to the 2016 census, less than 40% of the Parramatta electorate was born in Australia. Nearly 15% of residents were born in India and 8% in China, with Lebanon, South Korea and Sri Lanka also highly represented.
Chiu, who previously released research showing Australia’s parliaments lagged far behind comparative countries such as New Zealand and the UK in electing candidates from diverse backgrounds, said both major parties had failed to prioritise the issue.
“The median length of an MP’s career is over a decade, so unless we start prioritising diversity right now we’re going to have a monocultural parliament decades into the future,” he said.
