Reproduced below are parts of the monthly (May 2025) update with news and original analysis on Asia and Australia-Asia relations from the Asia Society, Australia, emailed each month to subscribers.
Speaking Chinese, Asian MPs Rise, and Team Asia are mainly analysis of the recent Australian Federal election 2025, in which the Australian Labor Party (ALP) led by PM Anthony Albanese won.
There are now 6 MPs of Chinese background and 8 from South Asian background although the ethnic Chinese community is older & more populous.
The content below is published with the permission of the Asia Society, Australia. No part of the content has been edited. You can follow Asia Society, Australia at Linkedin.
SPEAKING CHINESE
After complicated debates about distinguishing between the People’s Republic of China and the Chinese people and balancing acts over Australia’s economic and security partners, Chinese Australians appear to have spoken loud and clear at the election.
Going into the 2019 election, the Liberal-National Party coalition held seven of the 10 seats (all in Melbourne and Sydney) with the most Chinese heritage residents. After this month’s election that is down to two – Berowra and possibly Bradfield in northern Sydney. The average primary vote swing to Labor in the 10 seats which have at least 17 per cent Chinese ancestry residents was 4.7 five per cent or more than twice the national average.
There are about 1.4 million Australians with Chinese heritage, including about one million born abroad of which more than half were born in mainland China. But not all are eligible to vote.
The election saw former opposition leader Peter Dutton oscillating between talking up the value of the local ethnic Chinese communities and warning about China being the biggest threat to Australia. But the then Opposition election eve warnings about Chinese government sponsored operatives campaigning for some non-Liberal candidates is seen as a key tipping point for ethnic Chinese voters.
Labor appears to have been rewarded by ethnic Chinese voters for its gradualist policy of cooperating with China where it can and disagreeing where it must, while the Coalition has lost the confidence of a growing part of the population for more mixed messages about the Chinese government and the local ethnic Chinese community.
- Historian John Fitzgerald says at The Strategist the election lesson for politicians was to be careful what they say about Chinese Australians rather than the Chinese government.
ASIAN MPs RISE
The Liberal Party used to have a strong claim on Chinese voters underlined by how the first Chinese-Australian elected to any Parliament was Hong Kong-born Helen Sham-Ho as a Liberal in the NSW Parliament in 1988. Mainland born Tsebin Tchen was the first ethnic Chinese person to serve in the Federal Parliament as a Victorian Liberal senator in 1998.
But Labor will now have six MPs with some Chinese ancestry in its federal ranks after the election, led by Foreign Minister Penny Wong who was the only Chinese background Labor MP in 2019.
They are pre-existing MPs Sally Sitou (Reid, NSW) and Sam Lim (Tangney, WA) along with the newly elected MPs Zhi Soon (Banks, NSW); Julie-Ann Campbell (Moreton, Queensland); and Gabriel Ng (Menzies, Victoria).
Labor now also has four federal MPs of south Asian descent in incumbents Cassandra Fernando (Holt, Victoria) from Sri Lanka; Zanetta Mascarenhas (Swan, WA) from India; Varun Ghosh (WA Senator) from India; and newcomer Ash Ambihaipahar (Barton NSW) from Sri Lanka.
The conservative parties have two MPs of Indian background in NSW Senator Dave Sharma and newly elected Leon Rebello (McPherson, Qld). The Greens have a Pakistan background Senator in Mehreen Faruqi and former Labor Senator turned Independent Fatima Payman is from Afghanistan.
So, on balance there are now six MPs of Chinese background and eight from a South Asian background although the ethnic Chinese community is still older and more populous than the South Asian community, which has been growing faster in recent years.
Incumbent Independent Vietnamese MP Dai Le (Fowler, NSW) was returned to Parliament with a small increase in support after an unusual diaspora election battle with Labor’s fellow Vietnamese candidate Tu Le. Tu Le was pushed aside in 2022 in favour of former NSW Labor Premier Kristina Kenneally who went on to lose to Dai Le.
However, most of Labor’s ethnic Chinese MPs can also be seen as Southeast Asian background MPs depending on how they are classified. Wong hails from Malaysia; Sitou’s parents were from Laos; Lim and Soon are from Malaysia; and Ng is of Singaporean heritage.
This is now a record number of Federal MPs from an Asian background and possibly the largest number ever from a non-Anglo background. However, they still only account for about seven per cent of the Federal Parliament compared with about 17 percent of the population.
TEAM ASIA
The key ministers dealing with Asian issues are largely unchanged in the new Albanese government with Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Trade and Tourism Minister Don Farrell remaining in their jobs. Richard Marles, who has a long-standing interest in the Pacific, remains Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister.
But the more junior ministers and assistant ministers have been shuffled significantly perhaps adding slightly more heft to the international relations team.
Former minister for defence industry, Pacific affairs and international development Pat Conroy has been reappointed to the former two jobs but the international development role has been given to Anne Aly, the former early childhood development and youth minister. Aly, an Egyptian born former academic from Western Australia, has also been appointed to the Cabinet where she will be the government’s most senior Muslim. However, she will also be the small business and multicultural affairs minister, which is likely to mean Conroy will retain considerable influence over Pacific aid matters.
This is the first time that the aid and Pacific responsibilities have been separated since 2007. It may suggest Conroy had too much to do given the government’s defence industry building challenges. Aly will be confronted with a new dilemma of whether Australia’s reduced aid budget is mostly all about the Pacific or whether it has a broader international relations role.
Matt Thistlewaite, a former NSW Labor state secretary, has been appointed assistant Minister to both Wong and Farrell which can be seen as another move towards integrating international relations policy under the government’s statecraft rubric. He was previously an assistant minister for immigration.
Meanwhile Nita Green, a former Queensland union lawyer, has been made the assistant minister to both the tourism and Pacific island affairs ministers once again potentially joining up these international relations positions.
Tim Watts, the former assistant foreign minister who filled in for Wong in some more distant parts of the world including Africa, has become the main loser from this reshuffle and will now serve as the special envoy for Indian Ocean affairs.
Wong used her first speech in her second term as foreign minister in Fiji to talk up the government’s commitment to ending the cultural wars over climate change suggesting that remains a point of tension in relations with Pacific countries.
Source – Asia Society Australia – Briefing MONTHLY #84 | May 2025.
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