Melbourne-based high school teacher Kusum Mirchandani has called Australia home for more than two decades.<\/p>\n
So when the nationwide anti-immigration March for Australia rallies were first held last year \u2013 using promotional material that singled out Indian migrants<\/a> \u2013 Mirchandani noticed a distinct shift.<\/p>\n \u201cThe migration rallies, they\u2019re targeting the Indian community because now we are the largest migrant population here. I think that\u2019s a bit unfair,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n \u201cIt does make me feel hurt and upset \u2026 we\u2019ve been here 21 years, and it\u2019s only lately that these things are coming up.\u201d<\/p>\n Since then, the immigration debate dominating the political agenda has only grown louder, with Labor, the Coalition and One Nation all unveiling their party\u2019s plans to cut the country\u2019s net overseas migration intake<\/a>.<\/p>\n The ramped-up focus on immigration, alongside the rise of One Nation, has coincided with Australia\u2019s Indian-born population last year overtaking British-born residents to become the country\u2019s largest migrant group<\/a>.<\/p>\n Ahead of the Victorian election next month, Redbridge polling shows state Labor has a marginal lead against the Liberal party among Indian Australian, which widens when voters must choose between the incumbent party and One Nation.<\/p>\n Mirchandani, who describes herself as a Labor supporter, says she is leaning towards voting for the party in November\u2019s state election, describing education and healthcare as the most important issues to her.<\/p>\n double quotation markTravel is not a luxury for a migrant. Travel is a necessity to go and see family and that\u2019s taken a bit of a beating<\/p>\n While she is undecided about who to vote for in the 2028 federal election, she has ruled out One Nation because of the party\u2019s hardline immigration policy, which targets family members of skilled migrants<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIt would make it harder for us [Indian Australians] because we have family back home, especially with ageing parents,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Satish Devarakonda, a 49-year-old technology consultant living in Melbourne\u2019s east, shrugs off the immigration debate, describing it as a short-term kneejerk reaction. As he turns to discuss the prospects of Victoria\u2019s future, he expresses pessimism.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have not recovered from the whole Covid slump. It\u2019s been six years and counting and other economies around the globe have rebounded,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cAny government that comes in has a big, long laundry list.\u201d<\/p>\n Satish Devarakonda says Victoria\u2019s economy has \u2018not recovered from the whole Covid slump\u2019. Photograph: Christopher Hopkins\/The Guardian<\/p>\n For Devarakonda, cost of living and the state of the Victorian economy are some of the dominant issues. Travelling back to India to visit his parents is a priority that has had to take a back seat in recent years.<\/p>\n This December, his family are planning to travel to India together for the first time in almost two years to attend a wedding. \u201cTravel is not a luxury for a migrant. Travel is a necessity to go and see family, and that\u2019s taken a bit of a beating,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Devarakonda, who has typically voted for the Liberal party, says he is yet to decide who he will vote for in the state election.<\/p>\n Kos Samaras, a former Labor strategist who is now a director of polling group Redbridge, says multiple surveys conducted this year show the party has a marginal lead against the Liberals ranging from about 53 to 56% on a two-party preferred basis among Victorians of Indian ancestry.<\/p>\n \u201cIndian Australians provide a base which will enable Labor to protect their safest seats,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you look at the electorates where Labor is doing better, it\u2019s doing better in electorates where there [are] significant Indian voters.\u201d<\/p>\n Labor\u2019s lead widens to 70-30 among Indian Australian voters on a two-party preferred basis against One Nation, Samaras says.<\/p>\n \u201cI suspect it\u2019s largely driven by the national debate at the moment,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Samaras points to federal Coalition senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price\u2019s controversial comments \u2013 claiming that federal Labor was promoting migration by specific ethnic groups, including Indians<\/a>, to grow its electoral support \u2013 as sending a \u201cvery strong signal\u201d to the Indian Australian community that they are \u201cnot welcome here.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we speak to them, they tell us, \u2018Yep, I\u2019m socially conservative. I\u2019m aspirational. I should be thinking of voting Liberal, but I\u2019m not doing that because they just don\u2019t like people like me\u2019,\u201d Samaras says.<\/p>\n In Victoria, the state Liberal party\u2019s relationship with the Indian Australian community has had its own fractures. Earlier this year, Dinesh Gourisetty was preselected to replace Liberal MP Moira Deeming on the party\u2019s upper house ticket for the Western Metropolitan region, but was later dumped after it emerged he wrote a court character reference for a friend who was later convicted of grooming a 15-year-old girl.<\/a> Gourisetty said he had been \u201cled to believe\u201d Patel was \u201ccontesting the charges and maintaining his innocence\u201d at the time he signed the reference letter, which he added was \u201cdrafted by a lawyer and reflected only my personal experience of him as a party member and volunteer\u201d.<\/p>\n But Samaras said the Victorian Coalition\u2019s recent announcement to expand the state\u2019s select-entry high schools in the outer suburbs was \u201cabsolutely targeted to the Indian constituency\u201d, which he describes as an over-subscriber of private healthcare who, given the opportunity, would send their children to these schools.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s a sign that they understand the challenge and understand the constituency culturally. I would argue [they] caught the Labor side flat-footed,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Ahead of the 2028 federal, Samaras says the federal Liberal party could \u201clearn a thing or two\u201d from their state counterparts.<\/p>\n \u201cThe template is clearly pivoting into the aspiration of these constituencies. The Victorian Liberals have done this through education. There are a number of levers you can pull there,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Samaras says support for One Nation among Indian Australians is a minority and \u201cnot significant\u201d.<\/p>\n The chief executive of the India Link newspaper,Pawan Luthra, says he has observed a small cohort of Indian Australians in the more recent wave of migration \u2013 those who have arrived within the past decade, who believe the country\u2019s migration intake needs to be reviewed. He says they often link this to their own struggle to find affordable housing.<\/p>\n \u201cConnecting housing problems to migration numbers seems to be working for the parties who are making that argument,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re obviously uncomfortable with the more radical policies which One Nation has.\u201d<\/p>\n Since the 2022 federal election, the major parties have heavily courted the Indian Australian vote during the campaign trail. The former Victorian premier Jacinta Allan travelled to India as her first international trip as state leader in 2024.<\/p>\n India\u2019s prime minister, Narendra Modi, visited Melbourne \u2013 home to more Indian Australians than any other capital city <\/a>\u2013 in July after more than a decade, with about 25,000 diaspora members flocking to the stadium rally<\/a>. Anthony Albanese and the then premier Allan joined Modi \u2013 who entered the stadium to feverish chants \u2013 to give speeches.<\/p>\n In recent weeks, the premier, Ben Carroll, and the opposition leader, Jess Wilson, spoke at the state\u2019s annual Diwali celebration, pitching directly to voters.<\/p>\n Luthra says all political parties usually attend Indian Australian functions and deliver platitudes but fail to promote messages about the value Indian migrants have added to Australia beyond these events.<\/p>\n \u201cThey say how wonderful you are. We will back you. We think you\u2019re great migrants. So all the right noises are made, but we know that,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cThe feedback from the community is that the politicians need to go out and say it a little bit more loudly and clearly, the value of migration and why it\u2019s important.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Melbourne-based high school teacher Kusum Mirchandani has called Australia home for more than two decades. So when the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":932066,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-932065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/932065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=932065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/932065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/932066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=932065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=932065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=932065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}