A new policy paper published by a Chinese-Australian think tank has argued for greater measures to ensure greater racial diversity in parliament.
Australian political parties should introduce a target for the number of non-white candidates promoted in winnable seats to improve the lack of racial diversity in Parliament, a new policy paper has argued.
Author of the report, Per Capita think tank research fellow Osmond Chiu, told SBS News one of the biggest barriers to increasing diversity in politics was a lack of data tracking the problem.“Political parties broadly don’t collect information on the cultural diversity of their parties,” he said. “We are at a point where we don’t even have the data to say how underrepresented we are.”
But approximately 24 per cent of Australia’s population come from a non-European background, including Indigenous Australians who account for about three per cent, according to the Australian Human Rights Commission’s Leading the Change report. Chinese-Australian writer and former deputy mayor of the City of Monash, Jieh-Yung Lo, agreed there was a problem with “tokenism” in Australian politics, where candidates from CALD backgrounds were allowed to run, but only in the upper house or seats where the party didn’t have a likelihood of winning.“For so long, for so many years Asian-Australians and Chinese-Australians have been treated as walking ATMs and cash cows for fundraising purposes,” he said.
“Unless you see people that look like you in positions of power and influence, we can never brush away those stereotypes and differences,” he said. “We’re a multicultural country with mono-cultural institutions.”
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