It’s time again for Victorians in 79 LGAs to elect representatives, and it’s already shaping up to be a changeabout.
Except for those within the Moira Shire Council area (who were sacked due to the murder of a council worker, but that’s another story!), over the next four weeks, Victorians will head to the mailbox instead of the polling station, to enter a postal vote before Friday October 25, making campaigning more of a drip-feed than a gush towards the finish line.
Ever the high-achievers, South Asians are turning out in a big way as candidates and following the trend of running independent which we saw at the NSW LGA elections – of the 181 South Asian candidates this year, a staggering 168 are running as independents. But what’s most interesting is how absolutely the major parties have been spurned; most party endorsed South Asian candidates are running under the Victorian Greens and Victorian Socialists, with a measly four ALP endorsed South Asians across just Merri-bek and Whittlesea. Even Darebin’s perennial Greens candidate Alex Bhathal is flying solo this year.
The rise of the teals tracks with the last Victorian LGA elections in 2020, where 445 seats went to Independents and the majors got about 60 seats each. But this time around, Labor and Liberal seem to have little to no presence in most metropolitan areas – notwithstanding the City of Melbourne’s Leadership Team elections, that’s worth an article on its own. Perhaps a combination of multiple IBAC hearings, pandemic era Melbourne, and ScoMo’s wipeout have left a cumulative bad taste which still lingers?
Some South Asian independent candidates have left their party following disagreements, like Monash’s Angelica De Silva who left earlier this year due to the Greens’ ‘surveillance culture’, and several are affiliated with a major party, but not endorsed. The startling majority are first-time candidates, professionals and parents active in their communities who are embracing Victorian LGA elections as another chance to step up.
As expected, the largest clusters of South Asian candidates are in migrant heartlands in the Southeast and West, and developing suburbs in the North – Hume, Wyndham, Casey, Whittlesea, Mitchell Shire and Melton. This reflects the continued sprawl of metropolitan Melbourne, where eager migrants are settling into new houses springing up faster than you can shake a ballot paper.
In these areas, it’s normal to see five or six South Asian candidates running in each ward (Wyndham’s Bemin ward has eight South Asian candidates!); most are male and middle aged, homeowners, dads and first-generation immigrants advocating for much needed infrastructure in rapidly growing communities. A sizable portion of elderly South Asian are also running, including prominent seniors advocate Shashi Kochhar OAM, as well a strong contingent of working mothers.
With the 2021 dismissal of the Casey and Whittlesea Councils due to major dysfunction, it’s clear there’s a ravenous appetite for change in the outer suburbs where existing public services obviously aren’t meeting demand. But with 39 councils affected by changes from multi-member to single member wards and the number of available spots thus reduced, time will tell if these first-time candidates can distinguish themselves enough to clinch the vacancy.
South Asians, or even multicultural candidates are yet to make a dent in agriculture heavy regions like Swan Hill and Mildura (the 2021 Census says 78% of Mildura’s population is Australian-born), or the tourism hotspots and mining plains of Latrobe, East Gippsland and Wellington Shire (again, 81.3% Australian-born according to 2021 Census).
However, it’s promising to see South Asians candidates popping up in regional centres, a handful visible in wards across Greater Bendigo, Ballarat, Shepparton and even Ararat. In the North, South Asians have spilled out to adjoining Mitchell Shire and even wealthy Stonnington in the South has a lone Choudhury and a Balasingham.
In general, true to population distribution, South Asian candidates have formed relatively contained pockets – Melton is brimming with melanin but travel a bit further west towards neighbouring Moorabool Shire and it’s back to pale and male. The same happens when you travel South to Casey’s neighbours, Frankston and Mornington Peninsula shire. With migrant populations burgeoning and housing prices skyrocketing, it remains to be seen whether this clustering trend can be bucked at a Victorian LGA election, and if one day we’ll see a Singh or a Reddy contending for Bayside, or even out in Moira Shire (once the whole corruption thing clears up for them, of course!)
