Politics

Why Diversity Seems Easier Said Than Done in Politics – The New York Times

Published

3 years ago

October 1, 2021

Harry Miller

Minority members say they need to work twice as hard in a political system with “two sets of rules.”

The Australia Letter is a weekly newsletter from our Australia bureau. Sign up to get it by email.

Recently, I’ve been reporting on the controversy over Labor’s pick to represent Fowler, where Tu Le, a young lawyer and the daughter of Vietnamese migrants, was passed over, with the party instead choosing Kristina Keneally, a party leader and white woman. I’ve been using it as a starting point to examine why Australia’s Parliament lags behind other English-speaking countries when it comes to cultural diversity.

I’ve talked to people from across the political spectrum, including many young people of color within the Labor Party who have led the debate. For them, the controversy is just the latest example of the dissonance between a country that claims to be the most successful nation when it comes to multiculturalism and a governing elite that is reluctant to address diversity at the cost of political convenience.

What I wasn’t able to go into much in my article (coming soon) was the details that party members shared about the barriers they faced on every rung of the political ladder. It all added up to a picture of a two-tiered political system that sees people of color as fine community representatives or liaisons but not cut out for higher leadership positions, and treats immigrant communities as expandable membership bases or voting blocs.

A few caveats: they had differing views about the Fowler preselection. They had nothing against Kristina Keneally and her qualifications for office. They stressed that underrepresentation is a problem across all parties, not unique to Labor — it’s just particularly disappointing when the party that purports to champion diversity doesn’t make good on its promise.

Ethnically diverse members regularly have their worth tied to their communities, said Joseph Haweil, 30, mayor of Hume City in Melbourne. “Very often there’s a feeling if you’re someone from a multicultural background and you walk into a branch meeting without already having signed up five or 10 people from your community, you’re a nobody.”

Migrant communities are courted for fund-raising and to build a base for internal power struggles, but afforded little genuine engagement, said Tu Le. “When you go to a Cabramatta branch meeting, half the people there have no idea what you’re talking about, they’re just there because someone signed them up,” she said. “How parties engage with local communities — it’s one-sided, it’s not participatory.”

There’s a huge pool of untapped talent within the Labor party, she added, that gets overlooked because “we’re just seen or categorized in certain ways that don’t let people see our full potential.”

“There’s two different set of rules,” said Kun Huang, 30, a Cumberland councilor in Sydney. A person of color needs to simultaneously demonstrate that “you can bring along your community” and that they have appeal to those outside their own ethnicity, he said, but if you’re not a minority, “you just need to know the right set of people and you’re in.”

The system privileges party insiders who spend their time around other party members, shoring up support for internal preselections and ballots, said Charishma Kaliyanda, 33, a Liverpool councilor in Sydney. If you’re busy engaging with or volunteering for cultural or community organizations, “you have less time to do the organizational work that you need to do to build up that support.”

“There’s a really disjointed relationship between the skills you may have being from a different cultural background or being a community advocate, and how they’re valued in a political sense,” she added.

The other question I’ve been asking is: what needs to change?

It seems that the first step is acknowledging the issue. In N.S.W., party members are putting forward a platform change at the next state Labor conference to formally recognize the underrepresentation of racial minorities in leadership positions, including Parliament, and commit to improving representation in the party.

Party members also said change needs to happen at every level — from how members are recruited, to who is given staff positions, to who gets preselected.

“I don’t want to see a situation where the party just randomly picks, say, a Chinese Australian so that it fulfills the diversity image,” said Mr. Huang. “I want the party to select good local candidates who have been contributing to the party and who have been active.”

If there aren’t candidates who fulfill both those criteria, he added, “our job is to recruit more culturally diverse members into the party.”

Tim Soutphommasane, Australia’s former racial discrimination commissioner, theorized that we may be starting to see two different understandings of “multiculturalism.” There’s the one celebrated by the majority of the political class that “would see things as pretty good the way they are and would understand any underrepresentation as an issue that’d be fixed with time,” he said.

Then, there’s a more political form that sees underrepresentation as a matter of urgency and asks: “If we really are the most successful multicultural country in the world, why does the leadership of our society look much like it did during the era of White Australia?”

“The lesson here should be clear,” he added. “Multicultural voices will need to be more assertive. Power is rarely shared or gifted. It needs to be contested and won. But that’s not easy, especially when there is a strong social pressure for our multiculturalism to be nice, polite, compliant — anything basically but disruptive.”

My article about why Australia’s halls of power don’t look like our population will be out in the next few days.

In the meantime, here are our stories of the week:

Australia and New Zealand

Brett Phibbs/Associated Press

After Knife Attack, New Zealand Criminalizes Terror Plotting. A law passed Thursday makes planning a terrorist attack a crime, addressing a legal loophole weeks after an ISIS sympathizer stabbed people at a supermarket.
Daintree Forest in Australia Is Returned to Indigenous Owners. The rainforest is among nearly 400,000 acres of land in northeast Australia that were handed back on Wednesday to Aboriginal people who have lived in the region for thousands of years.
The World’s Deadliest Bird Was Raised by People 18,000 Years Ago. Researchers studying ancient cassowary egg shells in New Guinea found signs that the sharp-taloned bird was being domesticated.
Sydney plans to start leaving its lockdown in October. A phased reopening of Australia’s largest city is tied to reaching a series of milestones in vaccination rates.
Australia Took On China. Did It Get It Right? The country is wrestling with the political and economic consequences of its sharp turn in policy and tone — including an erosion of tolerance.
That Comment Someone Left on Facebook? It Can Get You Sued. Australia’s top court has said media companies can be held liable for replies to their posts, prompting some to step back from the platform.

Around the Times

Jiji Press/Agence France-Presse, via Getty Images

How Asia, Once a Vaccination Laggard, Is Revving Up Inoculations. Several countries are now on track to surpass the United States in fully vaccinating their populations, lifting hopes of a more permanent return to normality.
She Bought Her Dream Home. Then a ‘Sovereign Citizen’ Changed the Locks. A New Jersey woman was preyed upon by a fast-growing extremist group that claims its members are sovereign Moors, not bound by U.S. laws.
#DoNotTouchMyClothes: Afghan Women Protest Taliban Restrictions on Rights. A social media campaign within the Afghan diaspora celebrates pre-Taliban dress traditions, and mourns the loss of that freedom.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Daniel Craig. At long last, the star of the James Bond franchise bids farewell to 007 with “No Time to Die” (and learns for the first time about his life as an internet meme).

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Politics

Anita Anand sworn in as transport minister after Pablo Rodriguez resigns

Published

16 hours ago

September 19, 2024

Anne Joseph

OTTAWA – Treasury Board President Anita Anand has been sworn in as federal transport minister at a ceremony at Rideau Hall, taking over a portfolio left vacant after Pablo Rodriguez resigned from cabinet and the Liberal caucus on Thursday.

Anand thanked Rodriguez for his contributions to the government and the country, saying she’s grateful for his guidance and friendship.

She sidestepped a question about the message it sends to have him leave the federal Liberal fold.

“That is a decision that he made independently, and I wish him well,” she said.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was not present for the swearing-in ceremony, nor were any other members of the Liberal government.

The shakeup in cabinet comes just days after the Liberals lost a key seat in a Montreal byelection to the Bloc Québécois and amid renewed calls for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to step down and make way for a new leader.

Anand said she is not actively seeking leadership of the party, saying she is focused on her roles as minister and as MP.

“My view is that we are a team, and we are a team that has to keep delivering for our country,” she said.

The minority Liberal government is in a more challenging position in the House of Commons after the NDP ended a supply-and-confidence deal that provided parliamentary stability for more than two years.

Non-confidence votes are guaranteed to come from the Opposition Conservatives, who are eager to bring the government down.

On Thursday morning, Rodriguez made a symbolic walk over the Alexandra Bridge from Parliament Hill to Gatineau, Que., where he formally announced his plans to run for the Quebec Liberal party leadership.

He said he will now sit as an Independent member of Parliament, which will allow him to focus on his own priorities.

“I was defending the priorities of the government, and I did it in a very loyal way,” he said.

“It’s normal and it’s what I had to do. But now it’s more about my vision, the vision of the team that I’m building.”

Rodriguez said he will stay on as an MP until the Quebec Liberal leadership campaign officially launches in January.

He said that will “avoid a costly byelection a few weeks, or months, before a general election.”

The next federal election must be held by October 2025.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said he will try to topple the government sooner than that, beginning with a non-confidence motion that is set to be debated Sept. 24 and voted on Sept. 25.

Poilievre has called on the NDP and the Bloc Québécois to support him, but both Jagmeet Singh and Yves-François Blanchet have said they will not support the Conservatives.

Rodriguez said he doesn’t want a federal election right away and will vote against the non-confidence motion.

As for how he would vote on other matters before the House of Commons, “it would depend on the votes.”

Public Services and Procurement Minister Jean-Yves Duclos will become the government’s new Quebec lieutenant, a non-cabinet role Rodriguez held since 2019.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.

— With files from Nojoud Al Mallees and Dylan Robertson

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Politics

Political parties cool to idea of new federal regulations for nomination contests

Published

16 hours ago

September 19, 2024

Anne Joseph

OTTAWA – Several federal political parties are expressing reservations about the prospect of fresh regulations to prevent foreign meddlers from tainting their candidate nomination processes.

Elections Canada has suggested possible changes to safeguard nominations, including barring non-citizens from helping choose candidates, requiring parties to publish contest rules and explicitly outlawing behaviour such as voting more than once.

However, representatives of the Bloc Québécois, Green Party and NDP have told a federal commission of inquiry into foreign interference that such changes may be unwelcome, difficult to implement or counterproductive.

The Canada Elections Act currently provides for limited regulation of federal nomination races and contestants.

For instance, only contestants who accept $1,000 in contributions or incur $1,000 in expenses have to file a financial return. In addition, the act does not include specific obligations concerning candidacy, voting, counting or results reporting other than the identity of the successful nominee.

A report released in June by the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians expressed concern about how easily foreign actors can take advantage of loopholes and vulnerabilities to support preferred candidates.

Lucy Watson, national director of the NDP, told the inquiry Thursday she had concerns about the way in which new legislation would interact with the internal decision-making of the party.

“We are very proud of the fact that our members play such a significant role in shaping the internal policies and procedures and infrastructure of the party, and I would not want to see that lost,” she said.

“There are guidelines, there are best practices that we would welcome, but if we were to talk about legal requirements and legislation, that’s something I would have to take away and put further thought into, and have discussions with folks who are integral to the party’s governance.”

In an August interview with the commission of inquiry, Bloc Québécois executive director Mathieu Desquilbet said the party would be opposed to any external body monitoring nomination and leadership contest rules.

A summary tabled Thursday says Desquilbet expressed doubts about the appropriateness of requiring nomination candidates to file a full financial report with Elections Canada, saying the agency’s existing regulatory framework and the Bloc’s internal rules on the matter are sufficient.

Green Party representatives Jon Irwin and Robin Marty told the inquiry in an August interview it would not be realistic for an external body, like Elections Canada, to administer nomination or leadership contests as the resources required would exceed the federal agency’s capacity.

A summary of the interview says Irwin and Marty “also did not believe that rules violations could effectively be investigated by an external body like the Office of the Commissioner of Canada Elections.”

“The types of complaints that get raised during nomination contests can be highly personal, politically driven, and could overwhelm an external body.”

Marty, national campaign director for the party, told the inquiry Thursday that more reporting requirements would also place an administrative burden on volunteers and riding workers.

In addition, he said that disclosing the vote tally of a nomination contest could actually help foreign meddlers by flagging the precise number of ballots needed for a candidate to be chosen.

Irwin, interim executive director of the Greens, said the ideal tactic for a foreign country would be working to get someone in a “position of power” within a Canadian political party.

He said “the bad guys are always a step ahead” when it comes to meddling in the Canadian political process.

In May, David Vigneault, director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service at the time, said it was very clear from the design of popular social media app TikTok that data gleaned from its users is available to the Chinese government.

A December 2022 CSIS memo tabled at the inquiry Thursday said TikTok “has the potential to be exploited” by Beijing to “bolster its influence and power overseas, including in Canada.”

Asked about the app, Marty told the inquiry the Greens would benefit from more “direction and guidance,” given the party’s lack of resources to address such things.

Representatives of the Liberal and Conservative parties are slated to appear at the inquiry Friday, while chief electoral officer Stéphane Perrault is to testify at a later date.

After her party representatives appeared Thursday, Green Leader Elizabeth May told reporters it was important for all party leaders to work together to come up with acceptable rules.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.

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Politics

New Brunswick election candidate profile: Green Party Leader David Coon

Published

19 hours ago

September 19, 2024

Anne Joseph

FREDERICTON – A look at David Coon, leader of the Green Party of New Brunswick:

Born: Oct. 28, 1956.

Early years: Born in Toronto and raised in Montreal, he spent about three decades as an environmental advocate.

Education: A trained biologist, he graduated with a bachelor of science from McGill University in Montreal in 1978.

Family: He and his wife Janice Harvey have two daughters, Caroline and Laura.

Before politics: Worked as an environmental educator, organizer, activist and manager for 33 years, mainly with the Conservation Council of New Brunswick.

Politics: Joined the Green Party of Canada in May 2006 and was elected leader of the New Brunswick Green Party in September 2012. Won a seat in the legislature in 2014 — a first for the province’s Greens.

Quote: “It was despicable. He’s clearly decided to take the low road in this campaign, to adopt some Trump-lite fearmongering.” — David Coon on Sept. 12, 2024, reacting to Blaine Higgs’s claim that the federal government had decided to send 4,600 asylum seekers to New Brunswick.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.

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