CAMERON MILNER: Labor’s Pro-Palestine stance is poison among powerful diaspora

Albanese Labor’s embrace of Hamas at the UN and turning a blind eye to Islamic extremism in Australia hasn’t just deeply offended Jewish Australians, but it’s put in play the huge Indian Australian community ahead of the next Federal election.

Albanese’s reluctance in calling out Islamic extremism here in Australia so he doesn’t offend mullahs in Western Sydney has triggered far more visceral concern within the much bigger Indian Australian community.

India has suffered terrorist attacks for more than 30 years from Pakistani-backed Islamic extremist group Lashkar-e-Taiba.

The group was responsible for attacks in the early 2000s that culminated in eight separate bombings in 2008 in Mumbai known as the 26/11 attacks. Muslim extremists targeted civilians in hotels, hospitals and even a school.

These attacks came against the backdrop of multi-decade tensions between Pakistan and India over borders, especially in the Kashmir. It shouldn’t be forgotten that Osama Bin Laden spent his last moments alive in a villa in Pakistan within plain sight of a Pakistani military facility.

In more recent years Bangladesh on India’s east has seen jihadi groups with direct links with al-Qa’ida, like JMB, plan attacks on India including the bombing of a Buddhist temple in Bihir State.

For many Indians, living with the threat of Islamic terrorism is real and a lived experience of extended family members both in Australia and back in India.

So, when this community sees Albanese and his minister Tony Burke responding to local jihadis and hate preachers with anything other than condemnation, they rightly ask the question if Labor is still the party for them.

As the PM was posing at Kirribilli House with Virat Kohli and hosting the Indian cricket team on the shores of Sydney Harbour, Labor operatives were in overdrive sending out social media posts.

No doubt Albanese was also taking tips from Kohli on how to run out members of his own team while stubbornly making the wrong calls and staying at the crease.

There is now widespread concern within Labor that the Indian Australian voting community is hugely in play at the coming Federal election.

The UK experience is telling, as the Indian diaspora there has moved from being Labour voters a generation ago to being heavily in play, with many now voting Conservative. This voting dynamic won’t be lost on Peter Dutton or Liberal strategists.

The Australian Indian community is also heavily represented by those with Hindu and Sikh religious connections while those identifying as Muslims are significantly fewer than back in India.

Indian community members in Australia are most often ambitious, multilingual and highly educated. Their youth are studying, playing cricket in local parks or working hard.

The Indian Aussie community is well over a million people spread across critical marginal seats. By contrast, Lebanese Muslims are no more than about 120,000 nationally, with many enclaved in Western Sydney.

Indian-born migrants are the second largest community of new Australians, well ahead of China and behind only England, according to the Census. It’s also the fastest growing of any in Australia.

Why is this significant? Because this community resides in critical marginal seats in the battleground states of NSW and Victoria.

In Andrew Charlton’s electorate of Parramatta, the Indian community is 12 per cent compared to the Australia-wide average of just under 4 per cent.

In Victoria, critical marginal seats such as Hawke, represented by a bouffant-wearing Sam Rae, hosts some of the largest emerging Indian Australian communities in his new suburbs.

While Rae has been off playing factional games at national executive the very smart and talented Andrew Charlton has been courting the Indian community in his electorate.

In Melbourne’s eastern seats such as La Trobe and Bruce — held by Labor’s Julian Hill — have large Indian-born communities. Hill’s decision to use taxpayer funds to fund grants for Muslim and Palestinian community organisation in August is looking like an act of electoral self-harm.

While much more was made of Labor’s play for the Chinese Australian community in the 2022 election, using Scott Morrison’s perceived anti-China sentiment to win seats such as Chisolm, the Indian Aussie community will have much greater impact in the 2025 Federal election.

Both Albanese and Morrison campaigned to the Indian community in 2022. The critical difference this time around has been Albanese’s feeble response to Islamic extremism.

This is made worse by the selfish acts of electoral preservation by the likes of Tony Burke and a lack of support for Israel by Foreign Minister Penny Wong.

Labor has made a massive strategic error by panicking over Muslim Voice campaigns in a couple of Western Sydney seats and missing the message sent to the Indian Aussie community as a consequence.

Labor strategists are having a case of street food remorse and are privately suffering their own version of Delhi belly as the polling comes in and shows previously safe seats in NSW and Victoria now in play for the Liberals.

Sure, cost of living is crippling the Labor vote. Albanese’s self-serving acts of graft and personal benefit haven’t helped either.

But its pandering to Muslim extremists rather than condemning their acts as un-Australian that has put the proudly Australian community of Indian-Aussies now firmly in play.

Cameron Milner is a former Queensland Labor state secretary