Gurmesh Singh becomes first Sikh to lead major party, chosen as NSW Nationals leader, Dugald Saunders resigns

The Nationals, often stereotyped as a party of old white men, has become the first major Australian political party to have a Sikh leader.

Gurmesh Singh was elected unopposed as NSW Nationals leader on Tuesday morning, a day after former ABC broadcaster Dugald Saunders resigned citing family reasons.

The fourth-generation Australian farmer, whose great-grandfather moved from India 130 years ago, declared his ethnicity was irrelevant.

“I never see myself as anything but Aussie,” Mr Singh said on Tuesday.

In September, he told Parliament the main racism he experienced was from his left-wing political opponents who had called him the party’s “useful idiot of colour”.

He told The Nightly at the time he was sick of his Punjabi ethnicity and Sikh faith being unduly emphasised.

“How many more generations does it have to be before I stop being an Indian-Australian and just an Australian? I think that’s the question we all have to answer,” he said.

History making

He is the first leader of Asian ethnicity since the Nationals were formed in NSW in 1919, initially as the Progressive and then Country Party.

His elevation makes him one of the few Sikh leaders outside of India to lead a political party, putting him in the same league as Jagmeet Singh, the former head of Canada’s left-leaning New Democratic Party who is of Punjabi and Sikh descent.

Nikki Haley, also of Punjabi Sikh ethnicity, was the US ambassador to the United Nations and a former governor of South Carolina who last year ran against US President Donald Trump in the Republican primaries.

Nationals MPs chose Gurmesh Singh as leader after former State leader and police minister Paul Toole declined to contest the vacant leadership. Kevin Anderson, the member for Tamworth, was elected as deputy leader, also unopposed.

Federal Nationals MP Kevin Hogan, whose Page electorate overlaps with Mr Gurmesh’s State seat, said his elevation to NSW Nationals leader was significant.

“We’re a diverse party and Gurmesh being the first Sikh leader of a political party in Australia says a lot about him as an individual and a lot about us as a party,” he told The Nightly.

His new era of leadership has started just eight days after his Nationals partyroom voted to repeal net zero, in keeping with their Federal counterparts.

This leaves a division with the NSW Liberal Party, which on Tuesday voted to retain that climate policy despite the Federal Liberal wing this week ditching it.

“We’ve got to work constructively with our Coalition partners because we believe we are better placed to form government,” Mr Singh said.

The Nationals have also changed leaders in the same week that former ABC and Nine TV reporter Kellie Sloane is expected to challenge former barrister Mark Speakman, a fellow moderate, for the NSW Liberal Party leadership.

Mr Singh joined the Nationals shortly before being elected to Parliament in 2019 as the member for Coffs Harbour on the State’s mid-north coast.

In his electorate, people of Indian ethnicity make up 1.7 per cent of the population, which is well below the State and Federal average of 2.6 per cent, Census figures show.

Regional areas have a higher proportion of older and Australian-born Anglo-Celtic residents than Australia’s more multiracial capital cities.

Minority leaders

His elevation as Nationals leader, less than 18 months after becoming deputy, means the Coalition’s alternative deputy premier and Labor Deputy Premier Prue Car both have Indian ethnicity.

Gurmesh Singh’s great-grandfather Bella Singh came to Australia in 1895, with the last three generations of the family settling in the Coffs Coast area growing bananas and later blueberries and macadamia nuts.

His predecessor, Mr Saunders, is one-sixteenth Indian.

Few Australians of Asian ethnicity have led a major political party with Korean-born Elizabeth Lee leading the ACT Liberals from 2020 until losing last year’s elections.

Samantha Ratnam, who was born in the UK and raised in Sri Lanka, led the Victorian Greens from 2017 to 2024.

Aboriginal Australians have led political parties in the Northern Territory with Adam Giles serving as Country Liberals chief minister from 2013 to 2016, and Selena Uibo leading the Labor opposition since the party’s heavy electoral defeat last year.

While Australian politics has long been dominated by Anglo surnames, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Queensland Premier David Crisafulli and Northern Territory Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro have Italian ethnicity.

The old Country Party gave Australia its first premier with a Danish surname, Joh Bjelke-Petersen who ruled Queensland for 19 years until 1987.