The Greens have held events in Granville Town Hall before, but they’ve often had trouble getting any actual locals to turn up. In 2022 the party polled 9% in the seat of Parramatta and just 6.4% in Blaxland, the western Sydney electorate that covers nearby Auburn and much of Bankstown.
But the party’s calls for a permanent ceasefire in Palestine and an end to Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank are beginning to raise its profile in migrant communities that have overwhelmingly voted Labor for decades.
About 70 people turned out on a rainy Friday morning to hear from federal Greens leader Adam Bandt, NSW upper house MP David Shoebridge, and representatives of local Palestinian advocacy groups. For once, people arriving late needed to grab extra chairs from up the back.
While the audience skewed older and whiter than the crowd at El Jannah down the road — more than a few made the drive from the Northern Beaches or the Blue Mountains — it was noticeably more diverse than a typical Greens meet-up. Besides the Palestine Action Group, Palestinian Christians Australia, Western Sydney for Palestine and the General Union of Palestinian Workers, representatives and members of the Bangladeshi Community Council, the Australian Pakistani Women’s Association, South Asian social justice group the Humanism Project and the Federation of Italian Migrant Workers and Families were in the audience.
“We’re seeing a lot of people question: ‘Well, who do we vote for now?’” says Palestine Action Group organiser and Greens member Amal Naser. “Obviously the Coalition is a much worse option, but Labor has dehumanised our people and engaged in Islamophobia as well. So a lot of people are discovering or rediscovering how the Greens have supported people in western Sydney not just on Palestine but on other issues.”
Naser concedes that the party has work to do to reach migrant voters, but says the media framing of migrant communities across Sydney’s west as socially conservative is one-dimensional.
“There are older people in migrant communities who are socially conservative, like everywhere else, but we also have a lot of younger people and people who aren’t religious,” she says. “At the next election questions of justice and human rights are going to be at the top of people’s minds.”
Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi was the only politician on the speaker’s list at the School Strike for Palestine rally that marched through the Sydney CBD on Friday afternoon. Right-wing media outlets and Liberal politicians have attacked Faruqi as “anti-Semitic” for posting a photo from the rally in which a handmade protest sign depicts the Israeli flag being put into a bin. The photo has since been deleted.
Allyssa, a high school student from Cherrybrook who joined the march, has a very different view of Faruqi.
“She’s the first Muslim woman in any Australian parliament. She’s a good representative,” Allyssa says. “It shows that she really cares to come down to a protest like this that’s pretty small, not like the big ones on the weekend. It’s really good that she takes time to come and speak to us and help educate us on what’s happening.”
Last week Sukhjinder Singh, a member of the Sikh community, was elected convenor of the Blacktown Greens, one of the party’s biggest branches in Sydney’s west. The branch described Singh’s election as “[a] milestone in the development of the Greens movement in western Sydney”.
Singh, a former longtime Labor member, joined the Greens after the 2023 state election because NSW Labor supported the preselection of Sameer Pandey in the seat of Winston Hills. Pandey, who was ousted as the City of Parramatta’s first lord mayor of South Asian background just four months into his term in September, has denied claims he “begged and begged” to be elected into the job in order to meet Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during Modi’s tour of Australia in May.
“I was the Labor Glenwood branch president for 10 years, but when I objected about Sameer Pandey because of his associations with the BJP, no one listened. So I decided to oppose him in our area, and we made sure he lost,” Singh says.
Singh cites the Greens’ growing support among Sikh, Tamil, Bangladeshi and progressive South Asian voters as evidence the party can reach voters outside the inner cities.
“Traditionally Labor was the default party for migrants, but it has been changing,” he says. “Migrants are watching. Especially with this Palestine issue, people are very angry with Labor. In Blacktown, the buzz is ‘Labor is not listening. They don’t give a damn’. But whenever there is an issue, the Greens speak up. In Blacktown, wherever there is a group of voters we can reach — Muslim, Hindu, Tamil, whoever — we are going to do that.”
Disclosure: Alex McKinnon is a signatory to the open letter urging Australian media outlets to improve their reportage on Palestine.
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