How distant disputes are unsettling minorities Down Under

On a Sunday afternoon in January, Mr Henry Luo, a 42-year-old first-generation immigrant from China, was strolling through Sydney’s “second Chinatown” in the suburb of Burwood when he stopped to point out the red clock tower of a building across the street.

The building was a former post office that opened more than 130 years ago, when the suburb was home to about 7,000 mostly Anglo-Australian residents. Today, the iconic structure houses a Lanzhou noodle shop in a bustling precinct filled with Asian eateries and stores, far from Australia’s original Chinatown in central Sydney.

Burwood now has 15,942 residents, of whom 49.8 per cent have Chinese ancestry, while 29.9 per cent were born in China.

For Mr Luo, the president of Reid Business Community, a local business network, the tower is a symbol of how much the area has changed. And it is a monument to the contribution of the growing Chinese-Australian community to the area’s cultural and culinary life.

“The ‘second Chinatown’ here attracts people from across Sydney and is a source of pride for the local Chinese community,” Mr Luo said.

Burwood’s evolution represents the growing influence of migrant communities as they grow and thrive in Australia’s welcoming sunlight.

But they have also found themselves vulnerable in the last few years to the external forces of geopolitics far from the nation’s shores, which have sometimes exposed them to suspicion and discrimination.

Now these tensions have caused a political awakening in some local communities, which have begun to organise themselves and dip into politics to ensure their voices and needs are heard. As Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s ruling Labor Party prepares for a federal election due to be held by May, geopolitics are not just challenging Australia’s social cohesion but redrawing the nation’s political map.

Mr Luo said he noticed a change in their community as ties between China and Australia became increasingly strained by trade tensions, spying allegations and especially the passing of foreign interference laws in 2018.

In 2020, as ties worsened, China imposed trade sanctions on Australia. These ended recently as relations thawed.

By then, however, on the streets of Burwood and around the country, the political stand-offs left some members of the Chinese-Australian community questioning whether they were as secure and accepted as they had long believed.

Many believed the interference laws placed them under suspicion, especially as the former Liberal-National Coalition government heightened its rhetoric and warned that tensions with Beijing could spill into war if, say, China invaded Taiwan. The loyalty of three Chinese-Australians was challenged by a Coalition MP who asked them to condemn the Communist Party of China at a Senate committee hearing in 2020.

“There has been a big impact since 2018 and 2019,” Mr Luo said. “Because of the geopolitical tensions, quite a few mainstream media outlets in Australia always like to have more negative reports (on) China or the Chinese community.”

The changing face of Burwood reflects demographic shifts reshaping the nation.

Huge waves of immigrants, particularly from India and China, have fuelled a surge in the population in recent years. As at the last Australian census in 2021, 1.4 million Australians – or 5.5 per cent of the population – had Chinese ancestry and 784,000 – or 3.1 per cent – had Indian ancestry.

In the year to June 30, 2024, Australia received about 88,000 arrivals from India, which has been the largest source of immigrants since 2019. During that period, 76,000 people came from China, the second-largest source. Other major sources include the Philippines and the United Kingdom.

These new arrivals tend to move to large cities such as Sydney and Melbourne and often live in concentrated pockets.

In the Sydney area of Hurstville, for instance, more than 47 per cent of residents have Chinese ancestry, and 28.6 per cent were born in China, more than the 28.1 per cent who were born in Australia.

For the most part, Australia’s multicultural experience has been rated as positive by long-term residents and new arrivals. The federal government proclaims on its website that Australia is “a majority migrant nation and one of the most successful and cohesive multicultural societies in the world”.

But these communities are unable to be completely insulated from global events, and ties can become frayed, both within and between communities.

Pockets of Sydney have high concentration of migrant communities

While Australia is a migrant nation that has long prided itself on its largely trouble-free sense of social cohesion, a series of interviews by The Straits Times with members and leaders of local communities suggest that the nation’s famed multiculturalism has come under strain in recent years as a result of seemingly distant disputes.

Developments such as the rivalry between the United States, Australia’s closest ally, and China, its closest trading partner; the war in Gaza and the rise of assertive nationalist leaders in India and elsewhere have had ripple effects in suburbs around Australia.

The loyalties of long-settled immigrants have at times been tested, and hate crimes, including Islamophobic and anti-Semitic attacks, are on the rise. And the election of the notoriously unpredictable Donald Trump as United States President has further heightened anxieties about the prospect that instability abroad could affect Australia.

A 2024 survey by the independent Scanlon Foundation Research Institute of more than 8,000 people, including respondents born overseas, found an overwhelmingly positive view of multiculturalism and the contribution of immigrants to Australian society, culture and the economy.

Some 85 per cent of Australians say multiculturalism has been good for the country, while seven in 10 people agree or strongly agree that “accepting immigrants from many different countries makes Australia stronger”.

While these are strong figures, support for multiculturalism has actually decreased by 2 percentage points to 7 percentage points since 2022, the survey said.

Prejudice was also a problem, the researchers found.

One in three overseas-born Australians from non-English-speaking backgrounds said they had experienced discrimination on the basis of skin colour, ethnic origin or religion in the past 12 months.

The war in Gaza, in particular, exposed deep schisms in Australia.

On a Friday afternoon in January 2025, Mr Harry Chahoud, a 59-year-old father of three who runs a car repair business, had just finished praying at Lakemba Mosque, a 48-year-old mosque in Sydney that is one of the country’s oldest and largest.

Mr Chahoud moved from Lebanon as a child with his family to escape the country’s civil war. He grew up in western Sydney, surrounded by migrant families from Greece and Italy and a few fellow Muslims.

“It couldn’t have been any better,” he recalled.

Now, however, he rates the period since the start of the Israel-Hamas war as the worst for Muslim Australians in his lifetime. He still believes that Australia is “the best country by far” but is deeply concerned about growing instances of anti-Muslim prejudice and intolerance.

“The perception of Muslims has never been worse,” he said. “The last 12 months have been very, very hard. Boy, there’s a lot of racism.”

A series of pro-Palestinian encampments in 2024 at major universities, as well as regular and ongoing pro-Palestinian demonstrations and ugly scenes as pro-Palestinian activists vandalised the offices of some MPs, divided Australians.

Mr Chahoud said his sister now feels uncomfortable wearing her hijab owing to fears of being harassed.

The numbers of Islamophobic and anti-Semitic attacks have soared, including a firebombing of a synagogue and a spike in reports of racist harassment.

A local community leader, Mr Gamel Kheir, secretary of the Lebanese Muslim Association, said he believed attitudes towards Muslims had worsened since the Israel-Hamas war.

But he traced the origins of the problem to the Cronulla riots in Sydney in 2005, which involved attacks by crowds of mostly young white protesters – often displaying Australian flags and emblems – against people of Middle Eastern appearance, and clashes between police and members of the Lebanese and Middle Eastern community.

“The world changed,” Mr Kheir recalled. “That was the first time that the Australian flag was used against us. It was used as a racial weapon.”

The Scanlon Institute survey found that inter-faith relations had worsened since the war in Gaza. Attitudes towards Muslims have hardened, with 33 per cent of those surveyed saying they had negative attitudes – up from 27 per cent in 2023 – while 18 per cent had positive attitudes and 49 per cent were neutral.

Positive attitudes towards all religious groups considered by the survey – Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Jews and Buddhists – have declined since around 2020.

An expert on racism and ethnicity in Australia, Emeritus Professor Andrew Jakubowicz of the University of Technology Sydney, said he believed levels of racism and intolerance in Australia had remained stable for at least two decades – until the past year, when they increased for some communities such as Muslims, Jews and Chinese-Australians.

He said the conflict in the Middle East had undermined social cohesion for some communities, adding to tensions that had built up in recent years because of resentments about Covid-19 lockdowns, frustrations over the rising cost of living, and the stream of images from conflicts in Ukraine and elsewhere.

“People are getting more and more uneasy about the disarray they see around them,” he said. “The assumption that people would come here and live harmoniously with each other and leave each other alone has come under some stress.”

Expressing concerns about the threat to Australia’s social cohesion, Mr Albanese in 2024 appointed separate special envoys to combat Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.

The Muslim population in Australia grew from 281,600 in 2001 to 813,400 in 2021, or 3.2 per cent of the population, including large numbers of migrants from countries such as Lebanon, Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Indonesia.

Along the shopping thoroughfare of Haldon Street in Lakemba, a short walk from the mosque, the community’s presence is evident in the Lebanese and Afghan eateries and the Islamic bookshops and banks.

More than 61 per cent of the suburb’s residents are Muslim, though many of the Lebanese residents who first settled here have moved and been replaced by migrants from South Asia, including Bangladesh, India and Pakistan.

Mr Sameer Ahmad, a 20-year-old student from Pakistan, said as he left the mosque in Lakemba that he had experienced no problems with racism and did not believe the war in Gaza had affected his life in Australia.

“It’s all good here,” he said. “It (the Gaza war) is hard because they’re Muslim too, but it does not affect us. There is less racism here than in other countries.”

Many in the Muslim community, however, say they feel a deep sense of “betrayal”, accusing Australia of ignoring the plight of Palestinians.

Ms Rita Jabri Markwell, a solicitor and adviser to the Australian Muslim Advocacy Network, works for a law firm that referred Mr Albanese to the International Criminal Court, alleging that Israel’s war against Hamas amounted to genocide and that Mr Albanese provided Israel with “unequivocal” support.

“There are a lot of members of the Muslim community who just feel completely betrayed, completely devastated,” she said.

“The Labor Party has always presented itself as the safe and trustworthy party to the Muslim community… People are now really looking for alternatives.”

Just 15km away, the Sydney suburb of Harris Park reveals a different pattern, with members of the Indian community saying they feel more at home as ties between Australia and their country of ancestry have grown closer.

The suburb houses Australia’s first “Little India”, low-key streets near a train station that are filled with Indian restaurants, salons, garment stores and groceries. More than 45 per cent of the suburb’s residents were born in India, compared with 19 per cent born in Australia, 6 per cent in Nepal, and 4 per cent in China.

At RaShi’s Boutique, a clothing store filled with colourful outfits and dresses, including lehengas, saris and anarkalis, Mr Rahul Rathore, the 35-year-old owner, attends to paperwork as his wife assists a group of customers.

Born in Bhopal, Mr Rathore studied accounting in Queensland, where he met his wife, who was from Nepal. They moved to Sydney and opened their store in 2023.

“It was free and independent and the economy was really good compared with India,” he said. “The Indian community is very much accepted here. That is what motivated me to stay. It’s a multicultural society, and it is becoming more multicultural than ever.”

Such sentiments are common in Harris Park.

At the beauty salon that he owns and runs with his wife, Mr Siddharth Shakya, a 44-year-old who moved from Gujarat to Australia for his studies in 1999, said he liked the “quality of life” and stayed. Now, he says, “I am more of an Australian than an Indian”.

“It’s a diverse country,” he said. “I think it is welcoming here, not just for the Indian community.”

But the positive mood in Little India is both a driver and a reflection of the warming ties between Australia and India.

Shared concerns about China’s rise have served to push both countries closer, along with the presence of Australia’s fastest-growing diaspora community and a mutual desire to improve the economic relationship.

Mr Vasan Srinivasan, a leader of the local community in Dandenong, a hub for Melbourne’s fast-growing Indian population, said Indian-Australians, like most diaspora communities, have a strong attachment to their country of origin.

Most of the Indian-Australian residents and community leaders interviewed did not think that the muscular Hindu nationalism of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which has at times led to tensions in India, particularly with the Muslim community, has had an impact on ties in the Australian diaspora communities.

During his two visits to Australia, Mr Modi received a rock-star welcome, although – as in India – he is a divisive figure. Some members of the Sikh and Muslim Indian communities have criticised Mr Modi, and some Hindu temples have been vandalised by Sikh separatist supporters.

Polling by the Lowy Institute in 2024 also revealed the extent of changing attitudes towards China as Canberra-Beijing ties worsened in the late 2010s and then improved with the election of the Labor Party in May 2022.

Some 53 per cent of Australians now see China as more of a security threat than an economic partner, down from a peak of 63 per cent in 2021 and 2022, but well above a low of 12 per cent in 2018.

From trade boom to diplomatic strains: Key moments in China-Australia relations

Mr Simon Chan, president of the Chinese Australian Forum, a Sydney-based organisation dedicated to engaging Chinese-Australians on political, economic and social issues, said Chinese-Australians became “collateral damage” in the deteriorating ties between Canberra and Beijing.

He said Chinese trade sanctions in 2020 had fuelled racism and led to “negative views” of Chinese-Australians.

Not all observers agree that Australia’s approach to Beijing has stoked community tensions. And Australian intelligence agencies have warned that China has been behind sophisticated espionage and interference plots and unprecedented levels of attempts to steal intellectual property.

Mr Kevin Yam, a research fellow at Melbourne University’s law school, observed: “Whenever there’s pushback against the Chinese Communist Party’s expansionist and authoritarian tendencies, then (part of the Chinese-Australian community think) that’s an attack on China and an attack on Chinese people itself.”

The consensus among almost all members of Australia’s migrant communities is that their voices too often remain unheard.

Mr Chan’s organisation, for instance, is pushing a series of civic programmes to educate Chinese-Australians about Australia’s political systems. He said successive federal governments have failed to consult communities about foreign and defence policies.

In a statement to ST, a spokesman for the Australian Federal Police – which enforces foreign interference laws – said it has teams across Australia that meet diverse communities to discuss the foreign interference laws. And it provides a fact sheet translated into more than 40 languages.

The Department of Home Affairs also said it delivers a community engagement programme and its officers meet diaspora communities regularly.

But a recurring view among community members and leaders is that the outreach is inadequate.

In suburban Melbourne, Mr Wu Minwen said there should be greater communication on China-related issues – such as foreign and defence policies – between the government and Chinese-Australians so they can be more active, participating citizens.

“I think the government can do better,” said the 57-year-old father of two who emigrated from China’s Zhejiang province in 2002.

Concerns about the need for a voice have led to an emerging phenomenon in Australia’s migrant communities: Many are becoming more politically active and promoting political candidates who represent their community’s views.

Among them is Dr Heena Sinha Cheung, a Melbourne mother of two and a dentist who left India in 2015 to study public health at Deakin University. She is running as an independent candidate for the Senate at the upcoming election.

She said governments frequently try to consult Indian-Australian community groups, but these groups do not always reflect the changing demographics of the Indian community.

With the next federal election due in months, communities across Australia have increasingly explored ways to have their voices heard.

At the previous election, in 2022, many Chinese-Australians turned against the ruling Liberal-National Coalition over its foreign interference laws and the rapid decline in relations with Beijing.

In areas with large numbers of Chinese-Australian voters, swings against the Coalition in 2022 were as much as three times as high as in other parts of the electorate.

As the community becomes increasingly politically aware, there is a growing push by major parties to include Chinese-Australians as members and political candidates. Just three out of Australia’s 230 MPs who have served in the current Parliament – or 1.3 per cent – have Chinese ancestry.

In Hurstville, a Sydney suburb where about half the residents are of Chinese descent, Mr Ben Wang has served as an independent member of the local council since 2021.

He said Chinese-Australians may be concerned about the prospect of Coalition leader Peter Dutton winning the next election, owing to his strident criticisms of China’s approach to Taiwan and to tensions in the South China Sea, as well as his pledge to curb immigration.

“This time, he (Mr Dutton) has mentioned a lot about immigration, including cutting migrant numbers, restricting international student numbers and limiting overseas buyers from purchasing Australian properties,” Mr Wang said.

Mr Dutton, the opposition leader, has pledged to cut the migrant intake if he wins the coming election, saying this will help to free up homes and address the “housing crisis”.

Such rhetoric could spark anti-migrant backlash, said Mr Wang.

In areas with large Muslim populations, the community has begun to prepare for the next election by promoting independent and Greens candidates against the Liberal and Labor parties, which they say have been too supportive of Israel.

Emerging groups such as The Muslim Vote and Muslim Votes Matter have called on the Muslim community to back candidates who represent its interests.

Polling analyst Kos Samaras said a large-scale shift of votes from Labor to independents could put several seats at risk but pointed out that the Muslim community was not “homogenous”.

Back in Burwood’s Chinatown, surrounded by local residents and visitors sipping bubble tea, Mr Luo, a member of the Labor Party, said he had noticed a change in the community among many who once believed that “politics wasn’t their concern”.

Many supported the Liberals’ policy of small government and lower taxes, but realise they can no longer ignore geopolitics.

“More and more Chinese-Australians are getting aware that sometimes, they do have to do something to express their concerns and tell the politicians,” he said.

As the election approaches, Mr Luo said cost of living remained the top election concern among the Chinese-Australian community, especially as relations with China have stabilised. But he worries about Mr Trump’s influence on the future of the Australia-China relationship.

“I will encourage the local Chinese-Australian community to be more active,” he said.

“We should be trying to express our concerns – at least, you know, to mitigate the impact of these (geopolitical tensions) on our local community here.”