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This was published 4 months ago
Zahid Safi was warned about the Liberals. Now, he is a candidate
Zahid Safi had only just arrived in Australia when he was warned about the Liberal Party.
It was during Friday prayers in Melbourne’s south-east when the Afghan-born refugee asked a fellow worshipper who the “men in suits” were at his mosque that day in 2013.
Zahid Safi with wife Zinab Husseinkhil and three of his six children, Abdulbasit, 4, Rida, 1 and Wesal, 14. Credit: Paul Jeffers
“They told me it was election time, and it was a candidate from the Liberal Party and that they were against Muslims and immigrants,” Safi told The Sunday Age.
A decade on, the 36-year-old is on a mission to become the first Muslim MP to represent the Liberal Party in federal parliament. He’s been preselected to take on Labor’s Julian Hill in the south-east Melbourne seat of Bruce, where he lives with his wife and six children.
“When we come here, we listen to our communities but unfortunately, our community does not always have a proper understanding of political parties and their policies,” he said.
His preselection, he says, is proof that the assumption that the Liberal Party is “not the party of multicultural people” is wrong.
Zahid Safi with federal member for La Trobe Jason Wood. Credit: Paul Jeffers
Bruce, which includes Doveton, Endeavour Hills, Hallam, Lysterfield South, Narre Warren and Dandenong, is home to more than 24,000 people of Islamic faith, making it one of the largest Muslim seats in Australia.
Born in the Laghman province of Afghanistan in 1987, Safi’s family moved to Pakistan when he was a toddler. They lived in a refugee camp for more than a decade before being granted asylum in Finland in 2003.
Safi learnt Finnish and went to university while working part-time as a translator. He moved to Australia in 2013, settling in Dandenong with his Melbourne-raised wife, Zinab.
“Through all my experience – from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Finland and then Australia – I have found Australia to be a home,” Safi said.
“When I came here, I had a sense of belonging from day one.”
To have any chance of winning back government, the Liberal Party knows it needs to better reflect modern Australia and prioritise greater gender and ethnic diversity when selecting candidates. That was the message from the party’s post-mortem review into its 2022 election thumping: the membership is too male, too old and too white – and it’s hurting the party’s chances.
While some Liberal women remain frustrated with the party’s efforts to preselect more female candidates, efforts are quietly being made to broaden the party's membership base to better represent modern multicultural Australia.
Bruce has been a safe Labor seat since 1996, but is one of several traditional strongholds in the outer suburbs being targeted by the Liberal Party in an effort to offset losses in affluent Melbourne and Sydney seats it once safely held.
Labor MP Julian Hill currently holds the seat of Bruce by a margin of 6.6 per cent.Credit: Elke Meitzel
A senior Labor source told The Sunday Age – speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters – that the party was not “remotely worried” about losing the seat and was confident the electorate’s large Muslim community would be unlikely to vote Liberal.
Jim Reed, founder of Resolve Strategic which conducts the Resolve Political Monitor for this masthead, said that while the Liberals’ staunch support for Israel might count against it in seats such as Bruce, to represent the outer suburbs parties must reflect their diversity.
“This is something the Tories have done well in the UK, and the Liberals need to follow suit,” Reed said.
“The electoral map is changing. We’ve seen that already with inner-city strongholds falling to the Teals and Greens, and it may also be true of the blue-collar seats the Liberals are now targeting.”
But the Liberal Party has had a strained relationship with Muslim communities in recent years, fuelled by a track record of interventions and remarks – by candidates, MPs and even party leaders – that were perceived as anti-Muslim.
In one example, Peter Dutton – now Opposition Leader but at the time immigration minister – in 2016 claimed former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Fraser had made “a mistake” by allowing Lebanese Muslims fleeing civil war to immigrate to Australia under relaxed migration laws in the 1970s.
At the time, Dutton justified his comments – made against the backdrop of a spate of foiled terror plots – by highlighting that 22 of the last 33 people charged with terrorism-related offences were from second- and third-generation Lebanese Muslim backgrounds.
Safi – who teaches business studies to international students – has travelled to Canberra to meet Dutton, describing him as an “amazing person”.
He insists the beliefs and values of the Liberal Party align with immigrant communities.
“When it comes to immigration, any immigrant or Australian citizen would want to protect their community, for their kids and everyone,” Safi said of Dutton’s 2016 comments.
“The Liberal Party were the ones that abolished the White Australia Policy, more recently they helped more than 4100 Afghans escape within eight days.
“Actions speak louder than words.”
But with the next election to be held in the first half of next year, Safi said he wanted to focus on local issues hurting voters in his community, including cost-of-living pressures and better access to mental health services.
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