NSW election: Indications Chinese-Australian voters tipped to vote Labor

Labor appears to be winning favour with Chinese-Australian votes ahead of Saturday’s NSW election.

Warren and Daisy Lam are thinking of voting Labor. Picture: Noah Yim

Labor appears to be winning favour with Chinese-Australian votes ahead of Saturday’s NSW election. It is a key voting demographic well placed in seats that could determine the balance of power in a race looking unfavourable for the Liberal Party.

In six of the electorates most likely to decide the outcome, more than 10 per cent of residents have at least one Chinese-born parent, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

In the seat of Kogarah in south Sydney, where 23 per cent of people have at least one parent born in China, premier aspirant Chris Minns won in 2019 with a narrow 0.1 per cent margin.

Premier Dominic Perrottet on Thursday campaigned in Ryde, where 21 per cent of residents have at least one parent born in China. The Liberals are hoping for a seamless transition in the seat from outgoing local member Victor Dominello to fresh-faced, 28-year-old former mayor Jordan Lane.

It will therefore come as little comfort to the Coalition there are continuing indications Chinese-Australian voters may deliver a victory for Labor. An informal poll conducted by major Chinese news website Sydney Today has so far found a thumping lead for Labor, with more than 70 per cent of its nearly 3000 respondents saying they prefer Labor over the Coalition.

The website’s editor, Martin Ma, reasoned this was because “Labor is engaging harder with the Chinese community”.

“I feel the Liberals are a little bit quiet this election in the Chinese community,” he continued.

“Labor’s running a lot of events and I regularly receive invitations from Labor.”

It suggests NSW Labor has repaired its standing with voters of a Chinese background – among others – after then-leader Michael Daley in 2019 made disparaging comments about Asians at a “politics in the pub” event in a video that resurfaced before the party’s election loss.

“Our young children will flee and who are they being replaced with?” he asked. “They are being replaced by young people from – typically – Asia with PhDs.”

Chris Minns is also an active user of Chinese social media platform WeChat – ubiquitous among Chinese-Australians – posting regular articles from his account, some of which have been read thousands of times.

Mr Perrottet is not active on the platform and a search for his name mostly yields Covid-era news articles and videos.

The shifting vote among Chinese-Australian voters has previously been noted with concern inside the Liberal camp. Its 2022 federal election post-mortem review found the Liberal Party saw a 6.6 per cent swing against it in the country’s top 15 seats by Chinese ancestry, almost double the 3.7 per cent swing nationally. “Rebuilding the party’s relationship with the Chinese community must be a priority,” it read.

Married couple Daisy and Warren Lam, who operate an importing business in Marrickville, said they were considering voting for Labor on Saturday despite usually supporting Liberals.

“I always vote Liberal because I’m a businesswoman – we have the same mentality,” she said.

“But the reason I will vote Labor is, I think they’re more friendly to the Chinese.”

But she said she was not particularly keen on either major party. “To be honest, I think they are all the same,” she said. “They think China is a threat.”