Anthony Albanese: Kristina Keneally also a great migrant success story

Anthony Albanese spruiks US-born Kristina Keneally’s ‘migrant’ background as he defends Labor over the decision to parachute her into the multicultural community of Fowler.

Anthony Albanese has defended Labor’s record on diversity, spruiking Kristina Keneally as “another great Australian” migrant success story amid furore over a decision to shunt local Vietnamese-Australian candidate Tu Le in her favour.

The Opposition Leader’s defence of his home affairs spokeswoman came just hours after Ms Le slammed the saga as a “sour debacle”, saying the optics of imposing the US-born senator on her multicultural western Sydney community were poor.

Despite not living in the electorate of Fowler, Senator Keneally was parachuted into the safe seat that incorporates the culturally diverse suburbs of Cabramatta and Fairfield after it became clear she would land on Labor’s effectively unwinnable third spot on the NSW Senate ticket.

Amid criticism of the ALP’s record on diversity, Mr Albanese pointed to his Italian heritage as he touted Senator Keneally’s migrant credentials. “And by the way, our deputy leader in the Senate, Kristina Keneally, was born in the US, came to Australia, and is another great Australian success story of a migrant who’s come here and became the NSW premier,” he said.

Former prime minister Paul Keating also defended the decision to move Senator Keneally into the electorate, saying she was a “huge executive talent”, as he too pointed to her migrant background. “And on the diversity point, she’s a migrant herself – she got off the plane and scrambled her way to the NSW premiership, which is a pretty big effort, a pretty good effort,” Mr Keating told The Sydney Morning Herald.

The chosen candidate of retiring Labor stalwart Chris Hayes, Ms Le questioned the decision to “impose” Senator Keneally on her community, particularly as she had no connection to Fowler.

She said the underlying issue was whether Labor was doing enough to ensure the nation’s cultural diversity was appropriately represented in the party.

“I’m disappointed personally but I’m also disappointed for my communities … they feel like they don’t have a say in who gets to represent them and who is the person that speaks up for them in the struggles they face and we face every day,” Ms Le told ABC radio.

“But I think that the issue is beyond me, and I think it’s much more than just the sour debacle that we have now.”

Labor’s woes over multiculturalism come as one of the ­Coalition’s few ethnically diverse MPs – Ian Goodenough – is being challenged by Coalition colleague Vince Connelly, whose seat of Stirling has been abolished in an electoral redistribution.

Australian Multicultural Foundation chief and former SBS chairman Hass Dellal said the major parties were failing to reflect an ethnically diverse Australian public. “Labor, Liberal, Greens, they all have to do a much better job on getting MPs who reflect society.

“These sort of events discourage people from participating in democracy,” he said. “Only 4 per cent of MPs come from non-Anglo backgrounds but 19 per cent of the Australian population does.”

While stopping short of calling for “diversity targets”, NSW Labor senator Jenny McAllister said there were “clear calls” from the community to “do better on this” but added these issues were not ­exclusive to Labor or to politics in general. “We ought to be setting ourselves some bold goals in terms of shifting the dial on this … I think that we need to have a really strong conversation about how we make our caucus truly representative,” Senator McAllister told ABC radio on Monday.