The Greens’ deputy leader says mainstream parties have failed to address the needs of immigrant communities and their voices are not being heard.
Muslim voters “have been ignored for too long”, says Greens deputy leader Mehreen Faruqi, amid expectations that a grassroots organisation will field candidates in Labour-held seats.
The senator also expressed pride in Western Australian Senator Fatima Payman for “standing firm in her convictions” after she left the Labor Party over its stance on Palestinian statehood.
Senator Faruqi said she had been in contact with the senator over the past few weeks but had not attempted to recruit her to the Greens.
The Greens are also expected to continue to press the federal government to recognise a Palestinian state, Senator Faruqi said in an interview on ABC’s Insiders on Sunday.
Asked about her views on The Muslim Vote, a grassroots organisation that will field candidates in some Labor strongholds in western Sydney, Senator Faruqi said the major parties had failed to address the needs of those communities.
“People of color and Muslims have been ignored for too long in this country,” he said.
Politicians from both major parties have used immigrant communities as “symbols” and “photo opportunities at religious events,” he said.
Greens Deputy Leader Senator Faruqi says Muslims have long been ignored in Australia
Senator Fatima Payman resigned from the Labour Party after defecting to the independent party (pictured)
“So I’m not at all surprised that communities are organizing and saying, ‘Well, we want our voices to be heard, and one way to do that is to organize and run candidates.'”
According to the 2021 census, the number of Australians who identify as Muslim, across all forms of Islam, rose to 813,392 people, or 3.2 per cent of the population.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has expressed concern about the country taking a faith-based policy route, saying it would “undermine social cohesion”.
Senator Faruqi was not concerned about Muslim communities putting forward their own candidates as people had the right to express their faith in Australia.
She believed in a “secular parliament” with a “separation of church and state” and would like to see the Lord’s Prayer no longer read at the start of each Senate day.
“I would like to get rid of this because there are so many people of different religions and from all over the world living in this country, and that is not representative,” he said.
The final two weeks of parliamentary sittings before the mid-winter recess were dominated by the fallout from Senator Payman’s decision to cross parliament to support a Greens motion on Palestinian statehood.
More than two-thirds of United Nations members recognise a Palestinian state and it has been a non-member observer state at the UN General Assembly since November 2012.
Mehreen Faruqi says mainstream parties used migrant communities as ‘signposts’ and ‘photo opportunities’
Senator Faruqi said the Greens would continue to press the Labour Party to recognise Palestinian statehood and self-determination.
He said it was a separate issue whether or not Hamas should be dismantled.
“Who is going to dismantle it? It is up to the people of Palestine and that region to make sure that people can live in peace,” Senator Faruqi said when asked about the question of Hamas’ future.
“The Palestinians need to decide where they want to go with their own region,” he said.
Australia has classified Hamas as a terrorist organisation and the senator said the Greens have made no demands to change that classification.
Government Services Minister Bill Shorten said he was disappointed Senator Payman had left Labor but it was ultimately her decision.
However, if Mr Shorten were to leave the party, he said he would resign his seat.
“However charming and charismatic individual candidates are, people vote for parties quite often,” he told Sky News on Sunday.
National Party Senate leader Bridget McKenzie said it was “a problem of the prime minister’s own making”.
“This guy has become stuck in a rut and has become more focused on domestic factional politics and, you know, building his foreign policy through the lens of how it will affect western Sydney,” he told Sky News on Sunday.