While the federal parliament will see an increased representation of female and culturally diverse members in the term ahead, the make-up of the two houses is still skewed in favour of white Anglo-centric candidates.

There will be 13 MPs from non-European and non-Indigenous backgrounds in the new parliament – up from nine MPs in the last parliament. But this represents just six per cent of all parliamentarians while 21 per cent of Australia’s population are from non-European backgrounds.

This compares with 17 per cent of non-European MPs in New Zealand, 16 per cent in Canada and 11 per cent in the UK.

Women have fared better in the latest poll with females expected to fill 57 per cent of Senate places and 38 per cent of lower house seats, including a wave of first time independents in Melbourne and Sydney.

Indigenous members of the new parliament number just 10, or 4.4 per cent – but this is up from eight, or 3.5 per cent, in the previous parliament.  

Labor’s caucus will be more diverse than the coalition’s with probably six new non-European MPs and two new indigenous MPs.

The Liberal Party will have just one non-European, non-Indigenous candidate, Singapore-born WA MP Ian Goodenough.

Advocates for multiculturalism point to the success of several non-European candidates in the election as evidence that it is in the political parties’ interest to run a more diverse array of candidates into the future.

Former Race Discrimination Commissioner Dr Tom Soutphomassane says more work is needed to make Australian politics more representative of the overall population.

“We simply do not see our multicultural character represented in anything remotely close to proportionate form in our political institutions,” he said

“But in Australia, there is a sense that you can still maintain the status quo with very limited social and political consequences.”

In the highly multicultural and traditional Labor Sydney seat of Fowler, Tu Le, the child of Vietnamese refugees who works as a community lawyer for refugees and migrants, was dumped by Labor to make way for Labor heavyweight Kristina Keneally.

Keneally lost on preferences to local independent Dai Le after an angry backlash over Labor’s ‘parachuted’ candidate.

“If this scenario had played out in Britain or the United States, it would not be acceptable,” Dr Soutphomassane said.

Twenty years ago, Australia and the UK had comparably low representation. But political parties in the UK have responded to campaigns from diverse communities and addressed the problem.

“The British Conservative Party is currently light years ahead of either of the major Australian political parties when it comes to race and representation,” Dr Soutphomassane said.

“This issue matters for everyone in Australian society that cares about democracy. If democratic institutions are not representative, their legitimacy will suffer,” he said. 

Advocates say a lack of representation in parliament can also lead to failures in policy.

During Sydney’s COVID outbreak in August 2021, electorates in the city’s multicultural western suburbs were subjected to harsher lockdowns as a result of a higher number of cases.

Tu Le says this was because the policies designed to contain the spread were crafted by people who didn’t understand these communities.

Orders around working from home could not apply for the many residents in insecure work; reliant on paid-per-hour jobs like cleaning or food delivery where there’s little if any sick leave.

And isolation requirements also didn’t account for the reality of multi-generational families living in the same household, often sharing rooms.