This week, the Victorian branch of the Australian Labor Party (#ALP), launched at the Trades Hall Council building in Melbourne, the Victorian Multicultural Labor Network (#VMLN), implementing a 2023 state conference resolution, which aims to bring today’s multicultural communities closer to the ALP.

The objective, as stated in the adopted resolution is to “attract and support ALP members who are people of color or are culturally or linguistically diverse.”

The ambitious principle is to involve ethnic Australia at all levels of the ALP, for example, prepare culturally diverse members for public office, create awareness about issues facing them in the party, increase ethnic representation within the ALP at all levels, improve to state and federal policies and party platform in areas of interest to multicultural Australia, etc.

It has been a while since Labor attempted grassroots and policy work with what used to be a natural constituency of the party, that is, migrant Australia.

I do not know how many people remember and appreciate today, people from the wider Labor movement, party and trade unions, as well as from ethnic Australia, that the ALP became electorally competitive and won government again, after the 1955 split in Victoria, not because of the university educated middle classes, rather, because of the migrant vote, as a result of the post war mass immigration to Australia.

I cannot understand, why the Labor Party in Victoria, and federally, seeks to engage ethnic communities through peak multicultural bodies and bureaucracies that do not have real bonds, involvement and connections with their own communities, and have limitations imposed by their very nature. The real work should be via grassroots initiatives and policy work not through peak multicultural bodies.

I cannot understand why the Australian Labor Party now deals only with ethnic secular, or religious leaders who cannot deliver a single vote to the party, because they do not have real grassroots appeal and influence and may not share the party’s values.

It is unacceptable that ethnic Australians are treated, or be depicted as foot soldiers of Labor officials, or as troops commanded by ethnic powerbrokers, there for branch stacking. Or, on behalf of factions and individuals, seeking to win pre-selection.

Labor can no longer continue with these token “relationships” with ethnic Australia, if it wishes to remain the main governing progressively reformist party of this country.

The ALP needs to understand that ethnic leaders, or ethnic councilors and MPs, do not suffice anymore. As a matter of fact, they were never enough, they were never the main voter movers and shakers in migrant Australia. Ethnicity always goes hand in hand with ideology, class interests, gender identity, etc. It was the class identity /common work/industrial experiences of the past for example, that drove first generation migrants to Labor. The same goes for today. A voter or an ALP member is not just an ‘ethnic member’. Ethnicity is one of the variables that drive the politics of individuals and communities.

The newly established Victorian Multicultural Labor Network needs to understand this point from day one, if it is to be politically useful to its own grassroots members from various multicultural communities and to Labor The Network. It won’t be able to reverse the current strong conservative trend within old and new ethnic Australia, if it does not link its policies and its actions with the multifaceted ethnic and cultural identities. There is a very strong conservative element in today’s multicultural Australia. The ethnic vote regarding the marriage equality plebiscite in 2017, or the Voice to parliament referendum in 2023, is clear evidence.

The fragmentation of work, the fragmentation of our society into quite microcosms that never cross paths and never experience the same things is a major issue. The existence of an immigration program that does not make the new migrants permanent stakeholders of our country via residency and citizenship is another. The lure of conservative and right wing minor parties as much as the lure of Greens is tearing at the so called ‘ethnic vote.’

The explosion of the immigration program to levels that do not take into consideration the housing and infrastructure needs of the current “battlers”, or issues of social cohesion is another issue.

These factors easily erode the vote, and popular appeal of the ALP in immigrant and in wider Australia. This has happened in France, Germany, Italy and elsewhere.

Labor must change the way it views its relationship with multicultural Australia, and unless it changes the way it practices its politic , the Victorian Multicultural labor Network won’t make an impact.

Without a critical mass of active and reflective policy engagement from ethnic Australia, engagement that goes beyond electoral politics and electoral representation, without empowering ethnic members, without an alliance between emerging and established migrant communities, Labor cannot go far.

Kostas Karamarkos is a longstanding member of the Australian Labor Party. In the mid-1990s, he was an elected member of the Ethnic Affairs and Migration Policy Committee of the ALP in Victoria, as well as of the Foreign Affairs, Defense and Trade Policy Committee.