The new political movement emanating from western Sydney is not a Muslim party. It’s not a registered party at all – not at the moment anyway – but a network of people angry at government on a range of issues and brought together by one: Gaza.
The group is, it seems, a bit more diverse than the reporting on it thus far would suggest.
It is linked to the activist website The Muslim Vote through the influential Islamic scholar sheikh Wesam Charkawi, who is tied to the site through the company that registered it, IPBL College.
Charkawi has been central in bringing the broader network of concerned western Sydney residents together but, according to one of those who’ve had informal discussions with them, there are plenty of people involved who are not of the Muslim faith.
The group has consulted a range of people on electoral effectiveness – how, for example, a community network of highly motivated individuals might go from exchanging disappointments about government to ousting major-party incumbent MPs and getting independents elected.
Attending a meeting some months back, one guest was surprised and impressed at the breadth of the group’s political contacts, who they were able to call on to sit around a table in a room of about 50 people and offer candid observations or advice. This observer describes them as representing the working poor of western Sydney, the people who have a long train trip every day, to and from jobs that some sneer at.
The group’s grievances are wide-ranging, including about service delivery and roads that need repair. Not all of these things are the responsibility of the federal government. But foreign policy certainly is and that’s what has ultimately brought them together: a common and deeply felt disillusionment with the national response to Israel’s war in Gaza and specifically with the Albanese Labor government.
The movement is seeking to appeal to voters generally in the seats it intends to target, most specifically the western Sydney seats of Blaxland and Watson held by ministers Jason Clare and Tony Burke. It wants them to vote for pro-Palestinian independents instead.
These seats have been historically considered safe for Labor. Based on the 2022 election result, Clare holds Blaxland on a 14.94% margin and Burke is on 15.21% in Watson.
The Australian electoral commission’s proposed boundary changes as part of its New South Wales redistribution will affect those on-paper margins slightly. The sideways shift of some areas from one electorate to another will also affect the percentage of voters in each who, based on the last census, identify as Muslim. Post-redistribution, both seats will now have about 30% of total voting-age constituents who’ve said they are Muslim.
This is where The Muslim Vote website comes in.
The site appeared late last year after Israel launched its military assault on Gaza in retaliation for the 7 October Hamas terrorist attack against it. The site seeks to rate incumbent Labor MPs on their views and actions in relation to the Gaza conflict.
It’s also soliciting donations to run and support local and national pro-Palestinian campaigns, town-hall rallies and events.
“The Muslim Vote funds, magnifies and supports campaigns across Australia,” the website says. “Mobilising the Muslim community is essential to shifting the balance of power.”
It’s encouraging Muslim Australians in particular to consider their voting choices in light of its published ratings. Basically, it’s urging a section of the community to use its numbers in key seats to make its collective voice heard.
Western Australian Labor senator Fatima Payman’s recent move to the crossbench in protest at her party’s Gaza stance has drawn new attention to the website and another also publishing a scorecard on MPs, Muslim Votes Matter.
A third, Community 200, was registered by the same man who registered The Muslim Vote. The otherwise spartan website contains text that says: “Community 200 is future-proofing politics for good. Now is the time. BE THE CHANGE!”.
Cheekily, that is very similar to the language used by an established and separate organisation, Climate 200, which proclaimed it was “climate-proofing politics for good” when it funded so-called teal independent candidates who ousted incumbent Liberal MPs at the 2022 federal election. Community 200 has no connection to Climate 200, according to sources involved with the latter.
The emergence of the Muslim-labelled websites has also sparked debate about the viability and wisdom of establishing faith-based parties.
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The prime minister weighed in to criticise the concept, not that it’s especially new. Longtime morals crusader Fred Nile spent more than two decades in NSW state politics leading the Christian Democrats. And Labor’s familiarity with the sharp intersection between religion and politics goes back to the split of 1955 and the creation of the Catholic-dominated DLP. Why a Muslim-backed party would be any different isn’t clear.
On Friday, leaders of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community spoke on the sidelines of their annual national convention in western Sydney, also raising concerns about faith-based parties and emphasising that Australia is secular and voters are entitled to make their own choices about who they support and why.
But a look to recent events in the northern hemisphere suggests these websites’ proponents – and the adjacent western Sydney political movement – may not be especially perturbed.
British Labour’s landslide victory last week in the United Kingdom’s federal election has understandably obscured the fact that the incoming government also lost five seats with high Muslim-identifying populations – one to the Conservatives and four to pro-Palestinian independents.
And British website The Muslim Vote UK, on which the Australian version appears to be modelled, down to colour scheme and fonts, acted as a kind of political aggregator, helping voters choose pro-Palestinian candidates and vote against those they deemed sub par. In other words, this kind of strategy can work. And the British result proves it.
Australian Labor knows it too. One senior party figure acknowledges that if the western Sydney group can organise itself and choose effective candidates to run against Burke and Clare, the ministers could be in trouble, even though Clare’s primary vote last time was 54.98% and Burke’s 51.87%.
The path is narrow but it’s there. If pro-Palestinian independent candidates can push those primaries below 50% – more of a risk for Burke, who ironically has been among the most pro-Palestinian ministers in the cabinet – then preference flows become very significant.
What will Peter Dutton’s Liberals do? Will they preference a pro-Palestinian candidate ahead of Labor? Or a Greens candidate? Those would be fascinating negotiations.
This is another reason the members of the increasingly active network of western Sydney residents aren’t likely to badge themselves as a Muslim party. They don’t need to. If they declare themselves pro-Palestinian, and vocally so, they will hope to harness the broader community support for a protest vote among those who want the war in Gaza to stop. Just by existing, the websites will ensure Muslim voters in particular get – and carry – the message in the seats where they can make a difference.
It isn’t an exercise that all of these now-activists necessarily relish. Some have volunteered for Clare and Burke in the past. Some are longtime associates and might even call themselves friends.
But for them, the government’s early hesitancy in condemning outright the Israeli attacks on civilians in Gaza – and especially its refusal to use the word “genocide” in relation to the killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians there – is what’s being described as “a knife to the heart”.
Now they seek to respond in a language Labor understands, wielding what they have to hand: passion, a pencil and a paper ballot.