India is the most common country of origin for the almost 13,000 immigrants getting Australian citizenship during Labor’s pre-election blitz, making up about one-fifth of the total.
Home Affairs minister Tony Burke has been under fire for taking control of citizenship ceremonies in crucial electorates in Sydney’s west ahead of the federal poll, and has been accused of “vote buying” and “seat stacking” by his political opponents.
The electorates where Mr Burke has hosted citizenship ceremonies so far have large Indian immigrant populations, and a 2022 survey by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace found that newer Indian arrivals were nearly twice as likely to support Labor than the Coalition.
Of the 12,852 people becoming Australian citizens in time to vote in the upcoming federal election, due on or before May 17, 2,365 are Indian, The Daily Telegraph reported.
The second biggest country of origin is New Zealand, followed by the UK, the Philippines, China, Nepal, Iraq, Pakistan, Vietnam and Sri Lanka.
More than 6,000 are getting their citizenship during a three-day event at Sydney’s Olympic Park, where one attendee said officials from the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) were “working the crowd” to inform people of their voting rights and responsibilities.
A large screen also encouraged the new citizens to enrol to vote, and included a QR code and the AEC hotline.
Mr Burke on Friday hit back at critics of his citizenship push, who included local mayors, saying there was a “huge backlog” and councils were not having enough ceremonies despite having up to 700 people waiting.
But Opposition frontbencher Bridget McKenzie said Mr Burke was engaged in “industrial-scale seat stacking”, adding to criticism levelled at Labor on Thursday.
Opposition leader Peter Dutton accused Mr Burke of “putting thousands of people through an express citizenship process so that they can vote in the election”, and Opposition Home Affairs spokesman James Paterson said Labor was politicising citizenship for “partisan advantage”.
Independent Queensland Senator Gerard Rennick said the citizenship blitz showed that Labor was prioritising staying in power over looking after Australians.
“This is one of the most desperate examples of vote buying I’ve ever seen,” he wrote on social media.
“It confirms what we’ve always assumed which is that the Labor Party use immigration to boost their vote.
“Which isn’t really all that surprising when you consider how bad the Labor Party is at governing. Anyone who has lived here longer than six months can quickly work that out.”
Independent MP for Fowler in western Sydney Dai Le told Daily Mail Australia she had been attending citizenship ceremonies for a decade and had never seen a minister at one until Mr Burke showed up at the Casula Powerhouse Museum in Liverpool to welcome 260 new citizens on Wednesday.
‘Minister Burke told me that he is going to conduct citizenship ceremonies every day for the next couple of weeks,’ Ms Le said.
Fairfield Mayor Frank Carbone said citizenship should be about pledging allegiance to Australia rather than to a particular party or minister.
“You would have to assume that the only reason why they’re doing this is to do a photo op and to try and give people as many citizenship as possible, trying to influence their vote,” he said.
Liverpool Mayor Ned Mannoun said Labor had “rushed through citizenship applications for 700 people” in his council area, and said it amounted to “stacking marginal seats better than Woolworths stacks shelves”.
But Blacktown Mayor Brad Bunting said he was “thrilled” that Mr Burke joined a citizenship ceremony on Tuesday.
“Blacktown City is the largest council in NSW by population, home to 435,000 people. Our city is incredibly diverse, with over 180 nationalities represented and languages spoken,” he said.
Header image: A message from the Australian Electoral Commission at a citizenship ceremony in Sydney.
