By Neville D’ Cruz
Melbourne, Aug 19 (NNN-Bernama) The Howard Government is facing an electoral backlash from the nation’s Indian community over the Mohamed Haneef affair, according to “The Australian” newspaper.
The United Indian Associations (UIA), the peak body representing the 150,000 Indian-born Australians, said the Indian community felt “badly let down” by Prime Minister John Howard and would vent its anger at the polls due before the end of this year.
“There is a lot of dissatisfaction … and I would not be surprised if that is reflected in the election,” UIA president Raj Natarajan told the newspaper.
“If there were people (of Indian descent) who were sitting on the fence (politically), I would say they would have jumped to the other side (the Labour Party) now.”
Many Indians believe the Haneef episode resulted in the whole community being tainted by the terror allegations made against Dr Haneef and by the early media coverage, which was hostile to the Gold Coast-based Indian doctor, the newspaper said.
The community’s main concern was that the demonisation of Dr Haneef by the media and the Government had tainted all law-abiding Indians.
The community was angry that even after charges were dropped against Dr Haneef and he had left the country, Howard and his Cabinet made no attempt to repair the damaged image of Indians in Australia.
According to “The Australian”, if Natarajan was right about the ill-feelings among the Indians, it could hurt Howard’s Liberal Government in several marginal seats, including Howard’s Bennelong seat in northwestern Sydney.
Indian-born Australians concentrate in above-average numbers in five Liberal marginals, most notably Parramatta in Sydney’s west and in the Prime Minister’s Bennelong.
The newspaper said the Indian-born comprise 2.1 per cent of Bennelong, which places them fourth of the electorate’s major ethnic groups, behind the Chinese-born (6.9 per cent), Hong Kong-born (3.3 per cent) and the English-born (2.6 per cent).
Bennelong is expected to fall to Labour’s high-profile candidate Maxine McKew with a swing of 4 per cent votes.
In Parramatta, they are the largest immigrant group, comprising 3.8 per cent of the electorate. Labour requires a swing of just 0.9 per cent to win Parramatta.
Australia’s Indian-born population has almost doubled under the Howard Government, from 77,000 in 1996 to 147,000 at last year’s census.
Their numbers would be too small to matter if they were spread evenly across all electorate but they cluster in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.