The Liberals are ditching Dutton’s migrant rhetoric. They’ll need to do more to win over multicultural Australia

Having had a few weeks to absorb the shock and lick their wounds, the Liberal Party finally seems ready to shift from offensive to charm offensive.

The clearest evidence of this shift was an interview Queensland LNP Senator and shadow minister Paul Scarr did this week with Guardian Australia. While offering no explanation for why multicultural communities deserted the Coalition, Scarr did offer some theories. He blamed his colleagues for their “loose”, “harsh” or “clumsy” language, which in turn provided fodder for their opponents to “weaponise public statements to tarnish their image”.

Some of his colleagues have been more blunt. In a recent ABC Four Corners episode, Liberal Party luminary George Brandis explained why his party has lost the election:

We alienated women, particularly women who wanted to work from home. We offended public servants. We offended multicultural communities, particularly with this announcement that went nowhere about a referendum on dual citizens. We insulted people who live in the inner cities. We didn’t really have an offering for young people, particularly students. We offended other minority groups as well. It was almost as if we were running out of new people to offend.

That’s a lot of people the Liberals need to work on if they want to get back in their good books.

But would simply improving language and rhetoric be enough for the Coalition to win back the trust of multicultural communities? Osmond Chiu, research fellow at the Per Capita think tank, told Crikey he does not believe so. “Most people will forgive clumsy language if they believe you are on their side,” he said.

“The issue for the Liberals is that there is no trust, regardless of what they say. Unless they are willing to fight their conservative base and demonstrate they are genuine about combating racism and discrimination, then no one will believe or pay attention to anything they say.”

And as far as rhetoric goes, Scarr’s reflections don’t seem to be qualitatively different from what his Liberal colleagues said in the party’s previous internal review, co-authored by Jane Hume and Brian Loughnane after the 2022 federal election:

There is a particular need for the party’s representatives to be sensitive to the genuine concerns of the Chinese community and to ensure language used cannot be misinterpreted as insensitive.

Clearly the caution expressed in this review was subsequently thrown out the window. Hume’s allegation of Labor volunteers being “Chinese spies” seems a classic case of “do as I say, not as I do.”

Scarr’s comments suggest the Coalition is still thinking that messaging is its primary problem when it comes to winning support from multicultural communities at the ballot box. But a Melbourne-based, Chinese-Australian community leader points out that actions will always be more important than words. Citing the Chinese saying, “Listen to his words but also watch his actions,” he told Crikey:

We would like to see a genuine change in values [from the Coalition], so that everyone Australian is treated equally regardless of their background.

Scarr also wanted to project a more compassionate image of his party, suggesting that perhaps the Liberals finally got the memo from Albanese, who told them “kindness isn’t weakness”. As Scarr told Guardian Australia:

So [when] we talk about immigration, we talk about numbers in a macro sense, but we should never forget that we’re actually talking about real people, real families who have different, varying experiences.

Even though it seems to have taken two elections for Coalition politicians to finally notice — or at least to articulate — that migrants are “real people, real families”, it is still better late than never. While adopting a more empathic stance towards multicultural communities is a good start, perhaps one thing that is even more important than compassion is the acknowledgement that many people in these “diasporas” — and certainly the voters among them — are rights-bearing Australian citizens.

Scarr noted that “Chinese, Indian and other diaspora communities” had rejected the Liberal Party, but did not seem to realise that this could be largely traced to the Coalition’s inability to see multicultural communities beyond the framework of diaspora.

A few years ago, the then acting immigration minister Alan Tudge observed with regret that some communities were still seen by their countries of origin as “their diaspora”, whereas he preferred to see them as “proud Australians”. Tudge’s remark seemed to suggest that people have to choose: either you’re staying on as part of “their diaspora”, or you’re trying to become a “proud Australian”.

Scarr chose to give an exclusive interview to Guardian Australia, possibly hoping his conciliatory message would reach his target audience — multicultural communities and those on the left — and bypass the Coalition’s traditional supporters. But he would have been more convincing if he had gone on Sky News, or given an exclusive interview to The Australian, saying that migrants are citizens and that there is no “us” vs “them”.

It’s yet to become clear whether the Liberals will be prepared to risk offending their conservative base by calling out xenophobia more widely, or whether they can refrain from throwing red meat to this segment of their constituency by insulting multicultural communities. It’s also unclear whether, in the course of trying to score political points against their political opponents across a range of topics, multicultural communities will somehow become collateral damage.

Tharini Rouwette, founder and CEO of the Centre of Multicultural Political Engagement, Literacy and Leadership (COMPELL), is sceptical of the Liberals’ latest “narrative pivot”:

Multicultural communities don’t need PR. We need policies that repair harm and redistribute power. A fresh face means little if the system behind it stays the same. You can’t undo a decade of dog-whistling with an empathetic narrative pivot. If the Coalition wants credibility with multicultural Australians, it needs to dismantle the legacy of Dutton, from surveillance and deportations to zero representation. Don’t tell us you’ve changed. Show us, in policy, appointments and power-sharing. Until then, this isn’t a shift. It’s spin.

Both Labor and the Liberals should consider taking Rouwette’s advice. Last month, Australia’s Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke issued a joint statement with Multicultural Affairs Minister Anne Aly, announcing the establishment of an Office for Multicultural Affairs within the Home Affairs Department — a move welcomed by multicultural organisations and communities.

But it is Aly’s comments that indicate Labor is ahead of the game, at least at the rhetorical level:

Social cohesion is about everybody … Making multicultural communities solely and wholly responsible for social cohesion, I think, has added to that perception of multicultural communities being over-securitised, being responsible for things like social cohesion.

Will the Liberals eat humble pie and recognise that Labor has a point? If the Coalition wants to win back the trust of multicultural communities, a good start would be a sincere apology from Senator Hume, as has been demanded by numerous open letters and petitions. Hume’s demotion may be to punish her for hurting the party’s election chances, but it is not as convincing as an acknowledgement that her words damaged social cohesion.