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- 'All my uncles are voting for him'
Getting anyone to do anything at 9am on a Sunday is ambitious, but about 30 people showed up at Berala Community Centre last weekend to volunteer for The Muslim Vote’s incipient political campaign in western Sydney.
The organisers at the front of the room — Dr Ziad Basyouny, the recently announced independent candidate for the seat of Watson, and Sheikh Wesam Charkawi — conceded pretty quickly that the original plan to doorknock people at home wouldn’t get a great reception on a Sunday morning. Instead, volunteers were given flyers and split into six teams targeting three train stations — Bankstown, Parramatta and Berala — and three shopping strips — Greenacre, Auburn and Lakemba.
Volunteers ranged from first-timers to seasoned campaigners — recent Cumberland City Council candidate Mohamed Hassan was in the room, as was Rebecca Kay, who ran as an independent in the state seat of Bankstown in 2011 — but no one underestimated what they’re trying to do. Convincing tens of thousands of voters to unseat senior Labor ministers like Tony Burke and Jason Clare, in areas of Sydney that have voted Labor for decades, is an enormous ask.
“We’re removing 50 years of rust,” Sheikh Charkawi says. “But we’re already making progess. All of my uncles know Dr Ziad, and they’re all voting for Dr Ziad.”
But forcing Labor ministers out of government is the explicit goal. “I’m planning to dislodge Tony Burke, and probably federal Labor as well,” Basyouny says. “Tony Burke will never go against party politics. Anthony Albanese was the Labor Party’s strongest person on Palestine, and look what happened. The proof is in the pudding.”
Basyouny has often thought about becoming politically active since coming to Australia in 2004. In 2011, he considered running against Tania Mihailuk, NSW Labor’s candidate in Bankstown, after seeing that she had attended domestic ceremonies celebrating the anniversary of Israel’s foundation in 1948. (Mihailuk now represents Pauline Hanson’s One Nation in the NSW Legislative Council.)
“I’ve been angry at the idea that I live and work in a safe seat, but until now there was no way to express that,” he tells the room. “I naively thought, ‘can’t we just speak to our representative?’, which was Tony Burke. I learned better. They came to prayers, they came to iftars. They came to a mosque to talk about the Voice [to Parliament], and the next day, literally, they tried to stop us marching in the streets.”
The prospect of being targeted — by Labor, by the media — doesn’t phase him. “I might lose my registration, that’s okay,” Basyouny says drily.
He tells the room that federal authorities questioned him in 2007 based on supposed similarities between his “profile” and that of Dr Muhamed Haneef, such as being a Muslim doctor and travelling internationally on a one-way ticket.
(Haneef was wrongly imprisoned for nearly four weeks in 2007 after being falsely accused of providing support to the attempted Glasgow airport terror attack. He was later awarded a substantial payout as compensation for his wrongful imprisonment.)
Out on Haldon Street in Lakemba, the mood among volunteers is upbeat. People doing the shopping or getting chai from Dhaka Delight are happy to stop and chat. Every other shop window has a Palestinian flag in it.
With an election due by May 2025, The Muslim Vote is seeing to build itself into a grassroots political force in very little time. They’ve sought advice from Rob Oakeshott, the former independent member for Lyne, on campaigning against a major-party incumbent, and are planning an official launch in November.
For now, the focus is on educating people in the community that an election is coming up, and taking people’s temperature about the issues they care about. It’s also about building a presence — getting people used to the idea that an independent is running, that they have an option outside the major parties, and giving volunteers the experience and confidence they’ll need to campaign more intensively as the election gets closer.
“Don’t knock on people’s doors like you’re the police!” Sheikh Charkawi tells volunteers. “If you’re in a group and you’re speaking to someone, you don’t all need to stare at them. Be really honest about who we are and what we’re doing. We don’t want to annoy people or put them off. Give them time, give them space.”
“We don’t want to only speak to Muslims — we want to speak to the entire electorate,” he says. “Doorknocking, we’ve met Palestinians who are having problems with their visas to people complaining about hooligans driving up and down their street. Sometimes people just want to vent, and you’re there to listen — that’s okay. By doing that, you’ve created rapport.”
There are logistical challenges an independent campaign in Bankstown and Auburn faces that other independents, like the teal candidates on the North Shore and the Beaches, don’t. A lot of people aren’t actually enrolled to vote, especially recent migrants, so making sure people are enrolled takes up a lot of work.
But Basyouny points to the recent council elections as evidence that something big is underway. In the Canterbury-Bankstown and Cumberland local government areas, support for Labor candidates collapsed.
“These are areas that recorded 50, 55, 60 percent support for Labor last time,” he says. “Now it’s 40 percent, 35 percent, lower.”
Donations have slowed pretty much to a trickle now — I’ve managed to send Noor a few hundred dollars over the last six weeks or so but besides that there’s been almost nothing.
If you’re new to this newsletter, since February I’ve been trying to raise money for Noor Hammad, a young mother in Gaza who has been struggling to survive Israel’s ongoing bombardment and imposed starvation. She lost her home in Deir al-Balah in October, and gave birth to her daughter Hoor in a tent a few months later.
I’ve been speaking with Noor on WhatsApp for a long time now. Her and her family want to escape to Cairo, but they’re trapped until Israel reopens the Egyptian border crossing. They’ve narrowly escaped Israeli bombing several times, and have had trouble with illness.
If you’ve got anything to spare, please donate whatever you can here.
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