Hill – Queensland 2024

The Hillbillies will vote KAP until the cows come home.

Easy KAP retain, however if Shane Knuth retires, it could come in play. However, even if Knuth retires – the Katter Party would still be the strong favourites to hold the seat.

Labor and the LNP’s primary votes were very low in 2020 and I just can’t see them improving anytime soon.

KAP hold.

I’ll add that I think it’ll be KAP vs LNP so I’d say the margin will be slightly lower for KAP but still an easy win.

Interestingly, one of the preceding seats was Tabelands which was held by One Nation over a long period. Rosa Lee Long was popular enough to hold the seat until the 2009 redistribution abolished it. If the redistribution had been more favourable i reckon she could have held the seat even in 2012 and One Nation could have won it even in 2017 with a successor.

Interestingly Rosa Lee Long was of Chinese descent yet she is One Nation’s longest serving lower house MP in history.

Are there even any Hills in this electorate?

@ NP, correction is Rosa Lee Leong is not Chinese Descent, it’s her husband plus there are quite a few old stock Australians with partial Chinese Descent due to the Gold Rush

@Daniel T the town of Atherton (@Marh there is a historic heritage-listed Chinatown in Atherton from the Gold Rush) is 752m above sea level, so yes.

This is one of only a few Queensland state seats named after people (named after geologist Dorothy Hill, though she was born in Brisbane and died in Brisbane, but worked a lot on the Great Barrier Reef).

Bill Lee Long was famous in Qld for Tennis, having a well known name can be helpful [unless it’s Downer].

@Daniel t A cursory look at a map would jave saved you that question. Hill contains the two tallest of all Queensland hills, Mount Bartle Frere and Mount Bellenden Ker.

@ NP/Marh
It is an interesting point about at what point does someone cease to be a minority and become part of the cultural majority
As Marh correctly stated there will be some Old Stock Australians with partial Chinese heritage but more European. Should Robbie Katter be classified as non Anglo Australian even though he is only 1/8th Lebanese. Wikipedia lists Trevor Khan and Prue Carr as Asian Australians while they do have heritage from that part of the world. I am not sure if they cultural minorities in Australia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Asian_Australian_politicians#House_of_Representatives

@Nimalan if they all speak another language at home then they are definitely CALD.

When someone in a rural area has mixed heritage they often just nominate Australian on the census, and the Katters have never really said much about their Lebanese heritage other than that it’s there (Bob Katter was adamant that his granddad is “an Australian” in an interview and that saying he’s Lebanese is racist and that the reporter who asked it deserved a hiding, typical colourful Katterspeak). Race isn’t a topic that’s commonly discussed, but Aboriginal people are proudly Aboriginal even if they’re also white. Though that’s sorta different.

Prue Car has Bengali heritage and Bangladesh is in Asia but in North America, Australia, PNG and New Zealand “Asian” usually means East Asian while South Asians are more commonly known as “South Asian” or “Indian” (in Fiji for example the term Indo-Fijian refers to the ~30% of the population that has heritage from parts of South Asia, mostly India but also Pakistan and Bangladesh), so I would say she is part South Asian.

I think it all comes down to personal identity in terms of how they define themselves.

@ Nether Portal/Marh
Agree with your points if they speak another language at home or if they maintain distinct traditions. I would say Jews are CALD even if they dont speak another language at home they celebrate different festivals like Hannukah etc. With respect to the Katter family i think they are now assimilated.
I agree South Asians are Asians. I am South Asian myself and i describe myself that way. I prefer the term Indian not be used to refer to other South Asians. With Prue Car while she does have some South Asian heritage if she was walking down the street would she be perceived to be non-white? I am not sure if she can speak Bengali or practice Bengali tradition. I dont mean this comment to be disrespectful to anyone but is it just more about who is considered part of the majority and who is in the minority.

@Nimalan I think it comes down to personal identity, and how the individual sees themselves. I also believe that you can be culturally Australian, and also part of a cultural minority. For me, I have grown up in Australia and am culturally Australian, but I am also proud of my south Asian heritage and family traditions.

Also that article includes Zaneta Mascarenhas (Indian heritage), Cassandra Fernando (Sri Lankan heritage) and Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Sri Lankan heritage) as Asian-Australian politicians. So I assume it’s grouping people of south Asian heritage into that category. Prue Car is in there because her father is Indian.

@ AA
Firstly, on your second point i totally agree. I agree that Asian does exclusively refer to East Asians so no dispute about that.

I agree that people can be both culturally. i grew up in Australia as well but practice other traditions as well most of my friends are not South Asian that is because i grew up in an area where South Asians are less compared to other parts of Greater Melbourne. Again, i did not mean to be dispectful to Prue Car or anyone else and i am happy for people to self-identify as they see fit i am not accusing her of cultural appropriation etc. However, i am not sure if Prue Carr would for example experience the same level of racial abuse if she ran into a neo-nazi for example than you or I would. Dave Sharma two daughters are 1/4 Indian but they can pass as white something you or i cant. In the US, Fair skinned Hispanics especially those who speak English Fluently experience much less racism than Darker Skinned ones thats all.

@AA I would assume Zaneta Mascarenhas also has some Brazilian or Portuguese heritage too given that Mascarenhas is a Portuguese surname. There is a state on the western coast of India with a lot of Portuguese history from colonisation called Goa, perhaps her family is from there. The capital of Goa is Vasco da Gama which is named after the Portuguese explorer.

@Nimalan that second point you’ve made there is absolutely fair, there are definitely very valid points to make about the varying levels of discrimination people face. Also I don’t think you were disrespectful at all.

I presume the Katters would be proud of the

Their Lebanese heritage

We can think of minorities in a few forms. The ones pertinent to this discussion, in my view, are ethnic minorities (visible or passing) and cultural minorities, as well as the tangential term “people of colour”.

Ethnic minorities are just about genetic fact – you either have genetic ancestry from a part of the world or you don’t. I can’t claim to be of Han Chinese ethnicity if I’m simply genetically not. But culture is different. If I grew up in China amongst Chinese people (of whatever ethnicity), spoke and wrote the language fluently, went through the regular Chinese school system and mixed with Chinese people (as opposed to spending the whole time in expat enclaves), who’s to say I’m not culturally Chinese, no matter what genetics my parents had?

This is complicated by a few factors though. As Nimalan points out, there is a big difference in experiences between visibly recognisable minorities versus those who can pass as being from the dominant ethnic group. I think the darker someone’s skin is and the more non-Anglo their name is, the more likely they are to be seen as outside the dominant culture, a prefix Australian, so to speak, rather than just “an Australian”.

I don’t think passing takes away one’s ancestry or ethnicity, but a term like “people of colour” probably isn’t fitting. Labor once tried to call Jackie Trad a woman of colour, and I’m not sure I’d agree with that, because she looks like a European Australian and doesn’t have a recognisably non-European name. If one didn’t know about her Lebanese ancestry, they’d have a hard time picking it. That’s a level of privilege that some other Australians with similar ancestry simply don’t have due to their names and/or skin colour.

Perhaps there are two ways one can reasonably be described as a prefix Australian (Asian Australian, African Australian, etc) – ethnically or culturally.

When it comes to culture, I feel like Nimalan is correct, it’s generally only worth describing oneself as of a shared culture if one’s family as some level of practising that culture, be it through language, traditions or other practices. Or at least among those who can pass. The Katter family pass as European Australians, they assimilated long ago, and to my knowledge they don’t speak Arabic or engage in Lebanese cultural practices, so regardless of the Lebanese ancestry, I don’t think it’s fair to describe them as Lebanese Australians.

But consider people who are visibly not white but were adopted by white families. They may not be culturally of another background, but society may still have certain attitudes towards them based on what they look like. I think those people deserve to be regarded as part of the overlapping community because of that.

At the end of the day, it’s for people themselves to decide what aspects of their ancestry they want to identify with, but we should recognise the challenges are different for everyone, especially at different levels of minority visibility.

Also, Nether Portal, it’s great giving more information to everyone reading the page about other cultures and parts of the world, but it comes across as a little odd to direct an explanation about part of South Asia towards someone who has said they’re of South Asian background. It’s entirely possible A A knows more about Goa, having heritage in that part of the world. It’d be politer to ask what they know about it before explaining, or adding “as you may already know” to it if directing an explanation to them.

And as another person of South Asian ancestry, I can tell you that not every South Asian with a Portuguese surname has that ancestry. Some simply adopted them to curry favour with Portuguese colonial regimes, especially if they converted to Christianity. Cassandra Fernando too has a Portuguese surname, but that one is predominantly from Sri Lanka.

@Wilson I was unaware AA was South Asian. I knew Nimalan was though.

Mascarenhas is indeed a Portuguese surname though (if it was Spanish it would be Mascareñas).

India is a very diverse country and that has contributed to its political landscape. There are even entire states that are majority Christian.

@ Nether Portal that’s all good! There is indeed a lot of diversity in south Asia and some complicated history behind it. I’m always learning new things!!

@ AA
Thanks exactly that was my point there are different levels of discrimination that people face even if they have origin from the same part of the world. Lebanese Christians face less discrimination than Lebanese Muslims if Jacqui Trad was Lebanese Muslim and her name was Fatima Trad and wore a Hijab she will be more likely to be perceived an other.
@ Wilson, i agree with you there are different level of viability and the lived experience will be different. Names and Skin Colour in Australia does differentiate from those who seen as the default Australian and those who Australian with a qualifie. Varun Ghosh is Bengali like Prue Carr but i would think they will be perceived differently and have different experiences growing up in Australia.
@ NP Zaneta is in fact of Goan origin her parents lived in Australia before migrating to Australia. Also correct India is very diverse and does have Christian majority states. Pretty much all of the world’s religions are represented in South Asia. Zaneta, Michelle Anada-Rajah and Cassandra Fernando are all Christians while Varun Ghosh is Hindu

*qualifer

*her parents lived in Kenya I mean