By Alasdair Pal
SYDNEY (Reuters) -Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Tuesday that a right-wing opposition lawmaker should apologise for comments suggesting an unsustainable number of Indians were migrating to the country.
Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, a senator in the centre-right Liberal Party, made the comments about one of Australia’s largest minority groups following nationwide anti-immigrant protests that in part blamed Indians for cost-of-living pressures in the country.
Price used a radio interview last week to suggest that large numbers of Indians had been allowed to migrate to Australia to vote for Albanese’s centre-left Labor Party.
“There is a concern with the Indian community – and only because there’s been large numbers. And we can see that reflected in the way that the community votes for Labor at the same time,” Price said.
Her comments have caused anger amongst the Australian-Indian community, leading to calls for an apology, including from within her own party.
“People in the Indian community are hurting,” Albanese said in an interview with state broadcast ABC on Tuesday.
“The comments are not true that the senator made and, of course, she should apologise for the hurt that has been caused, and her own colleagues are saying that.”
Government statistics show 845,800 Indian-born people were living in Australia in 2023, more than doubling over the previous decade. Hundreds of thousands more born in Australia claim some form of Indian ancestry.
The state government of New South Wales on Tuesday held a meeting of community groups to discuss what it said was rising anti-Australian-Indian sentiment.
“Today we stand together with the Australian-Indian community to say unambiguously that the sort of racist rhetoric and divisive false claims we have seen over the last couple of weeks have no place in our state or country,” NSW Premier Chris Minns said.
India’s foreign ministry said last week it was engaging with Canberra over the rise in anti-Indian sentiment following the protests.
(Reporting by Alasdair Pal in Sydney; Editing by Saad Sayeed)
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